Coupling’s Biggest Update Yet: Practice in Real Conversations
Get a first look at Chit Chats before the big Valentine’s Day launch
Happy New Year — both solar and lunar! I’ve been hard at work transforming Coupling in preparation for a big Product Hunt launch on Valentine’s Day. Coupling has grown up some much in its first year. I’m excited to share all the latest updates!
💬 Chit Chats — Practice in Real Conversation
Chit Chats have landed! Chit Chats now give you a fun and natural place to use words you've learned in context, discover new ones, and share a laugh with your partner in another language.
Once you’ve mastered a Brew topic, you can open a Chit Chat to practice in a text conversation — or through audio messages if you’re a Cafe Member.
Each chat comes with an AI translation assistant to help you craft messages, and your partner can suggest corrections
Best of all, if you see new words you’d like to learn while chatting, you can add words you encounter directly to your deck.

Each Chit Chat includes a challenge goal to demonstrate words from the Brew. Demonstrate enough of them in conversation, and you’ll officially master that Brew — earning a shiny Brew badge to show off in your library!
🔰 Watch Your Brews Bloom
The Brew Store has been completely redesigned to showcase your progress. Brews appear as badges, organized by category. As your mastery grows — from acquisition to mastery to demonstration in Chit Chats — each badge evolves in color until it reaches a sparkly, fully mastered state.
Browsing through your pages of Brews will give you a clear sense of how far you’ve come in your language journey. As an added bonus, you now earn Beans when you fully master a Brew!
⚡ Level Ups — Aim for Level 99
Coupling now shows your language mastery level, complete with a progress bar. As you learn more words, you’ll rack up experience and level up. These are tied directly to your actual language progress and based around the standard Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Set your sights on fluency at Level 99!
🔀 Language Switcher — Become a Polyglot
If you’re looking to tackle more than one language at a time, you’ll love the new Language Switcher. Just tap the user switcher at the bottom twice to toggle between languages.
Personally, I’m focused on Cantonese but sometimes dabble in Mandarin and Spanish. I also switch to teaching my partner advanced English vocabulary or Vietnamese whenever the mood strikes.
🎁 Grind and Streak Rewards — Earn More Beans
Keep up your daily Grinds and you might stumble upon surprise rewards — including bonus Beans or even Delights from your partner.
Streaks are easier to maintain now: you only need 1 Grind per day to keep your streak alive. Whenever you hit a multiple of 7 in your streak, spin a wheel to win more Beans!
🔖 Cafe Membership Updates
The Coupling Cafe Membership has been updated:
• 2x Bean Rewards during Grinds
• 200 Monthly Beans added to your bag
• Custom Brews, Voice Chat Messages, and Personalized Sentence Suggestions included
🛠️ Segmentation — Learn Each Word of a Phrase
Coupling automatically breaks down phrases into their components — a process we call segmentation — to show you exactly what each part means.
However it’s not always perfect, so I’ve added tools for you to split or merge fragments yourself. Once you’ve updated a segment, Coupling will recalculate the definitions based on the context, making it easier for you to learn and remember phrases.
🚀 Preparing for Valentine's Day Launch
These are just the highlights! I’ve also been working on plenty of fixes, visual upgrades, and animations to get Coupling ready for its official launch on Valentine’s Day.
I’ll be posting on Hacker News and Product Hunt, and I’ll send out another email that day in hopes of rallying your support.
Thank you for following and supporting Coupling over the years as I prepare to release it into the world. I’m determined to make this the language learning app of your dreams — especially for couples!
Cheers and happy learning,
Kevo