--- title: Pocket Chronicle — a prompt journal of your kid's childhood description: A question about your kid every day, free forever, and a mission with membership. Every moment is saved with the prompt that caused it. No streaks, no ads. url: / --- Free by email · iPhone app soon # Your camera roll remembers what they looked like. Pocket Chronicle 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. Pocket Chronicle 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. [Get tomorrow's prompt](/waitlist.md) One a day, by email, until Pocket Chronicle opens. Free. *[Image: Pocket Chronicle's Today screen: a video mission and a question stacked as tinted cards, with Capture it and Write it buttons]* A few of them. [All 133 are published](/prompts.md), free to read and free to use. 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 **One question · free forever**: ### 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. **One mission · with membership**: ### 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. **It files itself**: ### 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. Pocket Chronicle 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. **Question**: What will he eat only if it's cut a specific way? Asked Tuesday · answered in nine seconds a half-eaten sandwich Triangles. Specifically triangles. He checks. Photo · 12:40 PM · age 4 years 2 months One object. In twenty years it still explains itself. ## 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. An app that only counts the days you produced a file is measuring the wrong thing. Terracotta is a mission, periwinkle is a question or a voice, sage means it happened. Get on the floor for ten minutes. That's the whole mission. Did it · 7:05 PM Nothing to upload. Still a complete entry. Filed. Fifteen seconds, start to finish. the tower, mid-collapse Get on the floor for ten minutes. That's the whole mission. **Photo**:7:05 PM Get on the floor for ten minutes. That's the whole mission. A tower went up and came down eleven times. I stayed for all eleven. **Written**: 9:20 PM · two sentences is plenty ## 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. [How to record your kid's voice before it changes →](/blog/record-your-kids-voice.md) *[Image: A voice entry in Pocket Chronicle showing a waveform and the transcript underneath it]* [Get tomorrow's prompt](/waitlist.md) 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. [Why we refused streaks, at length →](/blog/streaks-are-a-bad-idea.md) 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. *[Image: Pocket Chronicle's timeline grouped by date, with the child's age on each day header]* *[Image: Searching the archive for a word and finding the entries that match]* *[Image: A question above the parent's answer, saved together as one entry]* 04 · The promise ## Your kid isn't the product Most apps handle this badly, so here it is in full, before you sign up. [The whole promise, in detail →](/promise.md) --- ### No ads. No data sale. Ever. Not now, not at a bigger scale, not ever. Nothing about your child is sold, brokered, or used to train anything. Sign in with Apple, or Google. No Facebook login — routing a private record of a child through an ad company contradicts the thing being sold. --- ### Private by default Nobody sees the archive unless you invite them. There is no feed, no likes, and no place other people perform. --- ### We have never deleted a word a parent wrote If you stop paying, Pocket Chronicle drops to the free tier. **Nothing you wrote or captured is ever locked behind payment.** Your whole archive stays readable, searchable and exportable. You keep answering the daily question — text and did-it entries never stop. The missions go back to being part of membership, and new photo and video uploads pause. After ninety days, original photos move to cheaper cold storage: thumbnails stay instant, search still works, and pulling a full-resolution original back takes about an hour. That's a property of the storage, not a penalty. **We never delete a word you wrote unless you ask us to.** And if media is ever going to be removed, you get warned three times — ninety days out, thirty days out, seven days out — each with a free one-click export of the whole archive. Sign in once during that window and it's cancelled outright. If we can't reach you, we keep it. --- ### An export you can't read isn't a backup One tap gives you a zip: every entry, every photo, every recording, in folders by date — plus an `index.html` you double-click. It opens in any browser, offline, with no account and no internet. No app required, including this one. Free, complete, always. Even on the free tier. Even if you stopped paying years ago. It's built that way because an archive meant to last eighteen years shouldn't depend on this company lasting eighteen years. 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. *[Image: A sealed letter card reading “Sealed until 18”, written and waiting]* *[Image: The same letter opened: “Dear you, on the day you turn 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 →](/pricing.md) *Ships with the App Store launch. Waitlist members will hear the price before it goes live, not after.* 06 · Questions ## Questions parents actually ask a private childhood journal app [The full set →](/faq.md) ### My kid is seven. Is it too late? No. Backdating is a normal part of the app, not a workaround — you file a memory under the day it happened, whenever you get to it. Plenty of the archive will be older than the app. ### How long does this actually take? Under fifteen seconds for most days, one-handed. If it takes longer than that, that's a bug. ### What if I miss days? Nothing happens. That's the point. ### Can my partner use it too? Yes, on the same archive. The second parent is part of membership, and one membership covers everyone in the household — every kid, both of you. ### Do I have to use it for eighteen years for it to be worth anything? No. A hundred entries is already a thing your kid doesn't have. There's no threshold. ### What happens to it when they grow up? That's a decision the family makes, not one the app makes for you. Sealed entries — part of membership — can be written to open at an age you choose, and one you have already written stays yours whatever you pay. The export means the archive is handed over as a real object, whatever you decide. ## One question. Tonight. Pocket Chronicle 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 **Question**:Tomorrow, 7:00 What are they obsessed with right now? **Photo**:Monday, 7:00 Photograph their hands. Just their hands. **Activity**:Tuesday, 7:00 Get on the floor for ten minutes. That's the whole mission. …and 130 more after that. No streaks, no reminders about the ones you skip.