About
A sommelier, not an encyclopedia.
SŌMA is not a catalogue of cannabis, and it is not another Leafly clone. It is a sensory sommelier — built to help one person choose flower that suits their own taste, feelings, favourite strains and whatever happens to be available.
The one principle
SŌMA must never become an ordinary strain encyclopedia. Its single purpose is to help people avoid bad purchases through personal sensory taste matching.
“Is this strain right for this person?”
That is the value of the product. That is the core of SŌMA.
How SŌMA stays honest
The engine never fantasises. When it cannot know something, it tells you so — calmly and clearly.
Not enough batch data
When the information is thin, SŌMA says so plainly instead of pretending to know.
Grower and freshness decide a lot
The same strain can be excellent from one brand and flat from another. Packaging date and storage matter.
A sensory match, not a guarantee
SŌMA compares sensory profiles. It never promises an outcome it cannot see.
How SŌMA got here
Not a plan — a record. Each phase below is what actually shipped, in the order it shipped.
May–June 2026
The engine came first
- A deterministic scoring engine — effect archetype, texture and behavioural family, no machine learning anywhere
- 149 hand-curated strains to score against
- A menu parser that reads strain names and deliberately ignores prices
- Favourite anchors reserved at 94–96, so nothing outranks what you already love
June 2026
A catalog worth searching
- Grew from 149 to 895 strains, each mapped by hand to canonical sensory vocabulary
- A page per strain: genetics, sensory radar, and the strains nearest it
- Original artwork commissioned strain by strain — 181 published so far
- The engine reached v9: weighted tags, aroma adjacency, graded feedback
June 2026
It became yours
- Accounts with email verification and password reset
- Up to three named sensory profiles per member
- Your shelf — every strain you've rated — and your reads, every past run
- A bounded feedback loop: your verdicts bend future matching without overwhelming it
June–July 2026
The blend
- Taste Blender: merge profiles into one virtual palate and dial how it leans
- Explorer takes each strain's best world; Harmony weighs every profile equally
- The blend drives every surface — Harvest, your shelf, Taste Match
- A 21+ gate and a plain-language disclaimer on what SŌMA is and isn't
August 2026
An honesty pass
- A full audit of the code against what the product claims
- One score scale, and purchase-value language retired for good — a score reads taste, never price
- Matching unlocks on real sensory signal instead of a progress percentage
- Quick onboarding cut from fourteen questions to five
August 2026
The SŌMA you're using
- One design system, two rooms: an ivory reading surface and a private lounge for your account
- Every account section on its own page, with a way back
- A faster catalog and lighter pages on a phone
- Types, tests, linting and a production build checked on every change