PRD-003: Personal Journaling¶

Field	Value
ID	PRD-003
Title	Personal Journaling
Status	Draft
Owner	Loryth Team
Created	2026-02-18

1. Problem Statement¶

Most journaling apps treat entries as unstructured text, making it impossible to track patterns in mood, habits, or well-being over time. Apps that do support structured data (mood ratings, habit checkboxes) are typically cloud-only, subscription-based, and offer limited customization. Users who journal for mental health or self-improvement want structured capture with personal insights — without giving a third party access to their most private thoughts.

Loryth's journal service combines free-form entries with structured data capture (metrics, guided flows, multiple item types), offline-first sync, and privacy controls — all self-hosted.

2. Target Personas¶

Persona	Priority	Relevance
Mindful Planner	Primary	Daily journaling with mood tracking and guided flows

3. User Stories¶

ID	Story	Priority
US-JRN-001	Create journal entries	Must
US-JRN-002	Use guided flows	Must
US-JRN-003	Track custom metrics	Must
US-JRN-004	View insights and trends	Should
US-JRN-005	Manage multiple journals	Should
US-JRN-006	Sync entries offline	Should
US-JRN-007	Control entry privacy	Must

4. Functional Requirements¶

ID	Requirement	Priority
FR-1	Create entries with multiple item types: note, measurement, rating, enum, multi_choice, ranked_choice, attachment_ref, activity_ref	Must
FR-2	EntryItem envelope with `item_type`, `schema_version`, and JSONB `payload` for extensibility	Must
FR-3	Guided flows with ordered prompts that produce structured entry items	Must
FR-4	Custom metric definitions per journal with type (numeric, rating, enum) and scale	Must
FR-5	Journal-level privacy: `private_to_user` or `space_visible`	Must
FR-6	Insight projections: metric_point, set_point, ranked_point, daily_rollup	Should
FR-7	Multiple journals per space with independent metric definitions	Should
FR-8	Offline sync via idempotent UUID-based upserts and optimistic concurrency (`revision`)	Should
FR-9	Time-range entry support via `occurred_at` and optional `occurred_until`	Must

5. Non-Functional Requirements¶

Entry creation must work offline on mobile with eventual consistency
Sync conflicts must resolve without data loss (last-write-wins with revision checking)
Insight projections must recompute incrementally, not from scratch

6. Acceptance Criteria¶

User can create entries with mixed item types (text + rating + measurement) (FR-1, FR-2)
Guided flows step through prompts and save responses as structured items (FR-3)
Custom metrics are defined per journal and tracked over time (FR-4)
Private journals are invisible to other space members (FR-5)
Insights show metric trends over configurable time ranges (FR-6)
Entries sync correctly after offline creation with no duplicates (FR-8)

7. Out of Scope¶

AI-generated journal prompts or automatic mood detection
Social sharing or public journal features
Rich text editing (entries use plain text and structured items, not WYSIWYG)
Data export to third-party journaling formats

8. Traceability¶

Artifact	Reference
Vision	Vision — personal information management
Roadmap	Release 0.2
Stories	Journal Stories

9. Open Questions¶

Should flows support conditional prompts (skip a prompt based on a previous answer)?
How should metric definitions handle retroactive changes (e.g., changing a scale from 1-5 to 1-10)?
Should journal export be a first-class feature or a plugin concern?

10. Changelog¶

Date	Change
2026-02-18	Initial version