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For journal owners

Your own journal: how to write to it through an agent, who can see what, and how to let other people in.

This is your journal. This page explains how to write to it, who can see what, and how to let other people in.

The most surprising thing first: there is no editing screen here, and there never will be. No form, no upload box, no admin panel. You write by talking to an agent — Claude, or another assistant that can follow instructions and make web requests — and it writes the days for you.

Why it works that way

Your journal is markdown files and photographs in a folder that belongs to you. An agent is good at turning "we walked to the harbour and the ferry was cancelled" into a written day with the right date and the right photographs attached. A web form is not better at that, and it would be one more thing to maintain, learn and log into.

It also means your journal is not trapped here. The files are yours.

Getting started

  1. On the front page, copy the instruction in the dashed box.
  2. Paste it into your agent.
  3. It asks for an email address. Give the one the journal should belong to — only that address can write.
  4. A six-digit code arrives by email. Give it to the agent. It can then write for seven days.

If you are already signed in on your own page, there is a button that hands your agent a ready-made instruction, so there is no code to read out.

Writing a day

Tell your agent what happened.

Photographs help most when they carry a timestamp. Any common format works. JPEG and HEIC record the capture time — and often the location — automatically on most phones and cameras, which is what lets an agent put a day on the right date without being told. If you are exporting, scanning or renaming files by hand, keep the date in the filename instead: 2026-08-26-hoi-an-01.jpg.

Everything an agent writes arrives as a draft. It is not on the site until you say so. Read it back first: an agent writes what it was told, and the one thing it must never do is invent what happened. If a detail is missing it should stay missing.

When you are happy, ask it to publish. Publishing is a separate step on purpose, and it is yours alone — nobody you invite can publish, however much they write.

Who can see what

Two separate questions, and mixing them up is the most common mistake.

Each trip has a visibility:

  • Public — anybody with the link, and it is advertised on this server.
  • Guest — everybody you have let into your journal.
  • Private — only the people who were actually on that trip. Not your guests, however long ago you approved them.

A trip you want to keep back from people you otherwise let in must be private. There is deliberately no narrower setting: being a guest is one decision about your whole journal, not a decision per trip.

Your journal has a visibility too, and it is a different question — only whether this server advertises it at all. A journal set to guest is not listed on the front page or in the sitemap. It is unlisted, not locked; who can read a trip is still the trip's own setting.

Letting people in

Ask your agent to make you an invitation link. There are two kinds, and only one of them is safe to forward:

  • A guest link leads to reading the trips you have marked guest. This is the one for a family group chat.
  • A buddy link names one trip and leads to writing to it. Hand it to the person, not to a group.

Neither gives anybody anything on its own. Whoever opens one proves their own email address and lands in your approval queue — you decide. Nothing is shared until you approve them.

Your guest list is on your journal's contacts page, where you can approve, change or remove anybody, and see the invitations you have issued.

Telling people about a new day

If notifications are switched on for your journal, anybody who turned them on gets one when you publish. Guests only ever hear about trips they can actually open, and nothing at all goes out for a private trip, a draft, or a day marked as a test.

You can also send an email, and — where it is set up — a WhatsApp message. Ask your agent.

Things worth knowing

  • Your email address is the key to everything. If you lose access to it, you lose the ability to write. There is no password to reset.
  • An agent's token lasts seven days, then it asks again. That is deliberate: a credential that writes should not sit around for a year.
  • Deleting is the one thing an agent cannot finish for you. Ask it to delete a trip or the whole journal and you get an email with a link to a page with a button. Only the button deletes.