DandyLine — Vaults Deep-Dive

01

The Six Vault Types

Six different jars, six different sizes, six different colors, six different purposes. Each vault type is defined by its contributor structure, its intended timeline, and what makes it distinct from the others.

Grove

Gold · #D4A853

Multiple people co-plant into the same vault, each seed on its own timeline.

3 dots = multiple contributors

Personal

Sky Blue · #8BAEC8

Private, solo, intimate. One planter, flexible recipient and timing.

Single dot = solo planter

Milestone

Sage · #7A9E7E

Event-anchored. Built for life's defining moments you know are coming.

Large dot = the occasion's weight

Legacy

Purple · #6B5B8A

Long-hold, generational. For memories that need to outlast the planter.

Dot + lines = generational layers

Journey

Amber · #C4704A

Milestone-anchored progress. Strangers connect by walking the same path.

Ascending dots = milestone progress

Roots

Deep Teal · #4A8A85

A place-anchored community vault. Arrive at the location, join the jar, contribute to a living archive of a place.

Converging dots = people arriving at a place

02

The Vault Philosophy

A jar is not just a container. It's a commitment. Every vault type is a different kind of vessel — shaped for different depths of memory, different circles of people, and different timescales of life.

Every vault type is a different kind of vessel — shaped for different depths of memory, different circles of people, and different timescales of life. The jar you choose tells its own story before it's even opened.

The vault sits at the center of the DandyLine experience: it's where the moment becomes something more than a file. When you seal a vault, you're not just storing something. You're making a promise — to a future version of yourself, to someone you love, or to a stranger who one day walks the same path you're walking now.

From the brand ethos: "The memory preserved in soft light. Sealed, held, waiting in the dark. The puffball is still — patient — a perfect sphere of preserved potential. This is the vault: silent and luminous."

01

Plant

Captured with intention — transformed into a seed. Not just a file. A commitment. The moment is real, unfiltered, and honest.

02

Seal

Sealed in time — transformed by waiting. The seal is not passive. It is active preservation. The vault is silent and luminous.

03

Bloom

The moment of arrival — transformed by the distance traveled. The memory lands differently than it was planted. That distance is where meaning lives.

Vaults are starting structures, not rigid boxes. Each vault type arrives with a default feel, default settings, and a default starting structure — chosen to match the most common use of that vault. But vaults can adapt. You can change settings within reason, convert a vault type as your intentions evolve, and configure the experience to fit what you're actually building. The vault type is the beginning of the conversation, not the end. A Personal vault can become a Milestone vault. A Grove vault with no contributors yet is still a Grove vault. The jar shapes the experience — it doesn't lock it.

The core transformation: The person who opens a DandyLine vault is never the same person it was created for — whether that's a future version of yourself, or someone who didn't even exist when the seed was planted. That gap — that distance — is where the magic lives. DandyLine doesn't just preserve the past. It transforms what a moment means.

Dot Language Quick Reference: Every jar's dots represent who is planting. Grove has multiple orbiting dots (community). Personal, Milestone, and Legacy each have a single centered dot (solo). Journey has ascending dots connected by a path (progress). The dots animate to show the vault is alive and waiting.

02b

The Dandelion Inside the Jar

Every vault holds a living dandelion — a miniature ecosystem of seeds floating inside the glass. Click the jar to dive in.

Click the jar to dive in

Grove

A shared ecosystem — multiple voices woven together, each seed on its own timeline. The wide-mouth jar holds them all.

20 seeds floating inside

Wide-mouth · Bulbous · Gold

03

Grove

The shared multi-contributor vault — for family, for friends, for people who grow together.

Grove

Shared multi-contributor vault — for family, for friends, for people who grow together.

A Grove lets multiple people plant seeds into the same vault. Everyone contributes. Everyone receives the bloom.

Gold Wide-mouth · Bulbous Multi-contributor Shared bloom

What makes Grove its own vault type

The only vault where multiple people co-plant into the same container.

Each contributor plants their own seeds independently. Individual seeds can have different bloom triggers — one opens on a birthday, another in 5 years, another on a wedding day. The vault holds all of them. The shared structure is the defining feature, not the trigger or the occasion.

Ask: "Are multiple different people each planting their own seeds?" If yes → Grove. If one person is planting alone → Personal, Milestone, or Legacy depending on other factors.

Bloom triggers (date, age, milestone, anniversary) and recipients are settings you configure inside the vault — they don't determine the vault type. A Grove vault can have a milestone trigger. A Milestone vault can also have multiple contributors and remain Milestone — because the occasion defines it, not the contributor count. Grove is defined by the community-first, looser, surprise-default structure — not simply by having more than one planter.

Description

The classic mason jar — wide-mouthed, warm, and built for gathering. A Grove vault is the communal garden. Multiple people plant seeds into the same container, each from their own perspective. Seeds can bloom all at once or on entirely different timelines — one contributor's seed arrives on a birthday, another's in five years, another's on a wedding morning.

For families, friend groups, couples, teams — any circle of people who want their individual voices to arrive, each in its own time.

Jar Design

Shape: Wide-mouth, bulbous at the bottom — widens noticeably toward the base. The wideness communicates gathering and community.

Color: Gold (#D4A853) — the primary brand color. Grove is the anchor vault. Warm, generous, communal.

Animation: Three seeds glowing inside the jar at staggered intervals, different gold opacities — representing multiple contributors.

Primary Use Cases

Whole family co-planting — grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts all contributing their own seeds independently. Every relationship in the jar, every perspective preserved. Seeds don't have to arrive together — Grandma's voice note blooms on a birthday, Mom's photo blooms in 10 years, Dad's video blooms on the wedding morning.
Couples planting together — both people contributing their own seeds to the same vault. What she noticed. What he was afraid to say out loud. Each can bloom on a different trigger — the same anniversary, or years apart.
Friend group time capsule — everyone in the group plants independently. Nobody knows exactly what the others added. It opens on a future date everyone agreed to — and rediscovery is part of the experience.
A child with two separated parents — each parent contributes their own seeds separately. The child receives the combined picture: two people who loved them, each in their own voice.
Communities, cohorts, teams — any group of people sharing a moment in time. A graduating class. A team disbanding. A community marking an ending or beginning together.

Bloom Triggers That Fit

Specific date Age milestone Years from now Anniversary trigger Surprise me Location unlock

Grove key distinction: All trigger types are available — and crucially, each seed inside the same vault can have its own bloom trigger. Grandma's voice note blooms on a birthday. Mom's photo blooms in 10 years. Dad's video blooms on the wedding morning. One vault, one family, completely different timelines. This is what separates Grove from every other vault type.

Settings — Locked Decisions (04.09.26)

Contributors	Add by name, email, or invite link. Each contributor plants independently. All seeds held in the same vault.
Recipient(s)	A single designated recipient / all contributors receive it / contributor-specific (each seed goes to whoever the planter addressed it to)
Contributor visibility	Can contributors see who else has planted? Options: see names only / see names + count / fully blind until bloom
Bloom trigger	Date / milestone / countdown timer / all-planted trigger (blooms when everyone has contributed)
Default bloom timing — LOCKED	Surprise (90-day window) is the default. The seed blooms at a random time within 90 days — nobody knows exactly when, including the planter. This preserves time as the medium even for short-window contributions. Options the planter can choose instead: Surprise Soon (within 30 days) · Surprise (within 90 days — default) · Surprise Later (within 1 year — maximum for Grove) · Open Now · Pick a specific date. Grove Surprise is capped at 1 year — longer timescales belong in Legacy or Milestone.
Seed recall — LOCKED	Yes. Contributors can recall (delete) a seed they've planted at any time before it blooms. No questions asked.
Pending invites — LOCKED	Small vaults (under ~20 contributors): pending invites shown as faded/greyed contributor circles — same as most apps. Large vaults (Roots, high-volume community): pending invites shown as a count only ("34 invited") — individual faded circles become meaningless at scale. System determines the threshold automatically. No toggle for the vault creator.
Vault-level Surprise mode	Owner can set the entire Grove vault to Surprise mode — all seeds from all contributors bloom at the same random moment. Nobody knows when, including planters. Designed for family vaults where the shared experience of discovery is the point (e.g., the Hatch family vault).
Contribution deadline	Lock the vault on a set date even if not everyone has planted
Reminder cadence	Nudge contributors who haven't planted yet (optional, gentle)
Bloom delivery	Simultaneous (everyone opens at the same moment) or sequential (each contributor's seed blooms individually)

Story Example — Grove Vault · 4 contributors · 4 different bloom triggers

"What we kept"

Nobody told the others they were planting. They each just did it on their own.

Mom — Photo · "The kitchen at 7am"The twins had been up since 5 trying to make pancakes before anyone woke up. By the time Mom found them, the kitchen looked like a snowstorm. Flour on the dog. Milk on the ceiling. Two enormous grins. Caption: "They did this because they love you. Remember it when they drive you crazy." Blooms on her 30th birthday — age milestone trigger

Dad — Video · 40 seconds, no one noticedHer dancing with him in the living room. Just socks on hardwood floor, both of them completely in their own world. Note: "Something I want you to remember: you were never embarrassed to dance with me. Not yet." Blooms on her wedding morning — specific date (chosen when she announces her date)

Grandma — Voice note · Christmas Eve, after everyone was asleepShe didn't say much. Just talked about what it looked like from across the room that evening. The way the light fell. The way nobody was performing. "I'm watching your whole life happen and I can't believe I get to be here for it." Blooms in 10 years from today — years-from-now trigger

Older sister — Text note · Two sentences"You're so annoying and I would do anything for you." Surprise trigger — DandyLine chooses the moment

Four contributors. Four different bloom triggers. One vault — she doesn't know it exists. None of them planned it together. None of it lands on the same day. All of it will find her exactly when it's supposed to.

04

Personal

Private vault, single owner, flexible timing. Your own quiet garden.

Personal

Private vault, single owner, flexible timing. Your own quiet garden.

The most common vault. It belongs entirely to you — a moment sealed until a date you choose, for whoever you decide deserves to receive it.

Sky Blue Tall · Slender Single owner Flexible delivery

What makes Personal its own vault type

A single planter. Private, solo, intimate.

Personal is defined by who plants — one person, alone. The recipient can be yourself, a partner, or a child. What makes it Personal isn't who receives it — it's that one person is making a solo promise. No co-contributors, no shared container.

The distinction from Milestone: Milestone is occasion-defined — the vault IS the event. Personal is message-defined — you're planting because you want to say something, and you're choosing when it arrives. The trigger is a setting, not the vault's identity.

The distinction from Legacy: Legacy is for the longest timescales and highest-stakes continuity — where the planter might not be present at bloom. Personal can use long triggers too, but doesn't carry the legal/generational infrastructure Legacy does.

If a parent is planting a solo message because their child's 18th birthday exists as an occasion → that's Milestone, even with one planter. Personal is for when the message drives the vault — not the event. If both parents each plant their own message into the same vault → that becomes Grove.

Description

Tall and slender, like something you'd keep on a shelf. The Personal vault is private, intimate, and entirely yours. One owner plants into it; the bloom can be sent to yourself or to a chosen recipient.

This is where the most honest, unperformed memories live — the ones you wouldn't post, the ones you'd only share with one person, the ones that don't need an audience. The Personal vault is the anti-feed.

Jar Design

Shape: Tall and slender — like a medicine bottle or a narrow apothecary jar. Vertical, contained, private.

Color: Sky Blue (#8BAEC8) — distance, time, the horizon. The sky you plant into and the sky the memory blooms from.

Animation: Single seed glow inside, centered and still. Quiet. Solitary.

Primary Use Cases

Letter to your future self — sealed and delivered in 1, 5, or 10 years
IVF / fertility journal — voice notes and photos planted during treatment, set to bloom when a child reaches a milestone birthday. Note: if planted for yourself to revisit → Personal. If planted for your future child → consider Legacy (long-hold, potentially before they exist).
Pre-loss recording — a parent recording messages for milestones they fear they may not be present for. Note: if the timescale is long or posthumous delivery is the concern → Legacy is the stronger fit.
Personal journal capsule — capturing who you are right now, sealed until a future date
Trauma or growth milestone — a message to yourself for when you're ready to look back
Relationship vault — a private message to a partner set to open on a significant future date
Solo parent message to a child — one parent planting alone, set to bloom for a child on a meaningful milestone. Note: if both parents plant separately into the same vault → that's Grove.

Bloom Triggers That Fit

Specific date Age milestone Years from now Location unlock Surprise me Gradual bloom

Settings to Design (Future Build)

Recipient	Yourself / a specific person (email or in-app) / a person who doesn't have the app yet (email delivery)
Privacy level	Just me — invisible until bloom. Shared bloom — delivered to recipient only. Private with backup — trusted person holds a sealed key
Bloom trigger	All six trigger types available: date, age, years, location, gradual, or surprise
Media types	Photo, video, voice note, written letter, or bundled combination
Feeling tag	Hopeful · Grateful · Proud · Tender · Bittersweet · Scared · Raw · Celebratory
Re-seal option	Can the planter add to the vault after sealing? Options: sealed forever / open window for additions / can add but not edit existing
Legacy delivery	If planted for someone else and the planter is no longer available — trusted person activation or automated delivery

Story Example — Personal Vault

"A letter for the baby who wasn't born yet"

During their third round of IVF, Sarah recorded a voice memo she didn't know would ever be heard. She talked about what she and her husband had gone through, what they dreamed of, what they were afraid to say out loud. She set it to bloom on their child's 18th birthday. Four years later, she got pregnant. The seed is still sealed. Waiting. Fourteen more years to go. And when it opens — it will carry the full weight of a love that existed before their child did.

05

Milestone

Built for the defining moments — the ones you know are coming.

Milestone

Built for the defining moments — the ones you know are coming.

Round, wide, and sturdy enough to hold the weight of what matters most. Milestone vaults are designed for life's big, known moments.

Sage Round · Wide Event-anchored Known future date

What makes Milestone its own vault type

The occasion is the vault's identity — not just the trigger.

Milestone vaults are occasion-defined. You're not choosing when to deliver a message and then picking a trigger — you're building the vault because a specific life event exists. The graduation, the 18th birthday, the wedding: the moment creates the vault. They are the same thing.

The distinction from Personal: Personal is message-defined — you have something to say and you're choosing when it arrives. Milestone is event-defined — the event is why the vault exists at all.

The distinction from Grove: If one person plants for one recipient = Milestone. If multiple people each plant their own seeds into the same occasion vault = that's actually Grove with a milestone trigger.

A mentor's graduation letter (one planter, one recipient, one event) = Milestone. A family all planting for the same graduation (multiple planters) = Grove. The contributor count is the deciding factor when occasion + contributors overlap.

Description

Round and wide like a canning jar — sturdy, dependable, built for the weight of big moments. Milestone vaults are for events you know are coming: graduations, birthdays with zeroes, retirements, weddings, the day someone leaves for college.

The difference between a Milestone vault and a Personal one: Milestone is event-anchored. You're not just choosing a date — you're choosing a moment in someone's life that has cultural and emotional weight. The vault and the moment are designed together.

Jar Design

Shape: Round and wide — like a ball jar or a short canning jar. Low center of gravity. Solid presence.

Color: Sage (#7A9E7E) — growth, nature, calm. The color of something that's been alive for a long time and is ready to be opened.

Animation: Single large seed glow, centered inside. Present and waiting.

Primary Use Cases

Birthday letter from a parent — one parent, planted years in advance, delivered exactly on the day. Not a collection from the whole family — just one voice, one promise. (Multiple family members planting = Grove)
Graduation message from a mentor — a teacher, coach, or boss planting something for the moment a student crosses the stage. One planter, one recipient, one milestone.
A partner's wedding morning note — written the night before, sealed, opened the morning of. The most intimate 24-hour vault.
First night at college — something from a parent, planted before move-in day. One message for one specific moment of leaving.
A letter to yourself at a future age — "open when you're 40," written at 32. You are both the planter and the recipient. The milestone is the trigger and the vault's whole reason for existing.
Retirement letter from a manager — one person writing to honor one person's career. (Whole team contributing = Grove)

Bloom Triggers That Fit

Specific date Age milestone Years from now Gradual bloom

Settings to Design (Future Build)

Event type	Birthday (with age) / graduation / wedding / anniversary / retirement / departure / custom
Contributors	Single or multiple (if multi-contributor, becomes a hybrid Grove/Milestone)
Delivery method	In-app notification / email delivery to non-app users / physical print option
Countdown display	Option to show recipient a countdown ("Your vault blooms in 47 days") — or keep sealed with no countdown
Grouped delivery	Multiple seeds delivered together at the milestone moment, or staggered over the bloom day
Repeat milestone	Re-seed automatically for recurring milestones (anniversary every year, birthday every year)

Story Example — Milestone Vault

"Five friends. One time capsule. Twenty years."

The summer after college, five friends planted a shared vault — photos, voice notes, written promises. Jokes only they'd understand. An inside look at who they were at 22. It's set to open on the first Saturday of 2044 — when they'll all be in their forties. Everyone has already forgotten what's in it. That's the point. When 2044 arrives, they'll remember not just what they recorded — but who they were when they recorded it.

06

Legacy

The long-hold vault — for memories that need years, decades, or a lifetime to arrive.

Legacy

The long-hold vault — for memories that need years, decades, or a lifetime to arrive.

Legacy vaults are built for the longest timescales — 10, 20, 50 years or more. These are the vaults that outlive you.

Purple Hex-faceted Generational Decades-long Heirloom

What makes Legacy its own vault type

Built for the situations where ordinary vault infrastructure isn't enough.

Legacy isn't defined by how long the vault waits — it's defined by what's at stake if it doesn't arrive. Posthumous delivery. Legal/estate context. Generational reach. Subscription-independent continuity. These are the situations that require more than a trigger date.

The distinction from Personal: Personal can also have long triggers. But Legacy adds continuity guarantees — the vault persists beyond account cancellation, can transfer to an heir, can be verified at delivery. When the stakes are that the planter might be gone, Personal isn't enough.

The distinction from Milestone: Milestone is about an occasion. Legacy is about survival across time. A message for a grandchild's 18th = could be Personal or Milestone. A message for a grandchild's 18th, where the planter is 80 and wants to know it will arrive regardless = Legacy.

Legacy is less about the timescale and more about the intention: "I need this to outlast me." That's the signal. It doesn't have to be decades — it just needs to carry more weight than a regular vault can hold.

Description

Hex-faceted like antique glass — this is the jar you find in an attic and immediately understand was meant to last. Legacy vaults are built for situations where the memory needs to outlast the planter: grandparents to grandchildren, letters to unborn children, messages to be delivered after someone is gone.

The defining characteristic: the planter may not be alive when it blooms. Legacy doesn't just preserve a memory — it preserves a voice across whatever distance time creates.

Jar Design

Shape: Tall with horizontal score lines — faceted like antique glass. The lines suggest layers of time, depth, permanence.

Color: Purple (#6B5B8A) — depth, heritage, transformation. The color of something old and precious.

Animation: Centered seed glow with horizontal detail lines echoing the faceted glass. Slow, deliberate pulse.

Primary Use Cases

Grandparent to grandchild — voices, stories, recipes recorded before they're gone, delivered at meaningful ages
Messages for unborn children — planted before pregnancy, during pregnancy, before the child can understand
Letter from a parent for future milestones — "open when you're struggling," "open if I'm no longer here," "open on your wedding day"
Generational archive — family history, oral storytelling, lineage documentation
Terminal diagnosis legacy — a person recording what they want their family to carry forward
Estate or inheritance message — accompanying context for why decisions were made, who they were
50-year time capsule — the longest arc DandyLine holds

Bloom Triggers That Fit

Age milestone Specific date Years from now Event trigger (external)

Settings — Locked Decisions (04.09.26)

Legacy Guardian — LOCKED	Planter designates a trusted person in advance — same model as Apple's Digital Legacy Contact. Two modes: Pre-authorized (Guardian already has vault management access while planter is alive) or Request-based (Guardian submits a claim after death). Guardian can manage delivery — confirm dates, add recipients, activate the vault. The vault stays completely sealed to the Guardian. They cannot read the contents. Time as the medium is preserved even after the planter's death. The memory belongs to its recipient, not the executor.
Death verification — LOCKED	Death certificate upload required — no honor system. DandyLine verifies before granting Guardian access. Mandatory waiting period after verification: Pre-authorized Guardian: 7 days. Request-based Guardian: 30 days. The waiting period protects against premature activation and gives co-Guardians time to be notified. Verification protects DandyLine legally and protects the planter's privacy.
Capsule continuity	Subscription-independent preservation — vault persists beyond account cancellation (Legacy Protection tier)
Inheritance transfer	Legal-style transfer mechanism: vault ownership passes to a designated heir
Multiple bloom dates	Different seeds within the same vault bloom at different ages / dates / milestones (grandchild at 10, at 18, at wedding)
Fuzzy dates	Planter sets an approximate date; system prompts them to confirm as it approaches. If planter dies before confirming, Guardian is prompted to set the delivery date at activation — vault does not auto-fire without human confirmation.
Identity verification	Verified delivery to the right person at the right age — for vaults with long timescales
Archival format	Option to export as a physical archive (printed memory book, memorial box) at time of bloom
Guided prompts	DandyLine offers prompts to help planters think through what they want to preserve ("What do you want them to know about who you were?")

Story Example — Legacy Vault

"A grandmother's voice, preserved forever"

At 79, Eleanor recorded voice notes — stories from her childhood, recipes she'd never written down. Her family helped her plant them, each sealed for a different grandchild at a different age — some for age 10, others for graduation, others for their wedding day. She passed away last winter. The seeds are still waiting to bloom. She still has things to say. And DandyLine will deliver every one of them, exactly when she intended.

07

Journey

A vault that moves through milestones, not dates — and connects you across time with others walking the same path.

Journey

A vault that moves through milestones, not dates — and connects you across time with others walking the same path.

You plant at a milestone. Someone else reaches that same milestone — months or years later — and your seed is waiting for them exactly there.

Amber Straight-sided Milestone-anchored Community Temporal connection Draft

What makes Journey its own vault type

The only vault where time is measured in personal progress, not calendar dates. And the only vault that can reach strangers.

Journey vaults are milestone-anchored — "Day 30" is not a date, it's a point you earn. When you plant a seed at a milestone, anyone who reaches that same milestone (in the same journey category) can receive it — regardless of when they get there.

The distinction from all other vaults: Every other vault type is about personal time — your past self speaking to your future self, or to someone you know. Journey is about shared human time — strangers connected not by knowing each other, but by living through the same thing at the same point in their journey.

No calendar. No profiles. No social feed. The community dimension is purely temporal: you're connected by where you are in a journey, not who you are in the world.

Journey is the newest vault type — still in build. The sobriety Day 30 example is the clearest expression of what makes it distinct from everything else in DandyLine.

The Core Concept

A Journey vault isn't anchored to a calendar date. It's anchored to a personal milestone — Day 30, Month 6, Year 1 — of something you're actively living through.

You plant a seed at your milestone. It becomes available to anyone else who reaches that same milestone in the same journey — no matter when they get there. Someone who planted a voice note on their Day 30 of sobriety three years ago can still reach someone hitting Day 30 today.

You're not communicating in real time. You're traveling in time to meet someone exactly where you once were. The message you needed at that moment becomes the message someone else receives at theirs.

This is DandyLine's most radical idea: time doesn't have to be a calendar. It can be a shared human experience measured in personal steps.

Jar Design

Shape: Straight-sided and upright — deliberate, undecorated. A jar built for the journey, not the shelf. Practical and honest.

Color: Amber (#C4704A) — warm rust-orange. Distinct from gold. The color of ground covered, worn paths, and lived experience. Earthy and human without being heavy.

Animation: Ascending seeds connected by a faint dotted path inside the jar — from dim at the bottom (where the journey started) to bright at the top (where you are now). The path represents progress, not perfection.

Primary Use Cases

Sobriety — "Day 30: I want you to know it gets quieter. You don't stop wanting it — you just stop being ruled by it." Planted at Day 30, received by anyone hitting Day 30.
Grief — Month 3 of losing a parent. The specific, strange loneliness of that point. A message from someone who survived it to someone in the middle of it.
New parenthood — Week 2 with a newborn. The exhaustion, the awe, the feeling that you're failing and doing everything right simultaneously.
Cancer treatment — Round 3 of chemo. What you wish someone had told you. What helped. What was a lie.
Career transition — Month 1 of leaving a stable job. The doubt that arrives at 3am. What you'd tell yourself if you could.
Divorce / separation — 6 months out. The specific shape of rebuilding.
Mental health journey — Day 100 of consistent therapy. What shifted.
Fitness / physical goal — Week 8 of marathon training. The wall. What gets you through it.
Immigration / relocation — Year 1 in a new country or city. What you didn't expect. What surprised you.

Why It's Different

Every other vault type is about personal time — your past self speaking to your future self, or to someone you know.

Journey is about shared human time — strangers connected not by knowing each other but by living through the same thing at the same milestone. The community dimension isn't social (no profiles, no followers, no feeds) — it's temporal. You're connected by where you are in a journey, not who you are in the world.

This is DandyLine's answer to the community question: not a feed, not a forum — a temporal relay.

Full Settings Specification (For Deep Build)

Milestone type	Day-based (Day 1, Day 30, Day 100) / Week-based / Month-based / Year-based / Custom event marker ("First therapy session," "Left the hospital," "Said yes")
Journey category	Sobriety · Grief · New parenthood · Career transition · Health/illness recovery · Fitness goal · Mental health journey · Immigration/relocation · Divorce/separation · Education · Custom (user-defined)
Your milestone marker	The specific point you're planting from — e.g., "I am at Day 30 of sobriety." This is the milestone others must reach to receive your seed.
Identity setting	Anonymous (name hidden, seed attributed only to "someone at Day 30") / First name only / Full identity with optional profile link
Tone tag	What you want your seed to feel like: Honest · Encouraging · Raw · Celebratory · Reflective · Warning · Tender · Practical
Media format	Voice note (recommended for authenticity) / Written / Photo / Video / Bundle
Community access	Open — anyone on this journey receives it when they hit the milestone. Invite group — only people in your designated circle (e.g., a specific AA group). Private receiver — you receive others' seeds at this milestone but don't contribute one yourself.
Delivery method — LOCKED	Trickle delivery. Seeds do not all arrive at once when someone hits a milestone. They arrive gradually at randomized intervals over a window of time (suggested: 3–5 seeds over 1–4 weeks). Each arrival feels like someone just thought of you — even if the seed was planted years ago. Time as the medium applied to the delivery itself. Low seed volume is invisible: a pool of 2 seeds feels as meaningful as a pool of 20 because the spacing is randomized either way. Re-engagement is earned — people return to the app because something might still be coming.
Verification — LOCKED	Honor system. No verification. You self-report your milestone. There is no audience to perform for — seeds arrive privately. Nobody fakes a milestone to receive a stranger's voice note. The trust is the design.
Bloom window	How long after hitting the milestone the seed remains visible: 24 hours only · 1 week · 30 days · Always accessible. Creates scarcity vs. permanence choice.
Milestone range	Does your seed appear at exactly Day 30, or also Day 28–32? Fuzzy matching option for journeys where milestones are approximate.
Seed curation	At popular milestones (Day 30 sobriety, for example), there may be hundreds of seeds. Curation options: Chronological · Most-received (if recipients can signal resonance) · Random · DandyLine-curated selection
Re-seed	Can you plant a new seed at the same milestone later (e.g., you hit Day 30 again after a relapse)? Options: replace, add alongside, or plant as a separate journey.
Journey completion	Optional: mark a journey as complete. Your seeds remain in the archive but you're no longer "on" this path. Celebration bloom sent to you.

Story Example — Journey Vault · Grief · Day 365

"Day 365. You carried it a whole year."

Two years ago, someone hit Day 365 of grief — one year since losing the person they loved most. They recorded a voice note that night. Not advice. Not comfort. Just what it actually felt like to be standing at Day 365: the strange guilt of having survived it, the way the world expected them to be better by now, the moment they realized they weren't going to stop missing them — they were just going to get better at carrying it.

They planted it for everyone who would ever reach that day.

When you hit Day 365, that voice note doesn't arrive all at once. It arrives a few days after the milestone, when you've started to exhale. Then another seed arrives a week later — someone else who made it. Then one more, ten days after that. Each one feels like it just came. Each one feels like it was meant for you. Because it was.

Nobody verified that you lost someone. Nobody checked a database. You said you were here, and DandyLine believed you — because who would come here if they didn't need to?

Design & Privacy Principles for Journey

The Journey vault sits at the intersection of DandyLine's deepest privacy commitment and its most social concept. The solution is temporal community without social infrastructure:

No profiles visible to strangers. No follower counts. No likes.
Seeds are attributed by milestone, not by identity (unless the planter opts into identity disclosure).
Resonance signals (if any) should be private — only the planter sees how many people their seed reached. Never public.
The connection is the milestone. The community is the journey. Neither requires social identity.

08

Roots

The place-anchored community vault — for locations that hold more than one person's story.

Roots

A Roots vault is anchored to a place, not a person. When you arrive, you're invited in. When you contribute, you become part of the living record of somewhere that matters.

Deep Teal Place-Anchored Community Geofenced

What makes Roots its own vault type

The jar belongs to a place, not a person.

Every other vault type is planted by a person for a person — even Grove, where multiple people plant, is still organized around contributor relationships. Roots is organized around a location. The place is the container. Anyone who arrives can join. The owner sets the rules for how open or protected the jar is.

The distinction from Location-Locked vaults (#06): A location-locked vault is sealed until you physically arrive — the location is a trigger for opening. A Roots vault is different: the location is the vault's identity. The jar lives at the place. You don't unlock it by arriving — you join it.

The distinction from Grove: Grove is organized around a shared relationship (family, friends, a couple). Roots is organized around a shared place. You might not know anyone else who has planted in a Roots vault — you're connected by the location, not by a relationship.

A Roots vault at Starlight Lake Cove might have contributions from four generations of the same family, a stranger who camped there once and left a voice note, and a child who hasn't been born yet when the first seed is planted. The place holds all of it.

Wide, low, and grounded — the Roots jar sits like something that has always been there. Where the Grove jar is a mason jar you'd pass around a table, the Roots jar is the crock you'd find half-buried at the base of an old tree. It belongs to the earth. It isn't carried — it stays.

A Roots vault is how a place accumulates memory over time. Seeds are planted not because of a relationship or a milestone, but because of presence — you were here, and something happened, and now the place holds it. Anyone who arrives later can feel the weight of all those moments, even from people they've never met.

Color: Deep Teal (#4A8A85) — river water, lake stone, the color of somewhere that has been there longer than you. Grounded and alive.

Dot language: Five dots converging from different positions toward the center — representing people arriving at a place from different directions. Not side-by-side like Grove. Not ascending like Journey. Converging, the way people gather at somewhere that calls them back.

Jar Shape

Wide and squat — a ceramic crock, the widest and lowest of all the vault shapes. Flared slightly at the rim. Heavier-looking than the others. It doesn't reach up — it settles in.

What "Roots" means in the DandyLine system

Roots is also a navigation feature — the map of all location-tagged seeds across a user's garden. The Roots vault is the deepest expression of that feature: a jar that doesn't just remember where something happened, but lives there.

Use cases — when Roots is the right vault

Family property or land — a lake house, a family farm, a grandparent's backyard. Generations plant here. The jar stays at the place.
A meaningful public location — a park where someone got engaged, a street corner where a community gathering happened, a hiking trailhead with shared history.
A community memorial — a place where something happened. Contributions from people who were there, people who came later, people who heard the story.
A seasonal gathering place — the beach where the same group returns every summer. New seeds each year. The vault grows with the place.
A personal sacred spot — your spot. Private Roots vault. Only you can see it. GPS-locked — seeds can only be planted while you're there. A living journal of every time you returned.

Anchor type	GPS coordinates / named place. Set by the vault creator at time of creation. Can include a radius (tight: 50m, loose: 500m, area: neighborhood/park).
Geofence trigger	When a person with DandyLine enters the geofence radius, they receive an arrival notification — "Our roots run deep here. Want to garden?" — if vault discovery is set to Open or Discoverable.
Discovery mode	Open — anyone who arrives gets the notification and can see the vault. Discoverable — anyone can see the vault name, contributor count, and seed count, but must request to join. Invite-only — invisible to strangers; only people who have been directly invited know it exists.
Join access	Open — arrive and join instantly. Request to join — must be approved by the Owner or a Gardener. Invite-only — can only join via direct invite link from Owner/Gardener.
Contribution rules	Open mode — contribute from anywhere, any time. Soft location — encouraged to be at the location, but not enforced. Hard location (GPS-verified) — GPS must confirm you are within the vault's radius to contribute. Only media captured at this location (live capture or EXIF-verified) is accepted. No imports from other locations allowed.
Media provenance	Every seed displays where its location came from: Captured here (GPS live at time of capture), Taken here (EXIF confirms location), or Dedicated here (manually placed — memory is about this place, not necessarily from it).
Bloom triggers	Standard triggers available (date, age, event). Plus: Arrival trigger — the seed only blooms for a recipient when they physically arrive at the location. The memory waits for them to return.
Roles	Owner — created the vault, sets all rules, can transfer ownership. Gardener — can approve join requests, invite others, contribute. Contributor — can plant seeds. Visitor — can view open seeds but cannot plant.
Seed visibility	Open seeds — visible to all members. Private seeds — visible only to specific recipients or Gardeners. Time-locked seeds — sealed until a trigger fires; members can see that a seed exists and who planted it, but not its contents.
Archive mode	A Roots vault can be set to Archive — no new contributions accepted, but all existing seeds remain accessible to current members forever. For places that no longer exist, or after a major life event.

Story Example — Roots Vault · Starlight Lake Cove · Multi-generational · Open to family

"Our roots run deep here. Want to garden?"

Grandpa bought the Cove when he was thirty-four years old, with money he'd saved for six years. He told his wife he wanted somewhere that would belong to the family forever — not a house with a mortgage, just a piece of water and trees that nobody could take back.

The Roots vault was created the summer his granddaughter got the notification while unloading the car: "Our roots run deep here. Want to garden?" She thought it was funny. She joined. She planted a voice note right there on the gravel beach, narrating the sound of her dad arguing with the boat engine.

That was four summers ago. The vault has 61 seeds now. Some opened the day they were planted — a photo of the toddlers jumping off the pier, arms out like wings, taken in 2022. Grandpa's voice note from three summers ago is still sealed — he set it to bloom on his 80th birthday, which is two years away. Nobody knows what it says. Everyone knows it's there.

Under the oak tree at the water's edge, two dogs are buried. There are seeds about them — a photo from the last good summer, a voice note recorded the week after. Hard location mode is on for this vault. Every seed in it was captured within 200 meters of the water. The contribution rules say: if you're here, you can plant. If you're not here, you can't.

Twenty years from now, when someone new to the family arrives at the Cove for the first time, their phone will notice where they are. A quiet notification: "Our roots run deep here. Want to garden?" They'll join. They'll see 61 seeds — some open, some still waiting, all of them from this exact patch of earth. They'll understand, before anyone has to tell them, what this place means.

Design & Privacy Principles for Roots

The Roots vault sits at the intersection of community and privacy — it can be open to strangers or completely invisible. The principles that govern it:

The arrival notification is an invitation, never a demand. It can always be dismissed. Arriving at a location never automatically adds someone to a vault.
Discovery mode, join access, and contribution rules are three separate settings. A vault can be discoverable (everyone sees it) but invite-only to join. Open to join but hard-location for contributions.
Media provenance is always labeled — captured here, taken here, dedicated here — so the nature of each seed's relationship to the place is always transparent.
A fully private Roots vault (invite-only discovery, invite-only join) is indistinguishable from any other vault to outsiders. The geofence notification only fires for people who have been directly invited.
The vault's GPS coordinates are never exposed to members — only the vault name and radius description. This prevents exact location sharing for sensitive places.