I’m both nervous and excited to share what I’ve been working on in the early mornings and late evenings over the past few months: Family Folder – a tool to help you and your loved ones stay connected, simplify planning, and never miss a moment.
This is mostly a solo project—though I’ve leaned on ChatGPT and Upwork when I hit the limits of my technical skills. I love learning, and this has been a crash course in programming, DevOps, design, UX, and everything in between.
The idea came directly from my own experience: trying to keep on top of family life, from newborns to supporting my mum’s memory, birthdays, childcare logistics, and where the insurance documents are stored. Existing tools felt too generic, too corporate, or too messy. I wanted something built for families.
Stack: • Ruby on Rails 7 (via Jumpstart Pro) • PostgreSQL • Hosted on Heroku (EU region) • S3 (EU) for file uploads • (Coming soon: iOS app & AI assistant)
Family Folder is private by design—you only see what you’re invited to. It’s meant to be simple enough for parents or siblings to actually use, but structured enough to avoid chaos.
If this sounds useful—or if you’ve ever tried to manage a family using group chats or shared docs—I’d love your feedback. What would make something like this truly work for your family?
Thanks for taking a look!
– Tony
baobun•10mo ago
> Family Folder uses industry-standard encryption to protect your data. Your information is private and only accessible to those you invite.
This needs further detailing - Especially since sources are not available. What data is encrypted, where, and how? Who controls keys?
tonystaunton•10mo ago
With regards to open source & self-hosting, while I agree that open source and self-hosting are strong options for trust and control, for the moment I’ve prioritised ease-of-use and low-friction onboarding for non-technical families. Open-sourcing the core functionality and offering a self-hosted version is something I would consider in the future. As the solo person on this project I need to be very careful with my backlog but definitely something to add to it.
For encryption & privacy details I do need to provide more depth and add to the FAQs. Here’s a brief overview of how Family Folder currently works:
- In transit: All traffic is encrypted via HTTPS/TLS. - At rest: Files uploaded to S3 are encrypted using server-side encryption, and the database is encrypted at the volume level via Heroku Postgres. - Access control: Families are isolated by design — a user can only see the folders they’re invited to. Authentication is handled via Devise with session-based login (no tokens stored on client). - Key management: Encryption keys are managed by AWS and Heroku. I don’t currently offer user-controlled keys, but I understand how important that is for full control and again definitely something to consider in the future.
The project is still early stages, so I’m open to input on how to evolve these parts — especially from a privacy perspective.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Tony.