The Idea Catcher
A Marie Cole Experience tool for capturing ideas before they evaporate, and pushing them past obvious.
1The one-line version
Two doors. One catches the idea in the ten seconds you have. The other takes one idea and refuses to let you stop at your first three thoughts about it.
Why this belongs in your catalog. Every tool you have built so far is a relief tool: something is heavy, the tool helps you set it down. This is your first generative tool, where the point is to make something rather than release something. Same honest voice, same interactive format, completely different mood and a completely different set of people finding you.
2The two problems it solves
Problem one: ideas evaporate
The good one arrives in the shower, in the car, at 11pm with the lights off. You have about ten seconds before it is gone, and you tell yourself you will remember. You do not.
Design consequence: the capture half must be brutally fast. One box. No categories, no tags, no title field, no decisions. Anything you ask someone to decide in that moment is what kills the capture.
Problem two: ideas die at "obvious"
People stop after the first three ideas, which are always the predictable ones. The genuinely interesting ideas live further down the list, after the easy ones are used up. Almost nobody gets there on their own, because the first few feel like enough.
Design consequence: the second half is a pushing tool, not a storage tool. Its job is to make you keep going after you want to stop.
3Door one: Catch It
Deliberately the least interesting screen in the product, which is the point.
- One text box. Placeholder: "Say it fast. You can make sense of it later."
- One button. Saves with an invisible timestamp, clears the box, ready for the next one.
- No required title, no category, no rating, no "is this a good idea?" prompt.
- Newest at the top. Tap any entry to send it to Crack It Open.
- Delete on each entry, and Copy all / Download / Email, same three zero-setup exports as The Overflow.
The timestamp is captured silently and never shown as pressure. It exists only to power the reveal in section 5.
4Door two: Crack It Open
Pick one captured idea. Then five engines you can run on it, in any order, as many times as you like. Each one writes its output back onto that idea.
Ten More
A counter and a box. "Give me ten more. They are allowed to be terrible."
The counter is the whole mechanic. Nothing unlocks creativity like a quota you are slightly annoyed by. Ideas seven through ten are where the interesting ones live, and people will not get there without being asked.
Constraint Cards
Draw a random constraint and answer it. What if it had to cost nothing? What if it had to work for exactly one person? What if you had a weekend? What if you could not use a screen? What if it had to be embarrassing?
A stuck mind is usually stuck because the space is too open. Narrowing it artificially is the fastest unsticker there is.
The Reverse
"How would you deliberately make this fail?" List the ways. Then flip each one.
People are far better at finding problems than solutions. This borrows that skill and turns it around. It also surfaces the real risks without anyone having to be brave about it.
Borrowed Eyes
How would a seven year old do this? A rival who wanted to beat you? Someone with no money? Someone with too much money? Your grandmother?
Perspective swaps break the single frame you have been staring through. Cheap to build, disproportionately effective.
So What
Three levels deep. "This matters because..." then again. Then once more.
This is the honesty engine. Ideas that cannot survive three "so whats" were never the idea, and finding that out in four minutes is a gift.
5The reveal: your idea patterns
This is the piece I would be most excited to build, and it is what makes this a Marie Cole product rather than a notes app.
Your Stress Response Mapper shows people their stress signature. Your 30-Day Journal shows trigger times. This does the same thing for ideas, using only what has already been captured, computed on the device with no AI and nothing sent anywhere.
| What it shows | How it is computed |
|---|---|
| Your recurring theme | Word and phrase frequency across all captured ideas, common words filtered out. "You have come back to this same thing eleven times in three months." |
| When your ideas arrive | The silent timestamps, bucketed by time of day. Same mechanic as the trigger-times reveal in the 30-Day Journal. |
| What you never developed | Captured ideas that were never opened in Crack It Open, oldest first. Gently, not as a scold. |
| What survived | Ideas that made it through three or more engines. The ones you actually kept choosing. |
The emotional payoff. Most people have no idea what they keep circling back to. Seeing it named is exactly the kind of quiet recognition moment every one of your tools is built around. It is also the reason someone opens this again in month three instead of forgetting it.
6Structure, matching your existing tool format
Same five-section checklist shape as the Overwhelm Off-Loader, so it drops straight into your build system.
| Section | Subtitle | Tool mounted |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Why Ideas Slip Away | You are not bad at ideas, you are bad at catching them | none |
| 2. Catching Them | Fast, ugly, unfiltered, before it is gone | catch |
| 3. Past The Obvious | Your first three ideas are everyone's first three ideas | crackOpen |
| 4. Finding The Keeper | Not every idea deserves you, and that is fine | none |
| 5. Keeping It Going | Ideas need returning to, not just having | pattern |
The honest note
This will not have the idea for you. It will not tell you which one is good, and it will not turn a thin idea into a strong one. What it does is make sure the idea survives the ten seconds after you have it, and push you past the first easy answers to what is actually underneath.
7Naming
| Option | Read | |
|---|---|---|
| The Idea Catcher | Says exactly what it does, matches your "The [thing] [doer]" pattern alongside Off-Loader, Mapper, Builder. Doors: Catch It, Crack It Open. | Recommended |
| The Spark Keeper | Warmer and more evocative, but vaguer at a glance and weaker for search. | |
| The Half-Thought | Distinctive and very on-brand for your honest voice, but nobody searches it. |
Store category: the capstone, not another shelf
Tina's reframe, and it changes the shape of the whole catalog. Because this is the first generative product, the brand should bring a person's journey full circle. The relief tools get someone unstuck. The generative tools are what they build once they are. So this category is not another shelf beside the others, it is the end of the arc: you came in carrying too much, and you leave making something.
That reframe also gives the whole store a story it did not have before. Six categories that solve problems, and one that is the reward for having solved them.
| Category name | Read | |
|---|---|---|
| Higher Ground | Builds directly on your existing Steady Ground. Tells the whole progression in two words: you came to steady yourself, you stayed to climb. Uses vocabulary the store already has, so the ladder reads without explanation. | Claude's pick |
| First Light | Dawn, which is what follows The Quiet Hours. Also exactly what an idea does when it arrives. Two meanings in one phrase, and it sounds like your brand rather than like a seminar. | |
| Ascension | The most lift of anything on the list. Carries a spiritual reading, which may be a feature or a mismatch depending on how you want the brand to read. | Tina's pick |
| Evolution | Secular, growth over time, sits closest to the word "journey". The least warm of the group. | Tina's pick |
| Becoming | Deliberate sibling to your existing Belonging. Same grammatical shape, same quiet tone, and the pair reads as intentional on the store page. | |
| Full Circle | Literally the phrase Tina used to describe the goal. Says the reframe out loud, at the cost of a little mystery. |
Status: undecided, deliberately. Tina is sitting with these. Nothing depends on the choice until the product gets built, and because this category has no products in it yet, naming it carries zero risk. Renaming an existing category is what broke the Buy Now links in August. Naming a brand new one breaks nothing.
Whichever wins, the category should hold more than one product eventually. It is the destination, so it deserves room.
This product also works on Marie Cole Does Google
Same engines, same reveal, different framing. On the Marie Cole Experience side the ideas are personal: what to make, what to change, what you keep circling in your own life. On the Marie Cole Does Google side the same tool captures business, content and marketing ideas, and the Constraint Cards and Borrowed Eyes prompts swap to a business set.
Build implication: build it once, with the prompt library and all copy held in clearly separated constants at the top of the file. Then the second brand is a re-skin and a prompt swap rather than a second build. Doing this deliberately on day one costs almost nothing. Retrofitting it later costs a rebuild.
8Build notes
- Same two-page model: a public preview page, and a hidden noindex tool page reachable only from the delivery PDF.
- $27, one-time, matching the rest of the catalog.
- Storage keys
idea_catcher_v1for the checklist,idea_catch_list_v1for captures,idea_crack_v1for engine output. Give every entry an id from day one, so a future version never has to backfill the way Overwhelm just did. - Copy all, Download and Email exports on both halves. Pure client-side, no sign-in, nothing leaves the device.
- Cross-link footer to preview pages, plus Our Story, The Honest Difference and Real Results.
- Palette: this is the first generative tool, so it should not reuse the sleep blue or stress amber. A fresh accent marks the new category.
Deliberately not in version one
Every one of these is tempting and every one of them delays launch. Cut from v1
- Folders, projects, or any organizing layer. Organizing is procrastination wearing a costume.
- Sharing or collaboration.
- AI generation of any kind. It would break the honest note and the privacy promise in one move.
- Reminders or notifications, which need a backend.
- Images or voice capture.
9Evidence you already have
The Overflow, just added to the Overwhelm Off-Loader, is a small working version of the capture half. If people use it, that is real signal for this product before you build a line of it. Worth watching once it has been live a few weeks.