How it works
How a few seconds become the story of a week.
Four steps. You catch the moment and, later, open Insights to look back. The rest happens on your phone, from what you saved, with nothing to fill in.
Wonaby is built around one trade. You give it a few seconds in the middle of an ordinary day. Later you can look back at a week, written from your own words, with the patterns pointed out. This page walks through each step the way it actually happens in the app, with the detail that doesn't fit on the front page.
If you'd rather see the whole list first, every feature and what each plan gets is one page, and what's free and what Pro costs is another.
Step 01
Catch the moment
When something happens, you get it down in seconds: a few words about what's going on, a feeling you pick yourself, and a photo if you want one. No template, no prompt to answer, no blank page.
A moment is deliberately small. A sentence or two is plenty and there's no minimum, because it's meant to be caught in the middle of the day, in the queue or on the bus, before the feeling fades. It isn't composed at a desk in the evening. Back out mid-thought and what you'd written is kept as a draft, so an interruption never costs you the moment.
You choose the feeling. Wonaby never guesses how you felt or decides what something meant, which is what keeps every moment yours rather than an app's reading of you. Saying what it was about is optional too: pick up to three tags, or none. How tags and life areas work is on the features page.
Prefer talking? Tap the mic, say what happened, and the words land as text you can read over before you keep them. The mic is free on every plan. On the free plan your phone's own dictation does the listening, the same one your keyboard uses, so it may reach for the network. With Pro, an on-device voice model turns speech into text on the phone itself: it works with no connection at all, and your voice never leaves it.
Catching a moment works with no signal. A moment is saved the instant you tap and syncs privately across your devices when you're back online. The words, the feeling and the photo are end-to-end encrypted, sealed on your device so only you can read them. There is a ceiling on how many you can save a day, and the day's count is always in view, so a full day is something you see coming rather than a wall you hit.
A few secondsText, voice or photoWorks offlineKept as a draft if you stop
FreeFive moments a day, a photo on each, every feeling and every built-in tag.ProTen moments a day, up to 100 tags of your own, and dictation transcribed on your phone.Step 02
Your day writes itself
From the moments you saved, Wonaby writes that day's note for you, on your phone, with nothing to fill in. Add or edit a moment on an earlier day and its note catches up on its own.
A day note is a short card Wonaby writes for each day from the moments you saved. Its observations are plain things your own moments show. With the on-device AI downloaded, it opens on a daily recap: what the day held and how it fits your life. There is nothing to fill in and nothing to complete, and a day with no moments has no empty box waiting on it.
It never goes stale. Add a moment to last Tuesday, or fix the wording on one from this morning, and that day's note quietly catches up.
A reminder is the one regular thing in Wonaby that comes to you rather than waiting to be found, and it's on your terms. One a day, at a time, on the days and in the tone you choose, from four message styles. It asks for notification permission only when you set it, and takes no for an answer. Tap it and it opens that day's note, something to read rather than a form to fill, and it still lands on the right day if you open it after midnight. Skip it and nothing breaks, and nothing tells you that you missed one. One switch turns it off.
When you want to go back on purpose, there's the calendar: the last twelve months in one scroll, with a quiet dot on each day you saved something and nothing on the days you didn't. Tap a day and it opens with its moments ready. No colours ranking you, no numbers keeping score.
AutomaticNothing to completeNever staleFree on every plan
Free for everyoneDay notes, reminders and the calendar are on every plan.Step 03
Get the week back
Go to Insights, tap your week, and it's written for you on the spot. It opens on one of your moments, says in a line what the week was about, and walks through what stood out, each part linked to the moments behind it. Nothing is sent to you on a schedule. It's waiting when you go looking.
This is the reason the other steps exist. When there's enough to say, a weekly recap gives you a short, readable story of the week, built only from your own moments. It walks through what stood out: something you came back to after a break, something new, who was around, a turn in how your days felt. Beside it, on its own tab, sit the charts: which parts of your life came up most, and how the feelings you chose moved across the days.
Every pattern shows its evidence. Tap one and you see the moments it was built from, so nothing is a black box and nothing is a guess. If a story feels off, a thumbs-up or thumbs-down tells Wonaby so, and you can ask for another pass any time. If the new pass doesn't come together, your current story comes back unchanged.
There are no time locks. An in-progress week is readable the moment you want it (on the free plan it uses that month's weekly recap), and Wonaby tells you how much has taken shape so far. When there isn't enough recorded to say something real, it stays quiet rather than manufacturing a story or grading you for a thin week.
Because the writing happens on your phone, the on-device AI has to be downloaded once. The first time you ask for a retrospective before it's there, Wonaby offers to fetch it right then.
Readable mid-weekEvidence you can tapQuiet when there's nothing to sayNever a scorecard
FreeOne a month, so you can see what a week reads like.ProEvery week.Step 04
Watch the bigger picture form
With Pro, the monthly and yearly retrospectives read across the weeks and months and pull the smaller stories together into a bigger picture. Pro also brings Ask Wonaby, for when you want to ask a question of the whole record.
A monthly retrospective reads across the weeks and a yearly one reads across the months, over a stretch you could never have held in your head. This is where the Tuesday you couldn't account for turns out to have been part of something.
When you want to ask something the retrospectives don't answer, there's Ask Wonaby, part of Pro: a private chat that answers questions in plain language using only your own journal. "What made me happy last week?" "How was March?" Ask about a week, a month or a whole year, and the answer is built from the moments you wrote in it. Counts are real tallies of your moments, not estimates, and when there's nothing to go on it says so instead of inventing something. Follow up with "why?" or "and the week before?" and it asks your earlier question again with the change.
It reflects; it doesn't advise. Ask Wonaby answers questions about what you recorded. It doesn't coach you, diagnose you or tell you how you feel.
MonthlyYearlyAsk WonabyBuilt from your own words
FreeAsk Wonaby: read past chats only.ProMonthly and yearly retrospectives included. Ask Wonaby: ask as much as you like.
What's doing the work
Maths finds the patterns. A small model on your phone writes the opening and the details.
Two different things happen, and it's worth being precise about them. Finding the patterns is deterministic maths: it counts and compares what you recorded, with no language model involved. A small AI model that lives on your phone then writes only the opening scene and the details of each recap and daily recap, each from one of your moments. It also answers your Ask Wonaby questions. It never decides how you felt, never assigns a label you didn't choose, and never invents something your moments don't show.
Nothing you write is sent to a cloud AI or used to train any model. Your journal is end-to-end encrypted; only you can read what you write. That is what makes it safe to record the honest version rather than the presentable one. Every other app that tells you something about your journal has to read it first; Wonaby doesn't. Where the line sits exactly, including what the server does see so that sign-in and sync can work, is on the FAQ.
On the plans
Most of this is free to use.
Catching moments, the day note, the calendar, reminders, encryption, offline use and the export are on every plan, and the free plan isn't a trial with a countdown on it. Weekly recaps are one a month on the free plan, so you can see what a week reads like before you decide anything.
Pro is for the part that takes real work to build: every weekly recap, the monthly and yearly retrospectives, Ask Wonaby, and dictation transcribed on your phone. Every limit is written out line by line on the pricing page, with what Pro costs and what happens to your journal if we ever shut down.
