Free by email · iPhone app soon
Your camera roll remembers what they looked like. Vellum remembers what they were like.
A question about your kid every day, free forever. A mission to go with it, with membership. Answer in fifteen seconds, or skip it — nothing keeps score. Vellum is a private childhood journal app that grows into a whole archive: every moment is filed with the prompt that caused it, so in 2040 you can search “what he was afraid of” and actually find something.
One a day, by email, until Vellum opens. Free.
01 · The problem
You have four thousand photos and almost no context
You know the ones. A blurry shot of a shoe. Him holding something up to the camera. A drawing you photographed because you couldn't keep it.
In ten years you'll have all of those and no idea why you took them.
The photo survives. The reason doesn't.
“Photograph their face mid-laugh. Burst mode. Take twenty, keep one.” — the one that stays is the one with the question still attached.
02 · The prompt engine
Three things, once a day
There are 133 of them. Here's the deck — drag a card away, or filter it down to one kind.
or drag the card away
Something you'd never think to write down
What is he pretending to be this week? Answer it in a sentence. This is the half that arrives every day whether you pay or not.
Sometimes there's nothing to upload
Take a photo, shoot ten seconds of video, record their voice, or just go do something — get on the floor for ten minutes. Some missions produce a file. Some don't. Both count. One on a weekday, two at the weekend.
Nothing to tag, nothing to organise
The answer, the prompt that asked for it, the date it actually happened, and anything you captured all land on one timeline. Bigger missions land weekly; a measurement mission lands monthly — height, hand, foot, the things you'll want a number for later.
The prompt is saved with the moment
This is the whole idea, and no other app does it. Every photo album stores the photo. Vellum stores the photo and the question that made you take it.
A picture of a half-eaten sandwich is nothing. A picture of a half-eaten sandwich filed under “what will he eat only if it's cut a specific way” is a story.
That's also why search works. You are not searching filenames and dates. You are searching the questions you were asked and the answers you gave.
What will he eat only if it's cut a specific way?
Triangles. Specifically triangles. He checks.
Not everything worth keeping is a photograph
Most memory apps assume you have media. Half of what matters doesn't produce a file. One prompt — “get on the floor for ten minutes” — lands three different ways.
Record how they actually sound
Their voice changes faster than their face and nobody thinks to record it. Some missions ask for ten seconds of audio — a song they're mangling, how they say a word wrong, what they think a job is.
It's transcribed on your phone, so you can search a recording you'll never have time to relisten to.
One a day, by email. A note when it opens and when the price goes live. Nothing else.
No streaks. No badges. No red.
Skip a day and nothing happens. Skip a week and nothing happens. Missed prompts stack quietly and expire after two weeks, and the app never mentions it again.
There is no counter to break, no confetti when you comply, and nothing in the interface turns red because you were busy.
An app that punishes a parent for a hard week is a bad parenting app. That's a design decision, not a missing feature.
03 · The archive
Built to be searched, not scrolled
A timeline with their age on every day
Scan it by date. Age is stamped on every entry, so you're not doing arithmetic to work out whether he was three or four. The point of an archive isn't that it's stored. It's that somebody can find something in it.
Search everything — even what was spoken
Everything you wrote, everything they said, and every prompt you were asked. Voice notes are transcribed on your phone, so a sentence forty seconds into a recording you'll never relisten to is still one search away.
The question and the answer, one object
Every entry keeps the prompt that caused it. And backdating is normal here, not a workaround — the day something happened and the day you got around to writing it down are two different facts, and both are kept.
05 · The handoff
It isn't yours forever. That's the point.
Everything in here is being kept for one person, and it isn't you. When your family decides they're ready, they get all of it — the entries, the photos, the recordings, the questions. Some things you can seal until a birthday you choose. A letter meant for eighteen stays shut until eighteen.
The daily question is always free. Here's what the rest of the day costs.
Free — not a trial
$0
A question about your kid every day, forever. Unlimited written and did-it entries. Voice recordings up to two minutes. 100 photos, lifetime. Search and a full export, always.
Membership
$59.99/year
Two months free versus monthly — or $5.99 a month. Adds the missions, video, photos without a limit and the second parent. One membership covers the whole household: every kid, both parents. Everything open for two weeks first — no card, nothing to cancel.
Nothing you write or capture is ever locked behind payment. Membership buys more of the day — never access to your own archive.
See what's in each tier →One question. Tonight.
Vellum is in private testing and opening soon on iPhone. Until then the prompts come to you by email — the same ones from the deck, one a day, free.
- Free, and not a trial — the email prompts stay free whatever happens to the app.
- No third-party trackers, no ad pixels, no analytics on this page. Your address goes nowhere else.
- One click unsubscribes, and we say so in every send.
Your next three mornings