History

2018-2019: Domestica

Homechart was originally named Domestica. Domestica’s initial development started on March 2, 2018 with an initial commit adding icons, a simple Go HTTP server, and a very basic hello world UI. The initial goals for Domestica were to replace a budget app (YNAB 4) and a cooking/shopping list app (Paprika).

The initial release of Domestica occurred on December 30, 2019 with these components:

• Budget
• Cook
• Shop

The UI… had room for improvement:

2020: Pandemic Iterations

Following the usefulness of Budget/Cook/Shop, we started to focus on adding task management. To-do apps are a dime a dozen, we wanted something that combined the things we loved like Markdown. The Plan component was added in early 2020:

In mid 2020 the UX got a bit of an overhaul:

In October of 2020 Wiki (now Notes) would be added:

We rounded out 2020 by adding Calendar:

2021: App Stores and Homechart

Domestica was available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store starting in January of 2021:

In February, we launched the Inventory component, designed to integrate with Shop for inventory management:

In May, we launched the Reward component as a way to do positive reinforcement for kids (and partners!):

In June, we became obsessed with adding square buttons:

In August, we changed the name of Domestica to Homechart and added Bookmarks–a way to add links to things on the Home dashboard:

2022: UI Rework, Health

We started focusing heavily on the UI for Homechart, with an initial iteration in January:

More iterating in March:

In May, we launched the Health component for securely tracking allergies, food sensitivies, and behaviors:

By September, most of the UI changes had finished:

Except in December, when Homechart briefly became very colorful:

2023: More UI Work, Secrets

In early 2023, we cleaned up the UI some more and added Secrets in preview–a password and secrets manager built into Homechart:

The rest of 2023 would be spent finishing Secrets and doing some work on core Homechart features like push notifications. We would also remove Homechart from the app stores due to low usage and increasing support/maintenance costs. Perhaps one day Homechart will be available there again.

2024: Minor Improvements, User Feedback

In 2024, we launched feature voting and started working on more tactical changes requested by users. Annoyances, delays, slowness, and UI quirks were the primary focus of work this year: