DumpDraft is open for beta: dump your thoughts, get the story

I've been quietly building something for the last while, and today I get to open the doors.

DumpDraft is now accepting beta testers. If you’ve ever left an event, a trip, a hard day, or a big meeting knowing you should write it up, and then just… didn’t because sitting down to organize it all felt impossible, this is for you. Keep reading, and then go grab a spot on the waitlist: dumpdraft.com.

Why I built it

I work conferences. I speak, I staff booths, I run community events and sessions, and afterward I’m supposed to file a clean trip report. Here’s my problem: I’m an ambivert. Events drain me. By the end of the day, when I’m finally supposed to remember every conversation and turn it into something coherent, I’ve got nothing left in the tank. The details are already gone.

So I stopped trying to write reports at the end of the day. Instead, I built an app that lets me text myself all day long. Messy little notes, a photo of a whiteboard, a quick voice memo between sessions, and then it turns that pile into a finished write-up when I’m ready.

That’s DumpDraft. Capture the moment now, in whatever half-formed shape it comes. Get the story later.

Who it’s really for

I built this for me, but the more I used it, the more I realized who it’s actually for.

If you have ADHD, if you’re autistic or somewhere on the spectrum, if you deal with executive-function stuff, memory fog, or just a brain that doesn’t do “sit down and write it all up later,” the whole app is designed around removing that friction. No blank page. No forced organizing. No penalty for capturing a thought as three words and a typo. It just holds onto everything for you and does the structuring at the end.

And here’s the thing: everyone knows someone who needs this. A partner, a kid, a colleague, a friend who’s brilliant but drowning in “I’ll remember that later.” If that’s someone in your life, please pass this along. The beta is how it gets better, and the more different brains that try it, the better it gets for all of us.

I put it to the test at Black Hat

This year I used DumpDraft to work Black Hat. I set the capture reminders to nudge me every 30 minutes, and every time it pinged, I dumped whatever was fresh: who I talked to, what mattered, a photo, a selfie, a follow-up.

At the end of the week, I generated my full trip report in under 10 minutes.

The honest caveat: I actually had to use it. The app doesn’t read your mind. But those 30-minute nudges did the heavy lifting. They turned “remember everything at day’s end” (impossible) into “capture one thing right now” (easy). That’s the whole trick.

What you get in the beta

DumpDraft isn’t just for conferences. When you start an event, you pick a Mode, and the whole app adapts to it:

• 🎪 Conference / work trip: a professional trip report

• ✈️ Travel: a warm trip journal

• 🕯️ Memory / life event: a gentle keepsake (I’ve used it for a funeral, to hold onto the moments)

• 🎉 Party / social: a fun recap

• 🗂️ Planning / project: an organized plan

• 📝 General: anything else

Here’s what’s launching in the beta:

Effortless capture

• Text yourself notes like a chat. Short and messy is perfect.

• Voice-to-text and audio memos (record your actual voice)

• Photos, files, and QR/badge scanning

• Share into DumpDraft from any app: a screenshot, a link, a photo, straight into a note

• Home-screen shortcuts and a “recovery” mode for quiet end-of-block brain-dumps

• Gentle capture reminders (the Black Hat secret weapon), in-app or push notifications

Get the story

• An instant, offline draft built from your notes

• One-tap AI write-up that turns your mess into polished prose

• Save as PDF or share the finished write-up

Find & organize (without the work)

• #tags and @people if you want them, completely optional

• Filter by type (photos/files/text), date, tag, or starred; search everything

• Select multiple notes for bulk actions

• An Overview dashboard with your momentum, a tap-able timeline, a follow-up tracker with due-time reminders, and a gentle “on this day” look-back

• Optional location tagging to remember where you were

Yours, and private

• Local-first: your notes live on your device by default

• Optional encrypted cloud sync across your devices, with a zero-knowledge private mode where not even we can read your notes

• Comfort settings built in: adjustable text size, reduced motion, a calm interface

How to join (and a little patience, please)

Head to dumpdraft.com and tap Join the beta to get on the waitlist.

We’re starting slow, on purpose. I’m approving people in small batches so I can keep an eye on things, fix what breaks, and actually respond to feedback instead of drowning in it. So if you don’t get approved the same day, please don’t be discouraged. You’re not being ignored, and you haven’t been passed over. We will get to you. It just might take a bit.

While you’re in, there’s a feedback button right in the app. Use it liberally. Tell me what’s clunky, what’s confusing, what’s missing. You’re not just testing this; you’re helping build it.

A note on cost: everything is free during the beta. Down the road, the things that genuinely cost money to run (cloud sync, storage, and the AI write-up) will become part of a Pro tier. But beta testers get all of it, free, while we figure this out together.

Come build this with me

If you’ve read this far, you probably recognized yourself, or someone you love, somewhere in here. So two asks:

1. Grab your spot: dumpdraft.com

2. Send this to one person who needs it. Seriously. That’s how it spreads to the people it was made for.

Thanks for being here at the start. Let’s build something that finally works the way our brains actually do