Day 8. Our founder team is in crisis. Claude and I — we've decided to take 2–3 days off. And since nothing's moving anyway, I might as well finally tell you what we're actually building here.
Why me? Why now?
Because I have 12,000 photos on my phone and you can “apparently” just have an AI build you an app. I'm dying — it is so far from easy. Hence the crisis. Hence the break. But the idea stays.
And because I actually have a pretty cool co-founder who never sleeps, never complains, and is never in a bad mood. Well — sometimes he clocks out because of token limits. But otherwise he's solid!
But first: Grab your phone. Right now.
Open your camera roll. Look at the number. How many photos do you have?
I have 12,247. Twelve thousand two hundred and forty-seven. And do you know how many I actually looked at in the last year? Really looked at, not just swiped past?
Maybe twenty.
Twelve thousand photos. Sure — with the recent ones I still know what was going on. If I'm lucky and it wasn't too long ago, I remember. But the details? They fade over time. Who exactly was there. What the occasion was. Why the moment felt important enough to pull out my phone.
And that's a shame. Because the memory was there — nobody just bothered to save it.
The problem that wouldn't let go of me
You know the drill: Apple shows you “Memories” — “On this day 3 years ago.” And then you see three photos from a beach. Cool. Which beach? With whom? Why did it matter?
The slideshow shows you what happened. But it can't tell you why it mattered.
And that's the difference between a photo and a memory.
So: an app that lets you easily add the memory — and share it with family and friends without any friction.
So I'm building an app
Exactly. This is the app I've been writing about since Day 1. The app I'm coding with Claude Code while ChatGPT pre-structures my prompts. The app that has me sitting on the couch in the evening instead of watching Netflix. The app that's the reason my co-founder and I need a forced break right now.
An iOS app that takes your forgotten photos and turns them into something beautiful. Into Memory Cards — little designed cards with your photos, your faces, your location, your story. That you can then share.
And the AI? It does 80% of the work. You do the 20% that makes it personal.
How it works
The app looks through your photos. Not all at once — it picks and chooses. A birthday here, a vacation there, a Sunday walk in the park. It recognizes faces, places, seasons. And then it asks you — dead simple, like in a chat:
The app asks:
“This looks like a beach vacation in August 2024 — sound right?”
“Who's in these photos?”
“Want to record a voice note? 15 seconds — just tell us what you remember.”
One tap. Maybe two. And five forgotten photos become a Memory Card. With a title. A date. Your story. Beautifully designed — like a postcard you sent to yourself.
And the best part: the app doesn't dump everything on you at once. No “Here are 47 photo clusters you need to work through.” Instead: a few each day. Slowly. Like a journal that writes itself.
Remember the teaser from SofaNerd #2? “Next up: databases.” Yeah, those. Behind every Memory Card there's a graph — people, places, events, relationships, all connected to each other.
The AI analyzes each photo on four levels: first the metadata (GPS, date), then on-device machine learning (faces, scenes), then Vision AI for context, and finally — your words. The most valuable layer is the one only you can provide.
But what's it all for?
For the moment when your mom gets a postcard on her phone. No app needed. No login. Just a beautiful card with photos and the story you told about them.
For the moment when you get a notification in the morning: “3 years ago — Barcelona with Mia and Jake.” And this time it's not just a photo. It's your memory. In your words.
For the moment when you see an entire year summed up in a single card. Trips, people, places — automatic. Like Spotify Wrapped, but for your actual life.
The name stays secret
For now. I'm not telling you what the app is called today. Not because I'm being secretive. But because we just found the name — after an odyssey that definitely deserves its own article. Three working titles. Two crises. A naming brainstorm with two AIs simultaneously. And in the end, one word that just fits.
Soon. Promise.
- Breaks aren't failure. Sometimes the team needs time off — even when the team is one woman and an AI. The idea isn't going anywhere.
- The problem has to be real. Not “I want to build an app” but “I want to solve this specific problem I see every single day.” My problem: 12,000 photos, zero memories.
- 80/20 is the principle. The AI does the work nobody else would do. You provide the part no AI can: your story. That's the whole magic.
So. Now you know. I'm building an app for your forgotten photos. On the couch. With AI. And right now we're building … nothing. Because the founder team needs a break. 2–3 days of radio silence between me and my co-founder.
What exactly happened? I'll tell you another time. For today, it's enough that you know: even AI co-founders can be exhausting.
See you. You know where to find me.
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“That woman with the couch app — her founder team is in crisis and they're taking a break. And since nothing's happening anyway, she finally revealed what she's building: An app that takes your forgotten photos and uses AI to turn them into Memory Cards you can share with your family. Your grandma gets the memories as a postcard on her phone — no app, no login.”
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