Project Overview
- Services
- AsyncStorage, Expo, React Native, Reanimated
- Platform
- iOS
The short version
- Challenge
- I kept noticing how often I'd do something for the first time — a new restaurant, a new park, a new hobby — and never write it down. By next week I'd forget it happened. I wanted a journal that was specifically for firsts, not a general diary I'd never open.
- What I did
- React Native and Expo on the frontend, with everything saved locally on the device so the app stays private and works offline. The clever choice was how I store entries: instead of one big save file, the app breaks them into small chunks so the calendar stays instant even after years of use. Most journal apps slow to a crawl over time — this one won't. The founder lesson: pick a storage pattern early that can grow with you. It's invisible work that pays off a year in, and rewriting it later is a slog you don't want.
- Impact
- Live on the App Store after roughly three weeks of build time. The pattern here — single-purpose journal, offline-first, no engagement tricks — is one I'd recommend to any first-time founder: it's the smallest possible app that still feels complete, and the kind of thing one person can ship without a team.
The story.
A mobile journal for first-time experiences. Log, rate, and reflect on new adventures — calendar and list views, gesture-based interactions, light/dark themes, and a chunked offline storage layer that stays smooth at scale.
Designing for "occasional use" is harder than designing for "daily use." Most apps optimize for engagement — streaks, push notifications, badges that punish you for not opening it. This one needed to feel good even if you only opened it once a month. I cut every engagement trick on purpose, which made the app calmer but the design problem harder.