In development · iOS first
Spot it. Card it. Collect it.
A collection game you play by going outside. Photograph a dog on your street or a bird in a tree, and it gets cut out of the photo and filed into your dex as a card. The count that matters is how many you've met — not how many species you can name.
- Two axes
- The main one counts individuals you've actually encountered. The second lights up species in the field guide. Meeting a hundred ordinary pigeons is its own kind of progress.
- Dogs and birds
- Two ends of one rarity scale, on purpose. Dogs are downstairs every day and carry the habit. Birds are seasonal and unpredictable, and carry the surprise.
- On your phone
- Recognition and cut-out are designed to run entirely on the device. No upload, no per-photo cost, works with no signal.
Why dogs and birds, and not everything.
The category list is a design decision, not a limitation we're apologising for.
A collection needs both routine and surprise
A game made only of rare things is empty on an ordinary Tuesday. A game made only of common things has no moment worth showing anyone. Dogs supply the daily encounter; birds supply the one you did not expect.
Deliberately not plants
There are roughly four hundred thousand plant species — an unfinishable list that forces you onto a paid recognition API, and a hedge nobody ever describes as a rare find. Leaving them out is what keeps the model small enough to live on your phone.
How it works.
Three steps, and the phone does all of them by itself.
Photograph what you meet
A dog being walked past you, a bird that landed close enough. Ordinary phone photos, taken where you already are.
It becomes a card
The subject is cut out of its background and mounted as a card — the animal you met, not the parked car behind it.
The dex fills up
Every encounter counts toward the main total; each new species lights up an entry in the guide. Common finds and rare ones both have a place.
The photos stay on your phone.
Recognition and cut-out are designed to run on the device itself rather than in a data centre. That is a design constraint before it is a privacy feature: a photo-heavy game that pays a cloud API per recognition does not survive contact with real usage. Running it on the phone makes the cost per photo zero — and means your camera roll never has to leave with it.
Questions.
What is Sightdex?
A collection game played in the real world. You photograph dogs and birds you encounter, each one becomes a card, and the cards fill a dex. The primary score is how many individuals you have met; identifying the species is the secondary layer.
Is this a bird identification app?
No. Identification apps exist to tell you what a species is, and several good ones already cover ten thousand species. Sightdex is a collection game — the point is the encounter and the card, not the label. It covers a deliberately small set of common dogs and birds rather than trying to be a field guide.
Does it work without a signal?
That is the design. Recognition and cut-out are intended to run on the phone, so a walk with no reception still fills the dex.
Do my photos get uploaded?
The recognition step is designed to happen on the device, so photos do not need to be sent anywhere to be identified.
Why only dogs and birds?
Because a collection needs both routine and surprise. Dogs are reliably there; birds are seasonal and unpredictable. Plants are deliberately excluded — the species list is effectively unfinishable and nothing in a hedge feels like a rare find.
When can I play it?
Sightdex is in development and does not have a release date yet. Email hello@aivmelna.com to be told when it ships.