Not an oracle.
A mirror with structure.
Other journalling apps ask how you feel. Tinta asks where you are: it gives you 64 frames for naming a situation, lets you write down what you decide, and comes back at 30 and 90 days to ask what happened.
The I Ching has been read this way for eighteen hundred years. Xunzi wrote it down in the 3rd century BC: 善為易者不占 — those who truly know the Book do not use it to divine.
The figure is the cast 7·9·7·8·6·8: hexagram 11, Peace. Each ring is one line;the changing ones burn. Same coins, same drawing — here and in the app.
1.0 · When you need it
The question
You write down whatever is going round your head. If you ask "what is going to happen?", Tinta suggests — without stopping you — rephrasing it as "how do I act on this?". The first question has no answer; the second one does.
And a question gets cast once. It is the rule of hexagram 4, Youthful Folly: "at the first consultation I answer; asking twice and three times is importunity". Casting again until you get the answer you wanted is not consulting, it is negotiating with yourself.
2.0 · The gesture
The cast interrupts the loop
Three coins, six times. Chance predicts nothing — it does something more useful: it lifts you out of your own groove. A journal that asks what you are already asking yourself amplifies the rumination. An image you did not choose cuts it.
What comes out is a frame: a situation with a name, its tension and its way out. It does not tell you what to do. It tells you where to look.
3.0 · Every night
What changes, and only that
The changing lines are the focus: of six, rarely more than two change. That is tonight’s question. Tinta closes the day with three: two drawn from the hexagram and one fixed — what small fault of today could you repair tomorrow?
That last one is not motivational, it is technical. 無咎 wujiu — "no fault" — does not mean you did not fail: it means you have repaired it. It is this house’s unit of measure.
4.0 · At 7, 30 and 90 days
What happened
Here is what no other journal does. When you write down a decision, Tinta tells you right then when it will come back and ask — because writing down a decision is accepting an appointment.
And when it comes back, it does not ask you to rate it one to five: it offers the book’s own vocabulary for naming the outcome:
吉 good fortune, 無咎 no fault, 悔 repentance, 吝 regret, 凶 misfortune. Five outcomes, not five stars.
What Tinta will never do
Predict
Not the future, not outcomes, not other people. If that is what you are after, this is not the tool, and we would rather tell you here.
Promise health
It does not "reduce anxiety" and it replaces nobody. We give no medical, legal or financial advice.
Hide the AI
Every generated interpretation is marked as generated, with the model in plain sight. The classical texts carry their provenance.
Punish you for missing a day
No streaks in red, no badges. We count the days you showed up and the times you came back. Coming back is the practice.
The full manifesto, with the complete list and why each item is on it.
This week
24 · Return
The ancient kings, in accordance with this, on the day of the winter solstice, shut the gates of the passes from one state to another, so that the travelling merchants could not then pursue their journeys, nor the princes go on with the inspection of their states.
Each week one hexagram unfolds: its judgment on Monday, then one line a day from Tuesday to Sunday. Two minutes to read, no account needed.
Start with a question you have been chewing on for days.
You do not need to believe in anything. It takes two minutes, and the first cast asks for no account.