Why GladeX exists
The story behind an independent product studio from Ukraine: what the name GladeX means, what was wrong with the apps I tried, and how Quit and Weighly were built.
In this article
I always wanted to build something of my own. Not a side project that lives in a folder, but something real that people open every day and that makes their lives a little easier and a little better. GladeX is where that wish finally got a name, a shape and a standard.
This is the first post on the GladeX Blog, so it seems right to start with the simplest question: why does this studio exist at all?
What the name GladeX means
The name grew out of two words. The first is glad: joy, the small moment of happiness when something finally works the way it should. That is the feeling I want every product to leave behind. The second is gladiator: discipline, patience and the ability to come back to the work even after a hard day. Building products asks for exactly that. The X is a signature, the mark you put on work you are ready to stand behind.
I sign the apps with the studio name, not with my own. Partly because a studio is something that can outgrow one person. Partly because I want the name on the App Store to stand for a level of quality, the way a good label on a product does.
We don't build everything. We build what matters.
What bothered me about the apps I tried
Before building anything, I used a lot of apps in the categories I cared about. Most of them had the same problems:
- They don't motivate. You log something and nothing happens. No sense of progress, no reason to come back tomorrow.
- They don't help you calm down. Health is already stressful. An app that adds red numbers and pressure makes it worse.
- They don't look finished. Small details are rough, screens feel assembled rather than designed.
- They are overloaded. Ten widgets on the first screen, and you still can't see the one thing you opened the app for.
So the rule for every GladeX product became simple: one clear job, done calmly and done properly. If a screen doesn't help the person holding the phone, it doesn't ship.
Quit: watching recovery become real
Quit was the first GladeX app. It is a recovery app for people who want to leave a harmful habit behind: smoking, alcohol, sugar, social media, gambling or anything else that holds them back.
There is no dramatic personal story behind it. What drove me was a simple observation: quitting is hard because progress is invisible. You feel the craving today, but you don't see what is getting better. So Quit shows it. A science-based recovery timeline, a 3D model of the brain recovering, and the changes in the body day by day. People can see how their brain and body come back, and that turns "one more day" into something concrete. The feedback from users has been warm, and that is the best fuel I know.
Quit has an AI coach that reads your streaks, relapses, mood and triggers, and answers with guidance that fits where you are. That AI runs on servers and costs money every time someone talks to it. Quit shows ads, and that is a deliberate choice: the ads help cover the cost of the AI.
Weighly: calm by design
Weighly is the second GladeX app, and it is now available on the App Store. It is a weight tracker built around one feeling: calm. The scale jumps every morning for reasons that have nothing to do with fat, so Weighly shows the smooth trend underneath, a realistic forecast for your goal, progress photos, intermittent fasting and an AI coach that explains your own numbers in plain words.
This time I made a different choice about privacy. There are no accounts and no sign-up. Weighly's AI coach runs on the device itself, using Apple's on-device model. Your weight, your photos and your questions to the coach stay on your iPhone, and they sync only through your own iCloud if you turn that on. Weighly collects no data about you and doesn't track you. I believe a weight tracker should be a private place, the way a paper diary is.
A note with a face
Weighly has a small character. It has no name yet, and it lives only in Weighly. It was born in 2026, together with the app.
It is not a fruit, not a scale, not an animal. It is a note: a small sheet of paper with a folded corner and a face. In onboarding it slides out of an envelope, and after that it stays with you on the Summary screen, in the coach, on the plateau card and when you reach a goal.
Why a note? Because that is exactly what a weight log is: notes you leave for yourself, one morning at a time. A note is quiet, it doesn't judge, and it keeps what you tell it. That felt like the right companion for an app about patience. The two lines under its face are your notes, and the fold is the trace of the envelope it came from.
The note has eight moods, and each one appears for a reason. Calm is the default and happy is the everyday one. Proud shows up on achievements and in the weekly recap when you moved toward your goal. Curious appears when the coach is ready for your question, focused while it works something out, and wink is a small nod back. The rest are kept for special moments.
Built in Ukraine
GladeX is an independent studio from Odesa, Ukraine, and right now that means one person: me. I design, build, test, write and ship everything myself.
Both apps were built while Russia keeps attacking my country. Some days begin with air raid alerts and stay anxious until night. Work doesn't stop because of it. If anything, building calm, useful things during a time like this became a way to hold on to normal life. I don't say this for sympathy. I say it because it is part of how these products were made, and it explains why calm matters so much to me.
What comes next
The plan is not to ship as many apps as possible. It is to build a few products people choose to keep, and to keep improving them long after launch. Quit keeps growing, and Weighly has just met its first users.
This blog is where I will share how GladeX products are made: design decisions, launches, small details and honest lessons. If that sounds interesting, come back from time to time.
Oleksandr, founder of GladeX
