EternalJournal.life VS https://alanaknows.com/

EternalJournal.life's answer

The Eternal Journal is one HTML file. Not an app with an offline mode, a single self-contained file you open in a browser, with no dependencies, no network calls, and no server behind it. There is no account to create, because there is nothing to create it on.

• Everything you write is encrypted in your browser with AES-256-GCM and a PBKDF2-derived key. The passphrase never leaves your device, which means we cannot read your entries, cannot reset your password, and cannot recover anything. If you lose the passphrase, the writing is gone. That isn't a gap in the product; it's the only honest version of "private."

• The writing surface is deliberately narrow. The cursor stays centred on screen and past words fade toward the edges. No word count, no formatting toolbar, no streak counter, no AI finishing your sentences, no sharing. The file ships unminified, with SHA-256 checksums for every file in the download, so you can read the whole thing before you trust it.

• And every purchase includes two copies: one to keep, one untouched copy to give away.

EternalJournal.life's answer

Most journalling apps are subscriptions with a server in the middle. Your entries sit in someone's cloud, your access depends on a company staying solvent, and the writing surface fills up with prompts, streaks, mood graphs and AI suggestions. That's a reasonable product, it just isn't a private notebook.

The Eternal Journal is $24 once. No subscription, no tiers, no feature held back for a second paywall. It runs on up to three of your own devices, works after the first load with no connection at all, and will still open in ten years because it's an HTML file, not a service. There's a 30-day no-questions refund and a working demo you can try before paying.

Two honest trade-offs, so nobody buys the wrong thing: there is no cloud sync between devices. Backup is an encrypted export file you save where you like, and there is no passphrase recovery. If you want a journal that follows you seamlessly across phones and can be restored by support, buy one of those instead. If you want a place where you can write something you never intend anyone else to read, this is built for exactly that.

EternalJournal.life's answer

People who want to write honestly and have realised that most software makes that harder.

Concretely, that's four overlapping groups:

• Writers and long-time diarists who want a blank, quiet surface and no engagement mechanics.

• Privacy-minded people, anyone who has read a terms-of-service page and thought better of it, and who understands what client-side encryption actually buys them.

• People in therapy who journal between sessions, and the therapists, clinicians and practice managers who recommend it. The download includes a short briefing on clinical use, and site licences are available for clinics and schools. People leaving subscription software, who'd rather own one file forever than rent a notebook monthly.

• They tend to be technically literate enough to open an HTML file and keep a backup, and old-fashioned enough to want a tool that asks nothing of them.

EternalJournal.life's answer

The Eternal Journal is made by Meanwhile, a two-person studio in Amsterdam (Twan Janssen and Petur van Sluis) registered in the Netherlands as a vennootschap onder firma. No venture capital, no growth target, no investor deck.

Twan trained as a painter in Arnhem and has been exhibiting since the early 1990s, alongside work in fashion, teaching, curating and city-scale literary installations. The journal began the way most of that work does: a question that wouldn't leave. Where can a person write something they never want anyone else to see? The galleries had no answer, and neither did the apps: every one of them wanted an account, a server, a subscription, or a share button.

So he learned enough code to write one himself, in a single HTML file, with the same care he'd give a painting he didn't intend to sell. Petur reads everything before it ships and keeps the studio honest about what's finished and what only looks finished.

Sold once, owned forever, never asks the internet for permission. If that keeps it a small business, that's the design, not the compromise.

EternalJournal.life's answer

The application is deliberately dependency-free. No framework, no build step, no bundler, no analytics:

• Vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript in one self-contained, unminified file
• Web Crypto API - AES-256-GCM encryption with PBKDF2 key derivation, entirely client-side
• IndexedDB for encrypted local storage, with localStorage as a fallback
• Storage API for persistent-storage requests, with the browser's actual answer surfaced to the user rather than assumed
• Export/import as a single encrypted JSON file, for backup and for moving between machines
• Paddle as merchant of record for checkout, VAT and invoicing. No card details ever reach us
• SHA-256 checksums published for every file in the release

EternalJournal.life's answer

We don't know, and that's the product working as designed.

• The Eternal Journal has no accounts, no telemetry and no server. Once the file is downloaded, we have no visibility into who is using it or what they write.

• What we can say about who buys it: individual writers and diarists; people in therapy journalling between sessions; privacy-conscious professionals who need a place to think that isn't synced anywhere; and therapists, clinics and schools, for whom site licences are available on request.

• If a customer ever wants to be named here, they'll have to tell us themselves. We have no way of finding out.