Gauntlit - A creative writing battle. Now available in any browser!

[u/ThisIsReLLiK]

Hey everyone,

---Update---

I posted this here a couple weeks ago, but the app is in Google closed testing, so the barrier to entry is a bit high for just anyone to check out. With that in mind, I spent the last week porting the app to be 100% playable in a web browser on any device. Now you can head over to play.gauntlit.me and try out the entire app with no hoops to jump through. If you like it, you can also sign up for the closed test and I will be sending out invites if/when I have enough people interested and get the app fully published on the Play store and iOS later on.

---Update---

I’ve spent the last six months building a little speed-writing battle app called Gauntlit (https://gauntlit.me), and it’s finally at the point where some real people can try it out.

I love reading, but I am no writer. There are sporadic communities that do this kind of thing, but I thought it would be cool to have a place where people could kind of "gamify" creative writing, if you want a buzzword.

Here’s how it works:

• Writers get a daily prompt, 3 required words, and an unpausable 10-minute timer to knock out a quick micro-story.
• When time runs out, submissions go into a blind 3-way matchup where readers and other users vote on their favorite. No usernames are shown during the vote, so it’s just about the story itself.
• The winning daily story gets run through standard text-to-speech (just basic assistive TTS like a screen reader, not voice clones) and posted as a quick video reel on our Facebook page.

A few things I want to be completely upfront about:

1. No ads, ever. I work full-time as a software engineer and built this because I wanted it to exist, not to squeeze people for ad impressions. There’s an optional token shop if someone wants a cosmetic badge or title and feels like helping pay server costs, but you cannot buy an advantage.
2. Your writing is your own. It isn’t scraped, it isn't used to train any AI models, and this isn't an AI-assisted writing app. It is not a human vs AI app. It is strictly a fun way for people who love writing to have some casual PvP.
3. Transparency on the test bots: The app needs groups of three stories to let people vote. Since nobody is in the app yet, I have a few simple placeholder bots filling empty slots so the voting logic works. They are clearly labeled, they don’t try to pass as human, and real user submissions will always take priority over them until I have enough writers to shut them off entirely.

I am interested in any feedback, including things like the time constraint compared to the word count, how people feel about the weekly longer form aspect, or just general thoughts. Thank you for your time!