Some features live in the "someday" column for a long time. Not because they aren't important. Because they're hard, and the product needs to be in the right shape for them to land the way they should.

The Brain has been in that column for months.

Beta closed this week. And it shipped. Here's what we built, and why it matters.

A concept map that is uniquely yours.

Here’s one problem with most language learning apps: after months of study, you can’t really see what you’ve built. You have a streak. You have a level. You have a card count. None of those things look like knowledge.

The Brain is our answer to that problem.

Open it and you will see every concept you have learned in Kumi, displayed as an interactive map: kana, radicals, kanji, vocab, grammar, all connected.

Those connections are not decorative. They are real.

The radical you learned is linked to the kanji it forms. That kanji is linked to the vocabulary built from it. You can see the prerequisite structure of your knowledge, visually, all at once.

A streak tells you that you showed up. The Brain shows you what you actually built while you were there.

You can see which parts of your knowledge are dense and which parts are still growing. That is not just satisfying to look at. It is useful information for where to go next.

We wanted to build this from the start. This is it.

Last week we covered the big list update: you can now learn directly from any list you have built in Kumi. That was a meaningful shift in what a list could do.

This week: lists became social.

Any list you have built can now be shared with anyone. Send the link to a friend. Post it somewhere. Drop it in the Discord. Whoever opens it can see your list, and they can learn from it too.

This changes what a list is. It is still a personal curation tool, a place to gather the vocab, kanji, or grammar that matters to you. But now it is also a contribution. The list you built for yourself is also a resource someone else can study from.

The leaderboard is live, and it does two things.

First, the obvious one: you can see where you stand against other Kumi learners across mastery and streaks. Personal competition, a little motivation, the quiet satisfaction of watching a rank move.

Second, something more useful: the leaderboard surfaces the top lists. Community-created lists that are most studied, most shared, most loved by other learners. If you are looking for what to study next, or you want to see what the community is working on, this is a good place to start.

Great lists are a form of curation, and curation is a form of contribution. The leaderboard makes that visible.

Here is the thing that connects everything above: everyone now has a proper profile on Kumi.

Your profile is the home for all of it. Your KMT in every domain, Kana, Radicals, Kanji, Kana Vocab, Kanji Vocab, and Grammar, laid out so you can see exactly how far you have come in each one. Your Brain. Your lists. Your standing on the leaderboard. One place, and all of it yours.

"Yours" is the important word. Your profile can be private if you want it private, and that is not a setting we bury. Your privacy is entirely your call.

If you do want to share, you decide what shows. Share your profile and it can surface your publicly made lists and your Brain, but only the things you choose to make public. Want to show your domain progress and nothing else? Fine. Want to share a list but keep your Brain private? Also fine. Every piece is opt-in.

A streak says you showed up. Your profile says what you built: your KMT across every domain, the Brain underneath it, the lists you made, and where you land against everyone else. It is the most honest picture of a learner we have ever put in one place, and you decide who gets to see it.

Every person who used Kumi during the beta, sent feedback, logged bugs, asked questions in the Discord: you shaped what launches on July 14th. Not as a formality. As a fact.

The app goes into internal QA now, closed for two weeks, then public on July 14th. We are not going quiet, though. The updates keep coming.

In the meantime: hang out in the Discord, tell a friend the launch is close, and keep an eye here for what we ship next.

Discord: discord.gg/learnkumi. That is where we will surface.

See you at launch.

If you could see your entire Japanese learning journey as a map right now, which part of the graph do you think would surprise you most?

— The Kumi Team