Welcome

Welcome to Open Meadow.

Thank you for your interest in trying an early version of the app.

Open Meadow has been in development for several months, and this is an opportunity to explore it while it's still taking shape.

From AIM Lab to Open Meadow

Open Meadow is an evolution of what I started exploring with AIM Lab, but it’s also something a little different.

In many ways, it’s an upgrade. If you enjoyed the instant meditation player in AIM Lab, you’ll likely feel at home here.

At the same time, Open Meadow is based on a different intention. Unlike AIM Lab, it’s meant to become a financially sustainable product. It’s no longer an open, public, and free community experiment.

I loved that aspect of AIM Lab, but over time I realised that many of you were looking for something simpler and more private: a personal space for your own meditation practice, rather than a shared laboratory.

At some point, this also means introducing a paid subscription. However, as an early user, Open Meadow will remain free for you as a thank-you for your willingness to try it out and provide feedback.

Open Meadow grows out of learnings from AIM Lab: from user feedback, from observing how people actually used the tool, and from a desire to move from experiment to something more stable and enduring: a companion you can return to over time.

In AIM Lab, you created meditations inspired by many different traditions, intentions, beliefs, and personal needs. In designing Open Meadow, I tried to keep that openness, without anchoring the app to any single teaching, method, or ideology. The intention is for it to adapt to you and your way of practising.

Open Meadow doesn’t try to teach meditation. It’s meant to support your own exploration, whether you’re deeply rooted in a particular lineage, or simply curious about using AI as part of your personal or spiritual growth.

A vision for the future

Even in its current state, the app already offers a wide range of possibilities, mostly thanks to the AI assistant at its core.

That said, this is just the beginning.

I’m imagining ways for you to visualise your meditation practice over time and reflect on it with the assistant. I’m exploring how you might design not just a single meditation, but a whole series, a kind of arc or progression that unfolds over days or weeks. I’m also interested in how the assistant might gently suggest new practices to explore, based on what resonates with you.

One feature I'm particularly excited about is making it possible to start a meditation immediately, without any chat or preparation. Some days, you may simply want to sit down, close your eyes, and press play.

Another area I care deeply about is voice quality, especially in languages other than English. I’m continuously exploring new options and technologies, and this is something that will keep evolving.

There is a lot of innovation happening in the AI space right now. New models, tools, and possibilities appear every month. Because of this, Open Meadow will likely change quite a bit over time. If something feels missing today, there’s a good chance it will become possible in the near future.

As an early user, your feedback can genuinely influence the direction Open Meadow takes.

A few practical notes

Getting started with the chat

At the heart of Open Meadow, you'll find a chat interface. You can think of it as a conversational space where you shape and refine your meditations.

You don't need to provide a script. You can still do that, and this is important. If you just want a place where you can paste a script you've created somewhere else, that's still supported and works really well.

You'll notice that settings like voice and background sound now live inside the meditation player itself, rather than before the script is created. The idea is that the chat is for exploration and refinement of the script, while the player is where you adjust how the meditation feels.

All meditations you create are saved automatically and can be found under the "Meditations" screen. If you want to adjust or refine one later, you can simply ask the assistant.

Using voice input

One of my favourite ways to use the app is by speaking directly to the assistant using voice input. There's a small microphone icon in the chat. You can talk naturally, and the assistant will transcribe your words.

I often include details about how I'm feeling, what's happening in my life, and even my surroundings (whether I'm indoors or outside, sitting or standing, in silence or in nature). The assistant is surprisingly good at weaving these elements into the meditation.

Duration and pacing

Two areas that were challenging in AIM Lab have been improved here. One is respecting the desired duration of a meditation. You can now ask for a specific length, or adapt an existing script to fit it more precisely.

The other is silence and pacing. Preferences around pauses are deeply personal. To support this, you can describe what you like, store your preferences in the custom instructions, or adjust things in real time using the spaciousness slider in the player. This lets the guidance slow down or open up as you meditate.

Your data and privacy

Your data is stored securely and privately. You can export or delete it at any time, and it is never shared or used to train AI models.

For those who want an extra layer of privacy, Open Meadow includes a privacy mode. When enabled, your chats, meditations, and other sensitive data are encrypted so that even I cannot read them. You can turn privacy mode on or off at any time from the Preferences page.

If you have meditations saved in AIM Lab, you can import them from the Preferences page. Open Meadow also continues to support custom voices via a personal ElevenLabs account, with a simpler setup process than before.

Closing thoughts

As an early user, your feedback can genuinely shape how Open Meadow develops.

If you have questions, issues, or ideas, you can use the thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons inside the app to leave feedback, or reach out directly.

Thank you for taking the time to explore Open Meadow and for being part of this ongoing experiment.