Logbuch & Lotse

Your logbook. Patiently told.

Sketch, May 2026, born while writing my own memoirs.

The Spark

This idea appeared in the middle of working on this website. While writing my own memoirs with Claude, I realized: this is actually the product.

I sat there, answered structured questions, watched my life story being pulled out of memory, and thought: everyone should be able to experience this once.

Not everyone has an eight-hour slot with Claude. Not everyone knows which questions to ask themselves. But everyone has a story.

Name

Logbuch & Lotse are two northern German words that explain the product.

• The logbook is where your life is recorded: structured, honest, written like an evening entry.
• The pilot is the AI: competent, patient, and useful in unfamiliar waters. It knows the shallows and knows which question should come next.

What the App Does

A Flutter app for mobile, web, and desktop that creates memoirs through:

1. Structured interviews: the pilot asks careful questions in the right order
2. Photo library context: Google Photos and Apple Photos become memory anchors
3. Iterative refinement: memoirs behave like a repo, with versions and variants
4. Multimedia output: Markdown, PDF, ePub, audio, and photo inserts

Differentiation

What already exists: StoryWorth, Remento, and classic ghostwriting services.

What Logbuch & Lotse does differently:

• photo libraries as first-class memory anchors
• versioned life narratives
• local-first data ownership
• anti-social-media principle: the app does not want your attention
• dignified design for older users, not a tech-bro product shell

Anti-Goals

• no engagement optimization
• no viral or social layer
• no cloud-by-default model
• no subscription trap
• no “AI memoir generator” that pretends the model owns the story

Status

Concept. The full PRD lives in docs/products/logbuch-und-lotse-prd.md. No repo code yet, but the idea is fixed.

Connection to This Site

The fact that this idea appeared while writing this website is part of the story. It belongs in the memoir epilogue, on the Now page, and here as an active concept.