introducing early chapters.
why i built an app for my nephew.
i’m officially an unc.
i now have an almost 6 month old nephew, along with several friends who had babies in the last year or two.
it feels like everyone around me is having babies.
—
after losing one of my parents, i’ve been thinking a lot more about memory and cherishing your loved ones.
because over time, life gets busy, and things fade.
voices fade.
moments blur.
details disappear.
and you don’t really notice it until you try to remember something you can’t fully get back.
—
with all these new babies, everything is a first.
first smile.
first laugh.
first everything.
and naturally, everyone tries to capture it.
group chats get created.
photos get sent.
videos get shared.
but over time, it all gets messy.
things get buried in camera rolls.
lost in message threads.
it’s hard to go back to.
—
i started noticing this pattern:
every time i asked someone about their baby, the first thing they’d do is pull out their phone and start scrolling.
scrolling…
scrolling…
scrolling…
trying to find that one moment.
—
that’s what made me want to build something.
not just to store memories.
but to make them feel accessible again.
—
so i started building something for my nephew.
now came the ideating and building.
i just had one problem…
i’ve never built an ios app before.
and my coding skills are still pretty beginner.
but i didn’t want that to be the reason this didn’t exist.
so along with my friend, claude code, i started figuring it out as i went.
—
i started simple.
a place to keep:
photos and videos in a timeline
milestones (first smile, first laugh, first tooth)
custom moments that actually matter to you
but there was one feature that mattered more than anything else.
video logs.
—
what i wish i had now is something my dad left behind for me.
not a photo.
not a memory.
just something i could come back to, and feel like he’s there again.
so video logs are a way for parents and loved ones to leave something behind.
something their child ( & maybe their child’s child) can come back to later.
and still feel like they’re right there with them.
—
after a couple weeks of planning, building, hitting rate limits, and figuring things out…
early chapters is now live.
this is v1. it's still evolving. but it's a start.
if this resonates with you, you can check it out on the app store (ios for now).
ps. this is all part of a bigger shift i’m going through —
learning, experimenting, and figuring things out in real time.
the video above was my first product video.
i wrote more about the pivot here.