Recollection

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  Dashboard

Inspiration

At the age when a life decision feels enormous, the people we love often have one thing no feed, chatbot, or self-help article can give us: they have already been that age. Recollection turns a family photograph into a private crossing between two lives at the same age.

What it does

An owner starts an Age Chain with one original photo, the age they share with a parent or grandparent, and one question that matters now. The invited person answers in writing or with their own voice through a private, expiring link—no app download and no account required. The answer comes home beside the original photograph.

GPT-5.6 can suggest three careful opening questions from owner-supplied context. It does not invent the family story or answer on anyone’s behalf.

An optional FAL visual bridge adds atmosphere, not evidence: a silent, people-free room with light and movement. It is labelled Imagined and never receives a photo, face, name, voice, or personal context.

How we built it

Recollection is a Next.js and TypeScript application backed by Supabase Auth, Postgres, Storage, and Row Level Security. Passwordless email links protect the private owner experience; a separate guest invitation flow permits a consented text or audio response without creating an account.

The server-only OpenAI Responses API path uses GPT-5.6 for three constrained question suggestions. The server-only FAL queue uses a fixed prompt for the optional people-free bridge. Codex accelerated the product design, private architecture, implementation, security hardening, tests, and production release gate. See BUILD_WITH_CODEX.md for the detailed build record.

Challenges we ran into

The tempting version of this idea was a generated speaking relative. We rejected it. The harder, more valuable problem is creating a reason for a real conversation while clearly separating a photograph, a human answer, and any imagined atmosphere. That required private storage, consent, invitation expiry, revocation, source labels, and a model prompt that refuses to invent family facts.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• A complete private journey instead of a generic AI video wrapper
• Real authentication, persistence, private storage, invitation controls, and RLS
• A no-login judge walkthrough using fictional sample data
• A grounded GPT-5.6 interaction where the model opens a conversation but never replaces the person
• A visual feature designed so it cannot use or create a relative’s likeness

What we learned

The best use of generative AI here is not to manufacture a memory. It is to make a real memory easier to recover: a better question, a lower-friction invitation, and a clear boundary between history and imagination.

What's next for Recollection

Add owner-controlled exports and deletion jobs, family member roles, locale-aware prompts, and an optional private remembrance book built only from consented original and spoken material.

Built With

• codex
• fal
• gpt-5.6
• next.js
• openai-responses-api
• react
• row-level-security
• supabase-auth
• supabase-postgres
• supabase-storage
• typescript