We build this in the open. Every change that matters to a family is written down here, in plain words — no version numbers, no announcements dressed up as news. Just what the archive can now hold for you.
You can now invite a few people who loved the same person to answer the same question together. Everyone writes their piece in their own words, and the Family Archivist can offer a draft chapter that weaves the answers side by side — always marked as a draft, always yours to edit or set aside.
You can now seal any memory, photo, or recording until a date you choose — an eighteenth birthday, a wedding day, a first Christmas without them. Sealed entries wait quietly and the archive lets you know when one opens.
You can now put memories on a map — the kitchen, the lake, the street they grew up on — and see the constellation of people around a life: who loved them, who remembered what, how the family fits together.
You can now upload a scan of a handwritten letter or a typed recipe card and the archive reads the words in it, right on this server. The original image stays exactly as it is; the text sits beside it so the letter can be found again by searching.
You can now name the person who should carry the archive after you, in your own words, with a gentle once-a-year check that the plan still holds. An archive is a century-scale promise; this is the page that keeps it one.
You can now gather a little one's first years — milestones, letters, photos, the 6:42am details — into a printable bound book. Print it at cost, or keep it as a PDF; the archive it came from stays free either way.
You can now get a quiet note when today matches a memory — the day they were married, the summer photo taken nine years ago today. A day with nothing to remember sends nothing. Turn it off any time in settings.
You can now answer the weekly memory question just by replying to the email. Your reply lands in the archive's inbox as a waiting entry for the steward to review — writing back is filing the memory.
The transparency page now updates itself every month from the same records the money actually moves through — donations in, families and keepsakes sponsored, fund usage. Numbers, not promises, and never a donor's name.
You can now start an archive before a child arrives and let it grow with them — expecting status, milestone entries, stage-fitted weekly questions, and letters sealed for the person they'll become.
Every export now identifies its own format, carries the full specification and an offline viewer inside the zip, and verifies itself with checksums. You can also now restore an export back into a new archive — the door out and the door back in are both open, and both free.
You can now have voice notes and videos transcribed into text, on this server — nothing is sent to an outside service. The recording stays the heart of it; the words make it searchable and quotable.
You can now put an archive's public Life Page on a domain your family owns — remembering-nana.com instead of a path on ours — with the certificate handled for you. Free, like the rest of the commons.
You can now turn an archive into printed things — memorial books, posters, tribute videos — printed at cost. Keepsakes are optional, never required; the archive itself is always the free part. Update (October 2026): printed keepsakes have been retired. Keepsakes are now digital, print-ready files that stay yours to keep and print wherever you like.
Entries are drafted from the project's real merge history and reviewed by a person before they appear here. The archive is the point; this page just keeps us honest about how it's growing.