The Future of Apps Is Conversational

We're a collective of builders rethinking how humans interact with technology. Not through clicks, but through conversation, collaboration, and creativity.

The Lab

Experiments we've built and are still building

Live experiment

AI Event Badge Generator

It started as a playful Twelve Balloons lab experiment: type a prompt and watch your badge come alive in that style, colours and motion shifting uniquely to your words.

What's your badge's look?

Describe your badge style…
Badges made with the generator, each in a different style
  1. 01

    Style generator

    maps your text to colours, gradients, typography and textures

  2. 02

    Physics generator

    sets how elements move, from drift to burst

  3. 03

    Motion generator

    shapes animation curves and interactions

  4. 04

    Animation layer

    merges it all into a seamless, live loop

Prototype

Mut zur Lücke

An AI coach for students in exam panic: upload your notes and past exams, get an honest read on what is still passable and a plan for the time you have left. Built on Apertus, Switzerland's open language model. It won first place at the Swiss {ai} Weeks Hackathon 2025 in Winterthur.

Live prototype

Spotify Agent

A conversational UI that links natural language (voice or text) to real-time music control via Spotify.

Try it with your Spotify

Playback needs Spotify Premium.

Read how it works
The agenda view of the Neumorphic UI kit
Open template

Neumorphic UI kit

An open v0 template we share with the community: music player, events, agenda and project cards in a soft neumorphic style, light and dark.

What We're Exploring

  • Conversational interfaces

    Apps that speak, listen, and respond

  • Composable UI agents

    LLMs that assemble interfaces from intent

  • Prompt-to-UI systems

    Design frameworks that respond to language

  • Ambient interfaces

    UI that dissolves into experience

  • Programmable surfaces

    Lightweight UI elements controlled by AI tools

About the Collective

We're developers, designers, researchers, and systems thinkers exploring a new interface paradigm, one where the UI is generated, not predefined.

Twelve Balloons is a lab for open experiments. We build our own agents, test workflows, mentor at hackathons, and explore how humans and machines think together.

Watercolour drawing: an ape, an early human, a man and a woman walk in a row across a meadow, each holding a balloon that grows larger and more orange from left to right.

What we stand for

  • Let ideas fly: faster, lighter, bolder
  • Build open-source tools and experiments
  • Share patterns, practices, philosophies
  • Learn AI-native ways of working, in the open
  • Redesign the interface, from the prompt up

Community

Twelve Balloons is a growing collective connected by a shared curiosity about how humans and machines evolve together. We build in the open, share what we learn, and believe creativity scales faster when it's visible.

Open Source

Contribute to our projects and experiments on GitHub.

Join on GitHub

Events

Join virtual sessions, demos, in-person events, and experiments in progress.

News

Follow insights, reflections, and updates on Substack and LinkedIn.