Show HN: Coach Thyself – Replace your morning scroll with structured journaling

[rrranch]

Hi HN, I'm a solo dev who built this because I kept opening my phone and falling into social media instead of working on myself.

Coach Thyself is a journaling app with structure instead of blank pages: - Daily prompts and community questions to write about - Goal tracking and task organization built in - Optional insights from philosophy/astrology/psychology as reflection triggers - No social features, followers, or performance metrics

I use it every morning now instead of scrolling. It's the motivation that keeps me working on it.

Tech stack: [whatever you used - mention it if interesting] 7-day free trial, $12/month after: https://thyself.coach

Happy to answer questions about the build process or journaling habits. Looking for feedback on what would make this more useful.

[aniviacat]

> Tech stack: [whatever you used - mention it if interesting]

I hope the app's code was reviewed more carefully than this post.

[rrranch]

Oh man, sorry for that, it's embarrasing, yes I have put more attention into the app than on this post.

[navane]

It has a gradient sign up button

[patatino]

Why cant I see the product before signing up? at least a screenshot

[soco]

In this situation, where you know zero about the product, one would have to be out of their minds to sign up. Not saying some people won't click it, but see previous phrase. Maybe we are simply not the (gullible enough) target user base. That, or it's just a well meant but very poorly thought off side income attempt. Which doesn't bode well for the app itself either.

[rrranch]

Thank you for the response, I can include some pictures for sure, will do that in the next couple of days. Thanks again.

[simonmales]

Pay to play.

[simonmales]

Even the blog too!

[o0-0o]

A few observations. I never got the confirmation email and my account. The free one doesn’t seem to do anything except for allowing me to journal, but I can’t see the journal. I can’t go into the birthdate. I can’t edit my profile? This seems to be a web form with prompts? Where’s the verification email? Why can’t I change my birthdate? Why is the app totally not working as expected. How do you see the journal entries that you entered granted it’s 641 in the morning here but this is when I should be able to use an easy journaling app about what I want to do today also just note that questions like how do you want to show up in the world today are a bit flimsy. This is just my opinion of course, but why not just ask what are your goals and things like that my two cents ticket for what it’s worth everybody’s got an opinion.

[rrranch]

Hey, thank you very much for trying the app, it means a lot.

1- There is no automatic email confirmation for now, I verify the accounts manually and I can do that today. 2- The free can do everything but is just for 7 days, then the subscription is required.

About the other things, I think I can work on that onboarding experience to make it better, definetly, but I do want to touch on that journal question being "flimsy". I get what you are saying and I feel the same. The reason is those were made with an LLM based on some personal questions I had, but I hope in the future we could have a good list of good prompts qurated by the community. For me nothing like a good prompt, I feel special when someone wants me to express something, but anyway, I can do a cleanup there to avoid the more weird prompts you know. Thanks again.

[deforestgump]

I like the idea but why would I pay to trust you with my most inner thoughts?

[mrroryflint]

Would tend to agree. Interesting concept but unless it's all encrypted, I wouldn't trust this at all.

[ctxc]

Especially when you can't see the product and the readme has placeholders left over from ChatGPT

[rrranch]

This is a key question. I'm still reflecting about it. TLDR. Is a sensitive subject that needs to be well thought.

So when I journal manually in a book, I trust that I'm going to be the only person reading it. When I journal digitally is a bit different, in this case I trust the app because I made it myself for my own needs, but I wonder how to transmit that trust to the user. Encryption can be the way to go, I know there are different ways of implementing that, maybe optional encription in some places or some texts, but then if the users loosses the password then that content is gone forever, and also there could be say if we want to add some functionality to work with those pieces of text, if it's encrypted the backend would not be able to do things like filtering and so on...

[4ndrewl]

Hi, your Privacy page is non-existent.

Where's the stuff that I write about myself going? Who's it being shared with and what are they doing with it?

Without this info, I'd just assume the worst tbh - either out of malice or ignorance.

[rrranch]

Hey, thanks for your response.

So I can work on the privacy page soon for sure.

That information should be only for you. My information is for me only. This is not only for privacy but to avoid performative content as well. What I did in the app is that it shows you daily prompts, and you can answer to them, so those prompts are public and can be made by the community, I like the idea of knowing as a community what other people are writing about, or what are they responding to, to be more precise. As a general overview of what are the questions that society is drawn to lately for example. But the idea is the responses are just for you.

[4ndrewl]

Hi - I noticed you just published your Privacy Policy. Good work - it's really important to have this in place both for your and your user's protection. Good luck with Coach Thyself!

[margarina72]

I am sure there is an audience for it, even if 12$/m for a journaling template feels a tad pushy. But great if someone find this useful

[rrranch]

I take that into account, thanks. Maybe as we add more and more features the price will feel more appropriate, I hope.

[dSebastien]

Create 2025-10-25.md. There's my perfect space for my private thoughts

[misswaterfairy]

Requires personal details to even see what this does.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooope.

[rrranch]

Hey, I updated the landing page with screenshots of the app so you can take a look at it before registering, thanks for your feedback.

[truelson]

You know what else works? Talking to an LLM about what you want to accomplish today.

[rrranch]

Well I do that frequently, as you can tell by the post actually I forgot to clean that LLM response lol... But honestly I tried many LLMs, Claude is my go to choice, I tried creating projects and so on, but it's just like Apple Notes, I don't feel it scales or that later I can actually do something with that content, those apps are not ready for that, they are more generic, don't you think?