Why
People know journaling helps, and most of them stop anyway: 83% of new journalers quit within two weeks. Our early research showed the problem was starting, not writing. A blank page asks for a decision before it asks for a thought.
What
MicroJournal is a habit-first journal for iOS: a few guided prompts each day, a mood check-in and tags, then streaks, history, and mood trends over time. We validated demand with a public waitlist and submitted the app to the App Store. I led tech and infrastructure: backend architecture, deployment, and the data behind the app.
How
The app is React Native on Expo, with Expo Router for navigation and TanStack Query for data. Supabase handles accounts and storage, with sessions kept in the device's secure store. Streaks and mood trends are computed from the entries themselves, and a PIN-locked vault keeps private notes AES-encrypted on the device.
Prompts, not pages
Every entry starts from a prompt. Users told us starting was the hard part, so the product takes the decision of what to write off their hands.
Habit over features
It started as a journaling app and became habit-first micro-journaling. Short, repeatable entries kept people coming back where richer features did not.
Built under review
We pitched direction and pricing to Instructure's CTO and CPO, and shipped on feedback from their engineering team.