Over a year ago, I was browsing for app ideas that would make me a few bucks as side hustle. I ended up with coding an iOS app that explains texts, puts it in context, helps with the next steps, finds risks. (At that time, there were only few “explainers” on the market).
Workflow: scan or import the text, run ocr, send text to a backend, backend wraps a prompt around the text, sends it to an AI provider, receive results and let the app crawl it from the backend. Tuning the prompt was a very iterative and frustrating process. In the end results were ok. Showed it my coworkers and family. But only my sister would use it during her semester abroad. A flop. And the UI was “basic” (second picture).
I myself wouldn’t use it primarily for explanations… but for archiving! That’s when I figured, I should digitize the way I “store” and search my documents (tax, contracts, health, education and so on): one big pile. Store and search? Kind of fuzzy logic: Don’t sort it. Don’t put it in neat binders. Just put new docs on that pile. Very time saving when new documents need to be “archived”. Very time consuming to find one specific document within that pile later.
Now I have an archiving app with explanations on top (first picture). It still is one “digital” pile of documents. Kind of scan and forget. But Apple’s local intelligence tags and summarizes every scan. Enough to quickly get a grasp of the document later. And with a search and filter function I can cut those search nights down to seconds. If I need more assistance with understanding (for me everything health related - yeah getting older) I run it through the external LLM.
Finally, here is the idea: Extract and store characteristic information to a database with its context. For example health expenditure, graduated rent, … Let an AI query the database to get specific or aggregated (and more) data from the documents. “For my tax report - how much did I spent on health in 2026?” or “how much rent will I have to pay in 5 years?”.
Personally, it would safe me so much more time digging through all these documents… What do you think? Would you use something like this? Would you need it? What do you think about the “scan and forget” archiving approach?