Design principle. Dreams evaporate in minutes. The user is groggy at 3am, eyes half-shut. Any UI that asks them to think — pick an archetype, rate a function 1–4 — before they’ve dumped the dream will lose the dream. So Capture and Enrich are separate phases. The 3am screen asks for almost nothing. The structured fields from the paper template — Panksepp emotions, Jungian functions, archetypes, alchemical operations, colors — are filled in later, gradually, only when the user is awake and willing.
The default landing. Reverse-chronological list of dream entries. The list is the spine of the app.
Big blue + button opens Capture immediately
Each row: date, mood, title (or "Untitled"), first line, any tags already added
Three tabs at the bottom: Dreams, Daily, Insights
Tapping a row opens the detail / enrich screen
2Capture — the 3am screen
Capture
Built for the 3am, half-asleep, one-handed reality. The entire structured ask is a single mood tap.
Text field autofocused, keyboard up immediately
Dictate is the primary input expectation — voice is the killer feature
Date defaults to "Last night" (if before 11am) or "Today"
Auto-saves as they type — no Save button to fumble for
Done returns to the list. No required fields, ever.
3Dream Detail · Enrich
Detail · Enrich
Where the paper template's ~30 fields actually live. The user comes here later, when awake.
Header shows the basics — tap to edit inline
Five collapsible sections map to the PDF's groupings
Each section shows a completion dot indicator — gentle progress, never required
Synopsis lives at the bottom because it's written last, after reflection
Clinical Notes only appears if "clinician mode" is enabled in settings
4Expanded section · Symbols & Persons
Symbols section, expanded
Shows what one section looks like when tapped open. Other sections follow the same pattern: chips, swatches, segmented controls — never raw text fields when something simpler will do.
Tags for free-form lists (individuals, symbols, archetypes) — type and return to add, tap × to remove
Color palette as literal swatches; tap to toggle, long-press for a note (per the paper template's blank line beside each color)
Alchemical operation as a 4-option segmented selector with icons + labels
All optional, all auto-saved on change
5Expanded section · Feelings & Body
Feelings & Body, expanded
Same disclosure pattern. Emotion chips reveal a qualifier text field when toggled on — matches the paper template's "Seeking _____" pattern exactly.
Emotion chips (Panksepp & Biven) — tap to toggle, optional qualifier per emotion
1–4 scales as 4-dot rows — fast tap targets, no number keyboards
Pre / waking mood is the paper template's "Relate Feelings (1–4) Pre / Post"
Observation free text for ACTH, pain level, etc.
6Insights (foreshadowing v2)
Insights (v2)
The reflect phase. Surfaces patterns across many entries — once enough data accumulates to be meaningful.
All analysis runs on-device. No dream content leaves the user's iCloud.
v1 ships with simple counts and trends
Later versions could use an on-device LLM to suggest symbol tags from narrative text, or surface recurring themes the user hasn't noticed