PlaceMate
“I kept forgetting where I had stored important belongings.”
Problem
People frequently forget where they have stored important physical possessions. Traditional inventory applications often require cloud storage and compromise user privacy.
Context
Goal: build a privacy-first physical inventory management system that stores sensitive information entirely on the user's device. Philosophy: sensitive physical inventory should never leave the user's control.
Engineering Decisions
Prioritised privacy, offline capability, local ownership, and security over convenience features like sync or collaboration.
Trade-offs
Accepted no cloud sync, no collaboration, and no remote access in exchange for keeping data entirely local.
Architecture
Client-side, browser-only architecture. No server component; all data is stored and encrypted on-device.
Implementation
Natural language storage and conversation-based retrieval. AES-256 encryption with PBKDF2 key derivation for encrypted local storage. Recovery phrase system and password rotation.
Lessons Learned
Security is only valuable when it remains usable.