ThusFar app icon (1024 × 1024)
Today screen on iPhone, without a device frame (1179 × 2556)

Inspiration

A prayer journal can preserve what we asked for and still lose the story of what happened afterward. ThusFar brings the original prayer and later updates together, so people can return to their own words with more context.

What it does

ThusFar is a private Christian journal for iPhone and iPad. Write prayers and memories, add photos or recordings, link Scripture, and keep sermon notes in a series. Add updates without replacing the original entry. Prayer states make room for waiting, an answer, an unexpected outcome, and unresolved grief.

The Story library helps people browse and search their journal. The Bible is available offline. Optional Plus features include cloud-assisted memory search and transcription, with permission before sending content for processing.

How it is built

The app uses Flutter and Dart, Riverpod for application state, and SQLCipher for its local journal database. Cloudflare Workers handle cloud requests and verify paid access on the server.

RevenueCat powers the weekly, monthly, and yearly Plus subscriptions through the Flutter SDK. A shared plus entitlement controls paid features, with purchase restoration and subscription-state updates. Billing uses a separate identity; journal text is not sent to RevenueCat.

Engineering challenges

The main design constraint was keeping an intimate journal useful without requiring cloud processing for ordinary writing and reading. That led to local storage, explicit consent for cloud features, and a separation between billing identity and journal content.

Subscription access also has to remain consistent across purchases, restoration, expiry, and server requests. RevenueCat provides the subscription state, while the backend checks entitlement validity before serving paid cloud features.

What is shipped

Version 1.0 is available on the US App Store, with approved weekly, monthly, and yearly subscriptions. The demo follows a prayer from writing to an update and revisiting it, then shows sermon notes, Scripture, the Story library, and the Plus paywall. Demo entries are illustrative.

What comes next

The next step is to learn from people using the released app: where they lose context, what helps them return to an entry, and whether the optional cloud features are worth paying for. Growth claims should follow measured use.