How it works

Dear You is a place where your family writes letters to your child — with words, photos, videos and voice notes — that one day become a book. Here's how it all works, without the hurry.

The letters

Every letter is written to your child, in the second person: "today you laughed for the first time", "today you asked me to leave the light on". Photos, videos and voice notes don't live off in a gallery somewhere — they live inside the letter, right where you mention them, like a photo glued into a notebook.

A letter can be two sentences. It doesn't have to be beautiful, or long, or written on an inspired day. And when you can, record your voice: the voice notes matter most. There will be thousands of photos from this age; the voice — yours saying something to them, theirs at three years old — nobody else keeps that.

The family — who gets to write

Whoever creates the family's space is the one who looks after it: we call them the founder. The founder invites everyone else — mom, dad, grandparents, godmothers — with a short code that's good for 7 days.

The invited person downloads the app, enters with their email and the code… and waits at the door. They see nothing — not a letter, not a photo, not even your child's name — until the founder approves them explicitly. A code alone never gets anyone in; someone on the inside always has to say "yes, come in".

Once inside, everyone can write and read the family's letters. Each letter carries its author's signature — "Mom", "Grandma Rosa" — so years from now your child will recognize every voice. If it ever comes to it, the founder can remove someone from the space; their letters stay in the book, because they're already part of the story.

And there's one exception to all of this: whatever you mark "For me" is yours alone. No other family member sees it, it never enters the book, and it never appears in anything you share. That corner exists for what you're not ready to show yet — or what you never want to.

The kids

A family can have up to 6 kids, each with their own book. Shared memories — "the day you both fell asleep in the car" — are written once and live in each kid's book.

A baby on the way can join too: the letters start during pregnancy, with the due date. When the baby arrives, you tell the app — and all the pregnancy letters become the first chapter of the book: "before we met you".

Sealed letters

Some letters aren't for now. You can write a sealed letter for their 18th birthday: in the app it shows as a closed envelope, and nobody can read it — not even the rest of the family. Only the person who wrote it can open it again. It opens on that birthday, and not before.

Sharing

For the aunt who lives far away or the grandfather who doesn't use apps, you can create a share link: pick a window of time to show and send it over WhatsApp or wherever you like. Links switch off by themselves after 30 days, and you can turn them off sooner anytime from the app. If the window is longer than a month, only the highlighted moments travel — never the whole archive.

The book

There's no "someday we'll put the book together" here: every letter is already typeset the moment you save it, with its place on the page. You can generate the PDF anytime and see the book exactly as it's taking shape. The printable edition — cover, interior, and codes to hear the voice notes from the paper — is on its way.