The product problem
Before Gear Planner, I planned trips with a mix of notes, spreadsheets, route tools, and chat messages. It worked until more people joined and nobody had quite the same picture.
I wanted one place where a person could keep a reusable gear inventory, assemble a trip, invite others, and see what the group was actually carrying.
The decisions that shaped it
I started with gear, not trips. You build an inventory once and reuse it. A trip adds the people, route, shared items, and packing status around that inventory.
Maps and weight totals stay inside the planning flow. They answer practical questions without sending people to a separate dashboard.
- Create gear once, then reuse it across trips.
- Make personal and shared packing responsibilities visible.
- Connect route context and weight without overwhelming the checklist.
- Keep the product usable from the first item to a fully collaborative plan.
Built as a complete product
I built the product end to end, including the data model, responsive interface, sign-in, collaboration, mapping, payments, and deployment.
I enjoy that range. The interface matters, but so do the unglamorous parts that make a product reliable enough for other people to use.