Point it at the VIN
Photograph the plate on the dashboard or the door jamb. The app decodes year, make, model, trim, and engine, checks the check digit, and looks up open safety recalls. Your car is in the garage in about a minute.
For iPhone. Free.
The memory layer for buying and owning a car.
Every car you go see gets its own dossier. Photos, voice notes, the VIN, the dealer's paperwork, the real out-the-door price. Then one button turns the car you chose into a permanent record: every receipt, every service, every mile. Digitize the glove box.
No ads. No subscription. No account. Your data stays on your phone.
The Garage
Own a car? Put it in your garage.
You shop for a car for a weekend. You own it for years. DriveDossier is built for the years. Point it at the VIN and the dossier starts building itself.
Find its history
Photograph the Carfax, the title, the window sticker, the inspection report, the stack in the glove box. The app reads them, extracts dates and mileage, and files each one on the car's timeline with the original image attached.
Keep the record
Every service, every receipt, every mile from here on. Reminders by miles or months. Two cars or six, one garage. When you sell, the dossier is the proof this car was cared for.
The problem
Search is solved. Memory isn't.
Finding a car takes twenty minutes. Autotrader, CarGurus, Cars.com, and AI assistants will hand you a shortlist six miles long. Then you go see the cars, and the software disappears.
Three lots into a five-car Saturday, you're standing in a parking lot with your phone in one hand and somebody else's paperwork in the other. Which one had the new tires? Which seller said the brakes were done? Did the $899 fee belong to the black car or the blue one? By evening you have twenty photographs, four videos, four packets of dealer paper that don't compare cleanly, and a headache.
After you buy, the same problem continues. Service history scatters across a glove box, a shoebox of receipts, the shop's system, a few PDFs, and a Carfax record you don't control.
The listing records what the seller claimed. The dossier records what you learned.
How it works
One car. One lifecycle. One dossier.
DriveDossier begins the moment you leave the listing behind and meet the physical car. It never lets go.
Go see the car
Field Mode is deliberately simple: camera, video, and voice. Photograph the VIN and you're set. Then capture what matters while you're standing there.
- Odometer, tires, bodywork, window sticker
- Carfax, service records, the sales worksheet
- Hold the mic: "Dealer says brakes were done last year, no invoice. Faint vibration at 65."
Let the app read the paper
The document engine reads dealer worksheets and service records, recomputes the out-the-door price, separates government charges from dealer add-ons, and flags anything that doesn't add up.
- VIN checked against the listing
- Every number stays attached to its document
- Compare candidates from evidence, not recollection
- Share a dossier with a spouse, a mechanic, or your AI
One button: I bought it
The candidate becomes your car. Nothing to re-enter. The inspection becomes the acquisition record, the odometer becomes baseline mileage, the seller's documents become page one of the car's history.
- Receipts photographed and filed
- Maintenance, mileage, manuals, reminders
- Years later: proof this was the good car
Ownership
Digitize the glove box.
The most valuable record of a car is the one its owner keeps. Most owners keep it in a shoebox. DriveDossier keeps it on your phone, organized, searchable, and ready to hand to a mechanic, an insurer, or the next buyer.
Receipts, filed
Photograph the invoice on the way out of the shop. Date, mileage, and work performed are extracted and attached to the car's timeline, with the original image kept as evidence.
Document vault
Owner's manual, title, inspection reports, warranty paperwork, the window sticker from the day you bought it. In one place, offline, and yours.
Mileage and reminders
Log the odometer. Set service reminders by miles or months. Know what was replaced three years ago before you say yes to a $3,700 estimate.
Mechanic and AI packets
Export the car's context in one bundle: history, photos, open questions. Hand it to your mechanic or ask any AI assistant "does this estimate make sense?" with the evidence attached.
Resale documentation
When it's time to sell, the same dossier becomes provenance. A documented car is worth more, and now you can prove it.
Not only cars
Under the hood, a dossier tracks an asset, not just a vehicle. Motorcycles, boats, and equipment fit the same shape.
Principles
AI reads. DriveDossier verifies and remembers. You decide.
We don't want to be your mechanic, your financial adviser, or another chatbot. The job is narrower and more useful: keep a durable, trustworthy record that belongs to you.
A missing number beats a wrong number
Multimodal AI reads messy worksheets that OCR can't. But extracted isn't verified. Deterministic code handles the deterministic questions: VIN check digits, arithmetic against the dealer's own totals, fee classification, mileage comparisons. Where confidence is low, the app says so.
Local first, yours forever
Your dossiers live on your device. No behavioral advertising, no surveillance business model, no account to create. When a remote model reads a document, the processing is transient. Your vehicle history doesn't become somebody else's database.
The intelligence changes. The dossier accumulates.
Models come and go. The record you build is portable context you can hand to whatever reasoning tool you prefer, today or in ten years. That's the point of a dossier.
Pricing
Free to shop. A one-time price to own. Never a subscription.
The moment you pay is the moment of maximum relief: the search is over and the archive begins. We don't think you should rent the history of something you already own.
Founding release
Free
Everything, for good
- Unlimited candidate dossiers
- VIN capture, photos, video, voice notes
- Paperwork reading and out-the-door pricing
- Compare, share, export to AI
- The full ownership archive, included
Download the first release and you keep every feature free forever, including ownership. Founding users never see a price tag.
Download freeAfter the founding window
$9.99
One time, at "I bought it"
- Shopping mode stays free
- Ownership archive unlocks with one purchase
- No subscription, no ads, no upsells
- Priced against a vehicle history report, not a $2.99 utility
You may use DriveDossier for days or weeks and buy a car before anyone asks you for a dollar.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
Is DriveDossier free?
Yes. It's free to download, and shopping mode stays free: unlimited candidate dossiers, VIN capture, photos, video, voice notes, paperwork reading, and comparison. Founding users who download the first release keep every feature free for good, including ownership. Later, the "I bought it" step will carry a one-time price with no subscription.
Where is my data stored?
On your iPhone. Your dossiers live locally on your device. There is no advertising, no tracking, and no account required. When a remote AI service is used to read a photographed document, the processing is transient and the result comes back to your phone.
Does it replace Carfax or a vehicle history report?
No. A vehicle history report records what outside parties reported about a car. DriveDossier records what you learned in person, including the report itself. Photograph the Carfax and it stays attached to the car's dossier alongside your own evidence.
What does the app do with dealer paperwork?
Photograph the sales worksheet and DriveDossier reads it, recomputes the out-the-door price, separates government charges from dealer-controlled fees and add-ons, and flags anything that doesn't add up. Every extracted number stays linked to the document it came from, so you can always see the evidence.
What happens when I buy the car?
One button: I bought it. The candidate becomes your car with nothing to re-enter. The pre-purchase inspection becomes the acquisition record, the odometer becomes the baseline mileage, and the seller's documents become the first pages of the car's history. From then on the dossier grows with every receipt, service, and mile.
Can I use it for a car I already own?
Yes. Open the app, choose "I own this car," and start with the VIN. Then photograph the receipts in the glove box. The dossier fills in from there.
Is DriveDossier available on Android?
Not yet. DriveDossier is an iPhone app today. Android is on the list once the core loop is proven.
Who makes DriveDossier?
DriveDossier is built by Ultra-Normal LLC, a small independent studio making tools for people who do the slow work. It began the way most of our apps do: the founder needed it, in a parking lot, on a Saturday. Questions and support: support@ultra-normal.com.
Preserve Data. Preserve Value.