I turned GitHub's contribution graph into a life journal

Name: I turned GitHub's contribution graph into a life journal
Availability: InStock
Author: plsft

by plsft·Mar 18, 2026·2 points·0 comments

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AI Analysis

●●SolidCozyBig Brain

GitHub contribution graph for your life, colored by meaning instead of commits.

Strengths

•Meaningfulness metric rejects engagement-driven social media models in favor of deep reflection.
•Local photo scanning respects privacy while automatically populating your history grid.
•Visual constraint of 1,000 months makes mortality tangible and specifically countable.

Weaknesses

•Journaling apps are incredibly crowded with established players like Day One.
•Manual rating of months might become tedious over long-term consistent use.

Post Description

Hi HN,

I'm George. I've built lots of business applications but never a personal application.

After staring at my GitHub graph, I realized my actual life doesn't have a contribution chart. My app, Lifetale, gives you ~1,000 squares (one per month of life), colored by how each month felt, not how much you posted. I wanted sharing to be opt-in and limited so you can create 'circles' to share specific days and memories with close friends and loved ones, but not the world.

Beta is live on TestFlight. Happy to send invites to anyone who wants to try it — just join the waitlist on the site.

Technical: Hono on CF Workers, D1, R2, React Native/Expo. Passwordless auth via Resend. Private posts stay in IndexedDB on device. Photo scanner is really fast and populates your grid in a few seconds using the EXIF data from the photos.

Would love feedback on the grid concept. The most surprising thing has been watching which squares people fill first.