Case Study · Our Own Product

papierpilot: the app we needed ourselves.

Starting point

Anyone who gets a fine notice, a payment reminder or a tax assessment knows the feeling: officialese you have to read twice, and a deadline buried somewhere in the small print. We wanted to see whether an app could help, one that photographs letters, translates them into plain language and keeps deadlines in view as reminders.

Just as important was the second question: can we, as an agency, not only build websites for clients but carry a product of our own, from the first idea through to the App Store listing. papierpilot is the answer.

Concept & Design

The core of the concept was trust before feature list. Anyone photographing a fine notice doesn't want that data landing on someone else's server. That's why the entire analysis runs on the device, with no login and no tracking.

The freemium model with 5 free analyses per month lets anyone try out whether the app helps in daily life, without ever having to create an account.

Build

We built papierpilot as a native iOS app: photo capture, text recognition and analysis all run entirely on the device, an encrypted vault holds the captured documents, and a deadline system notes recognised dates as reminders. No server ever sees the original photos.

Live Operation

papierpilot has been live in the App Store since 21 July 2026. Updates run through the regular App Store pipeline, more on that at papierpilot.io. Anyone needing more than the free 5 analyses a month can buy more; everything else stays as it was on day one: on the device, no account.

What we take from it

Having a product of our own forces us to apply the same standards we recommend to clients: data minimisation, clear user guidance, a clean store listing, with no client buffer in between. What works in papierpilot, we test on ourselves first.