Niannian is an indie product.
No funding. No growth team. No user personas.
Just a developer, and the words he wanted to leave behind for two people.
Why I made Niannian
One night in late 2025, I dug up an old photo — me and my wife on top of Huangshan mountain, the first long trip we ever took together. The photo was buried somewhere in WeChat favorites, pushed deep behind thousands of other things.
And I thought: why is everything we write to each other living inside someone else's algorithm?
Moments aren't for two. WeChat favorites don't go both ways. Notes apps have no ritual. Real paper letters are slow and easy to lose.
I wanted a notebook for two — with ritual, anti-algorithm, that nothing else could push aside.
Couldn't find one. So I built it.
"I wasn't trying to make an app. I was trying to make a drawer. A drawer only the two of us know how to open."
About the name "Niannian"
"Niannian" (念念) is one of my wife's nicknames. It's also from the Chinese phrase 念念不忘 — "thinking of, never forgetting."
The whole visual language — rice paper background, cinnabar seals, serif type, slow pacing — is my attempt to translate the ritual of ancient Chinese letter-writing into a phone. You finish a letter, drop a cinnabar seal on it, send it. They open it, another seal falls.
This isn't decoration. It's the entire product philosophy: slow down, but let it stay.
What Niannian chose not to do
Niannian doesn't have feeds. No push algorithms. No follower counts. No third-party perspective.
No monthly subscriptions. No seasonal content packs. Nothing locked behind a paywall.
These are the dominant business models right now, but every one of them conflicts with "slow life for two." Niannian deliberately chose not to do them.
What it feels like to indie
From sketch to v1.0 took about 3 months. v1.0 → v1.1 (full bilingual + AI polish + morning/goodnight cards) took another month.
No team. One person writes the SwiftUI, the Node backend, the prompts, generates the visual art, writes the copy, designs the cinnabar visual. Slow, but every decision is made by me — none of "let's run a user study" or "let's wait for more growth data."
The benefits of solo work:
I can spend a 3 AM rewriting a cinnabar seal's rotation angle 20 times because it doesn't feel right.
I can fix a user-reported bug the same day I read it.
I can argue with a PM agent for 3 hours about whether to add the spirit beast system, then decide "yes, let's do it."
Where things stand
Not a big number. But among those 16 couples, one is in Nigeria. One is me, sending 4 test letters to my wife. One is a long-distance couple on day 287.
I know who every couple is. I know what each letter says — not because I peek, but because users send me feedback and I read every one.
What's next
v1.2 is in flight — the spirit beast. After pairing, you take a personality quiz together and receive an ink-painted creature. You raise it from egg, together. Shared between two. Sleeps after a breakup, doesn't disappear.
v1.3 plans: print-on-demand bound book — turn your memoir PDF into a real book mailed to your door.
v2.0 wants to be Android. Still early. But it'll come.
About you
If you use Niannian, here's what I want you to know:
You're not a data point. You're one of those 16 couples. The words you write, the days you keep, the questions you answer — I see them.
If it makes you and your partner smile a little extra, I've already been lucky.
— with love, NiannianIf you want to write to the maker:
hi@biblespirise.com