Overview
Most memory-keeping apps churn because remembering is a solo chore with no audience until a book ships a year later — and gamifying the individual with streaks makes it worse. Campfire makes it multiplayer: a small circle (think old friends, 2–8 people) co-authoring the documented history of that circle. Questions come from real people instead of a robot, reactions are instant, and progress is fill-the-map — the eras and gaps in your shared story — not keep-the-streak. The annual book is the reward the group earns together, not the entry chore.
It's deliberately the opposite of a social network, and a few hard boundaries define the product as much as the features do: no public graph, no followers, no discovery, no present-tense performance feed, and the archive belongs to the circle (export is a feature, not a threat).
Features
- A live ask → answer → react loop — questions, answers, photos, and voice notes stream into the circle in real time over server-sent events.
- Answer by link, no app — a question can be answered from a plain link without logging in, which is what gets the less-online members of a circle to actually contribute.
- A weekly ember — a gentle scheduled nudge that resurfaces one prompt, run as a cron service rather than guilt-driven streak mechanics.
- Voice and photo memories — capture in the browser; media is stored and served with a membership check.
- Fill-the-map progress — every new circle seeds eras and open prompts so there are visible, fillable gaps from the first session.
Stack
Next.js 16 (App Router) and React 19 with Drizzle ORM over Railway Postgres, NextAuth magic-link sign-in, Vercel Blob for media, and server-sent events for the live loop. Deployed on Railway with a separate cron service for the weekly ember.