Bedtime stories
Built for my kids, who wanted a new superhero story every night. Every story is original, runs 80–100 words, and never turns sad or scary.
What it is
Bedtime went the same way every night. “Tell me one about the guy with the shield.” Then thirty seconds of me inventing something badly. The picture books ran out fast, and most of what I found online was either written for adults or ended with somebody’s parents dying.
So the stories live in the repo as plain text files — one folder per character, ten stories each, in order from the origin onward. The app reads them at build time and ships as static HTML. Every story exists in three lengths, so a bedtime that has run long can end on the short one.
Browse
The home screen is a grid split into ensemble teams, then heroes and villains for each universe. Tap a tile and you get that character’s ten stories in order, starting with the origin.
Reading
Story Time is the long read-aloud version. Summary is the original 80–100 word story. TLDR is a few lines, for when bedtime has already overrun. Same tabs on every story in the library.
Quiz
Quiz Me deals ten multiple-choice questions across four difficulty tiers. Clue masks the answer out of the explanation and leaves the reasoning; Skip just shows it. Answers are tallied by topic and by character.
How it works
Four taps, in the order a child actually does them. Nothing before the first one.
01
No sign-up and no account. The whole app is static HTML, so the first thing on screen is the browse grid.
02
Type a name or tap a tile. Ensembles, heroes and villains are grouped separately, with ten stories behind each one.
03
Story Time, Summary or TLDR. One story, three sizes, so the read fits the time that is actually left.
04
Quiz Me runs ten questions and records what they got right, by topic and by character, in the browser.
Features
Every story is written for this app. Nothing is adapted or copied out of a comic or a film.
Story Time, Summary and TLDR on every story. Pick the one that fits how much bedtime is left.
Multiple choice across four difficulty tiers, drawn from the same characters the stories cover.
The clue masks the answer out of the explanation, so the reasoning is still there to follow.
Right and wrong answers are tallied per topic and per character, kept in your browser.
One button pulls a random story out of the whole library, for when nobody can decide.
Dark Gradient, Polaroid, Comic Panel, Minimal Glass and Sticker. The dark one is the default.
A service worker precaches the site, so a plane or a dead hotel wifi still gets you a story.
Built with
Static export, hosted on Vercel. There is no database and no backend — the stories are plain .txt files read at build time and baked into HTML. Theme choice, quiz progress and reading history are kept in your browser’s localStorage and never leave the device.
FAQ
Yes. No accounts, no ads, no payments and no analytics. It is a personal project sitting on a free hosting tier.
No. There is nothing to sign into. The app is static files, so there is no server holding a record of you.
Nowhere. Your theme, your quiz progress and which stories you have opened are stored in localStorage on your own device.
Yes. It ships a web manifest and a service worker, so you can add it to a home screen and read with no connection.
No. Every one is original, written to a 7-year-old brief: no death, no tragedy, and villains who cause mischief rather than harm.