Why I’m building this.

I’m a solo developer building this for a kid I haven’t met yet.

We’re expecting our first daughter. Some time in the months between finding out and now, I started thinking about everything I want to tell her. Not in some ceremonial way, just the regular stuff. What I was working on the day we found out she existed. What her grandfather sounds like when he tells a story. What her mother thinks about, the day before her birth. The small things I’ll forget by the time she’s old enough to ask.

I wanted her to have something like a daily podcast from us. From me, from her mom, from her grandparents and the people who’ll help raise her. Not a finished thing, not a polished thing, just the regular voices of the people who love her, recorded for the version of her who can listen.

I looked for the product that would do this and didn’t find one I’d want to use. The closest things were either baby books that nobody actually fills out, or AI legacy products built around mortality, or photo apps that capture moments but not voice. None of them got the part that mattered: the daily recording habit, the years-long compounding, and the recipient framing. That this is for her, when she’s old enough, in her own time.

tellsophie is a daily prompt and a minute of video or audio. Partner, grandparents, whoever you invite. One place for it. Someday you hand the whole thing over, in original files.

That is the whole product on day one of the iOS app: a prompt at the time you choose, a minute when you have it, and the people you invite recording on their own cadence. Catch a sound is one tap into audio. Each recording is private or shared — you choose every time. Private is the default. On This Day shows what you recorded on this date in earlier years. Recordings are not made on this website. The first version is United States App Store only. Non-US visitors see a holding page.

I am building it as a solo founder in California, operating as SAUERAPPLE LLC, doing business as TellSophie. There is no team behind a curtain and no outside editor on the recordings. Mail reaches us at PO Box 1222, Sugarloaf, CA 92386. Email reaches us at privacy@tellsophie.com. The first version is an iOS app and a way to record. The harder part, the part I care about more, is the commitment to keep what you record safe, in your hands, in an open format, in a way that survives whether or not the company does. That work is on the Trust page: US Cloudflare R2, AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.3 in transit, export by request within five business days, and a funded continuity reserve if we shut down. Pregnancy loss is a one-tap pause. The export format is published.

If you’re somewhere in the same place we were a year ago, join the list and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.