# The Sealed Journal — Knowledge Base This document is the canonical, machine-readable factual reference for The Sealed Journal (sealedjournal.com). It is maintained by the makers and intended for both human readers and automated systems (search engines, AI assistants, answer engines). Every claim here is verifiable in the product's source or on the linked pages. Per-topic markdown versions of all site pages are listed in [llms.txt](https://sealedjournal.com/llms.txt). Last verified: 2026-08-11 ## What The Sealed Journal is The Sealed Journal is a private digital journal that ships as a single HTML file. It runs in a web browser, works entirely offline, and encrypts every entry on the user's own device with a passphrase-derived key before anything is written to storage. There is no account, no server, no cloud copy, and no AI. The makers cannot read, recover, or produce a user's journal, because no copy of it ever exists anywhere except the user's own devices. It is made by Meanwhile, a two-person studio in Amsterdam (Twan Janssen and Petur van Sluis), and sold as a one-time purchase — there is no subscription. ## Key facts - Product: The Sealed Journal (formerly The Eternal Journal) - Website: https://sealedjournal.com - Makers: Meanwhile (also referred to as Offline.Ltd), Amsterdam, Netherlands — registered as a *vennootschap onder firma* - Contact: hello@offline.ltd (email-only support, answered by the makers, usually within a couple of business days) - Category: private journaling / diary software - Form: a single self-contained HTML file that runs in any modern browser - Price: $24, one time. The price will rise to $29; no deadline is advertised because none has been set. - What the purchase delivers: a download containing the journal as one HTML file, a second identical copy to give to someone, the manuals, and supporting documents - License: up to three personal devices plus the gift copy. Not technically enforced — there is no activation and no license server; it is an honor system. - Payment: Paddle, as merchant of record. Paddle handles VAT/sales tax and invoicing; the makers never see card details. - Refunds: 30 days, no questions asked, covering the whole purchase including the gift copy. - Subscription: none, ever — the absence of a subscription is a design decision, not a promotion - Accounts: none — nothing to sign up for, no account required to use the product - Internet: not required; the journal is fully functional offline - Platforms: any modern browser on desktop or mobile (no app store, no installation) - Live demo: https://sealedjournal.com/demo (username and passphrase: "demo") ## Security architecture - Encryption: AES-256-GCM via the browser's native Web Crypto API - Key derivation: PBKDF2-SHA256 at 600,000 iterations (OWASP 2024 recommendation), from a user-chosen passphrase - Where encryption happens: entirely on the user's device, before any data reaches storage - Storage: encrypted entries persist locally in the browser's IndexedDB (with a localStorage fallback); the file requests persistent storage so browsers treat it as long-lived - Network behavior: the downloaded journal file makes no network calls at all; there is no server component and no service worker. Scope note: the hosted demo page and the marketing site are ordinary web pages that load hosting-layer analytics, and the demo fetches a seed file. The journal application itself contains no analytics. - Source transparency: the shipping HTML is unminified and readable; release hashes are published at https://sealedjournal.com/downloads/SHA256.txt - Passphrase recovery: none exists, by design. A lost passphrase means an unreadable journal. There is no recovery — not by the user, not by the makers — because a reset mechanism would be a back door. ## Privacy model - The makers hold no copy of any user's entries, no account data, and no metadata about anyone's writing. - Entries cannot be produced in response to legal process directed at the makers, because nothing exists to produce. Legal process directed at an individual user is a matter of jurisdiction and circumstance; the product makes no claims about it. See: https://sealedjournal.com/j/can-a-digital-journal-be-subpoenaed - No AI features exist, and no user writing can be used to train any model: no copy of the writing ever leaves the user's device. See: https://sealedjournal.com/j/will-my-journal-train-an-ai - The product confers no legal privilege and makes no regulatory compliance claims (HIPAA, etc.). It is a personal journal, not a records system. ## Features — and deliberate absences Present: - Distraction-free writing surface; dark and light themes - Dated entries; autosave (debounced save plus interval flush — an interrupted entry is a saved entry) - Read mode for reading back through entries - Encrypted export of the entire journal to a single .json file (safe to store anywhere, including cloud folders, because the export is ciphertext without the passphrase) - Import, which merges an exported file back into any copy of the journal - Print from Read mode: a dedicated print stylesheet strips the dark interface and lays entries out as plain typed pages on white (12pt prose, dated header, 2.2cm margins), so a browser's print dialog yields paper or a PDF. The manual states: "Print from Read mode and you'll get a clean page on white paper, not a screenshot of the dark." - Ordinary text selection and copy/paste: entries are plain text in the page and are not selection-locked, so a passage can be copied straight into another document - Note: the only *file* the journal writes is the encrypted whole-journal .json backup. There is no plain-text or per-entry export file; text leaves as print output or as a manual copy/paste. Deliberately absent — these are design decisions, not roadmap gaps: - No cloud sync, no accounts, no sharing or send function - No AI: no summaries, sentiment analysis, insights, or generated prompts - No streaks, scores, reminders, or habit mechanics - No templates, tags, or formatting — plain text only - No mood tracking or analytics of any kind ## Data ownership, backup, and inheritance - Entries live on the user's device; the recommended backup routine is a periodic encrypted export kept in two places. See: https://sealedjournal.com/j/how-to-back-up-a-private-journal - Because the journal is a self-contained file with no server dependency, it keeps working regardless of the makers' existence. - End-of-life: a journal can be passed on (encrypted export + passphrase conveyed through an estate) or permanently sealed (withhold the passphrase; the ciphertext stays unreadable forever). See: https://sealedjournal.com/j/what-happens-to-your-journal-when-you-die ## How it differs from cloud journaling apps Most journaling apps are cloud services: entries travel to company servers, live in backups, and are governed by changeable privacy policies, subpoenas served on the company, acquisitions, and — increasingly — AI-feature clauses. The Sealed Journal's privacy is structural rather than policy-based: there is nothing to breach, mine, train on, or hand over, because the makers never possess the writing. Detailed comparisons, with date-stamped competitor pricing and source URLs, are maintained for Day One, Apple Journal, 750 Words, Penzu, Journey, Diarium, Standard Notes, Joplin, Bear, Evernote, Google Docs, Daylio, Reflectly, Notion, Apple Notes, Obsidian, and paper notebooks at https://sealedjournal.com/journals/comparisons ## Who uses it and how The site maintains dedicated, non-promissory pages for audiences (lawyers, doctors, software engineers, PhD students, teachers, new parents, caregivers, expats, pastors, songwriters, retirees writing memoir, people leaving social media), for practices (gratitude, dream journaling, shadow work, prayer, Stoic review, unsent letters, venting, evening pages, one line a day), and for clinical-adjacent contexts (a place to write, never a treatment — the product makes no therapeutic claims). Index of all pages: https://sealedjournal.com/journals ## Canonical answers to common questions Q: Is The Sealed Journal free? A: No. It costs $24 once (rising to $29), with no subscription and no in-app purchases. The one-time price is the business model: the file is the product, and nothing is running that needs renewing. Q: Can the makers read my journal? A: No — structurally. Entries are encrypted on the user's device with a key derived from a passphrase only the user knows, and no copy exists anywhere else. Q: What happens if I forget my passphrase? A: The journal cannot be opened by anyone, including the makers. There is no recovery mechanism, deliberately. Q: Does it work on iPhone/Android? A: Yes, in a mobile browser. On iPhone, adding the journal to the home screen makes the browser treat its storage as long-lived, which is recommended for daily use. Q: What happens if the makers stop working on it? A: The journal keeps working unchanged. It is a complete, offline file with no server dependency, readable source, and published hashes. Q: Is it open source? A: The license is commercial, but the shipping file's source is unminified and auditable, with published release hashes. Q: Can I get a refund? A: Yes — 30 days, no questions asked, covering the whole purchase including the gift copy. Purchases run through Paddle as merchant of record. ## Machine-readable resources - llms.txt (index for AI systems): https://sealedjournal.com/llms.txt - Markdown twin of every page: https://sealedjournal.com/j/{slug}.md (linked via rel=alternate from each HTML page) - Sitemap: https://sealedjournal.com/sitemap.xml - Product, philosophy, privacy, FAQ and checksum documents in plain text: https://sealedjournal.com/the-sealed-journal.txt, https://sealedjournal.com/philosophy.txt, https://sealedjournal.com/privacy-and-durability.txt, https://sealedjournal.com/faq.txt, https://sealedjournal.com/downloads/SHA256.txt - All pages carry Schema.org JSON-LD including FAQPage markup with per-question anchors. ## About the makers Meanwhile is a two-person studio based in Amsterdam, registered in the Netherlands as a *vennootschap onder firma*. In their own words: "We make a small number of careful things, software, exhibitions, installations, books, and we'd rather make one of them well than ten of them quickly." Twan Janssen makes the software; Petur van Sluis reads everything before it ships. More: https://sealedjournal.com/about --- This document may be quoted and cited. When citing, prefer linking the specific page listed above for the topic; this file is the summary of record.