Why I built maple

It started with a group chat. Someone asked for that little dinner spot from last spring, and the answer was buried under three hundred messages and a screenshot nobody could find. We were all hoarding the same recommendations — in notes apps, in saved posts, in our heads — and none of it lived anywhere we could actually share. I wanted one map: the places I love, the places my friends swear by, all in a spot I could open without scrolling past a single stranger.

So I built maple around what it would never be. No public feed to perform for. No strangers wandering through your map. No live location quietly broadcasting where you are. Every pin on your map is one you chose to put there — maple will read your photo library’s date and location stamps and offer you a list, but it never adds a single place you haven’t tapped, because the places worth keeping are the ones you actually chose. And nobody sees any of it until you hand someone your code. When you do, you’re handing them the whole map, on purpose.

There’s a leaderboard, because a small amount of competition is the honest reason anyone keeps a map like this current — but no streaks and no badges. You don’t travel daily, so a streak would only ever make you feel bad about a month you spent at home. One number, one line telling you how far behind you are, and nothing else keeping score.

maple is still early, and that’s the point. I’m building it slowly and in the open, shaping it around the people who use it rather than the other way around. If a private map shared with the people you trust sounds like something you’ve been missing too, I’d love for you to come along while it’s still taking shape.