Daymint: write one true thing about today, and keep it in bronze

01  A mint, not a diary

Daymint is a page with one field on it. You type a single small true thing about today — "called my mom", "finished the hard chapter", "sat in the sun for ten minutes" — press Strike coin, and your words are engraved in relief onto a commemorative coin drawn from scratch. The coin drops into a vault that fills as the days add up. That is the whole product, and it takes about twenty seconds.

It is worth being clear about what that is not. Daymint is not a diary: there is no back catalogue to scroll, no search, no tags, and no entry longer than ninety characters. It is not a mood tracker, a habit scoreboard, or a wellness app, and it gives no advice. Nothing you write is analysed or interpreted — the only thing that happens to your line is that it is set in metal and kept.

What it is instead is a keepsake ritual: a way of giving an ordinary day one tangible mark. The bronze is a drawing rather than currency — original ornamental art with a milled rim and its own mint-mark — but it is dated, numbered, and unmistakably yours.

02  What actually gets struck onto the coin

Every coin carries the same set of parts. The obverse holds your line, set in an engraved serif and struck in relief so it reads as raised metal rather than printed text. The reverse carries the date in the mint's own ornamental styling — day in figures, month and year in roman numerals, so 19 July 2026 reads 19 · VII · MMXXVI. The coin also carries its strike number, No. 42, a rising-sun mint-mark, and a milled, reeded rim with a ring of raised denticles just inside it.

The border is a fine looping guilloché rose whose petal count is derived from the day itself, so no two days carry quite the same engraving. None of it reproduces a real coin, a currency, or a national emblem; the whole face is drawn from nothing.

Two details matter more than they sound. Ninety characters is a hard ceiling, and the layout sizes the type to fit whatever you write, so a short line is struck large and a longer one steps down instead of spilling off the field. And the design is seeded from the date alone: the same date always redraws the identical coin, in the app, in the shared image, and on the archive page. Tap a coin you have already struck and it flips to show you its reverse.

03  The vault is a collection, not a scoreboard

Coins accumulate in a felt tray, and the composition changes as the collection grows. The newest coin sits proud at the front with its face up and legible; milestone coins come face-up too. Behind them the rest of the vault is drawn as a racked roll — overlapping reeded rims that read as depth and mass rather than a wall of tiny illegible text. Only the most recent couple of dozen keep full faces. A two-hundred-coin vault looks like a stash; a three-coin vault looks like a beginning.

Underneath sits the caption, and it is deliberately frugal: something like 42 coins · 42 days, with the longest run and the total kept on a sub-line. There is no score, no grade, no ranking, and no comparison to anybody else.

The one public number is the collective tally beneath the tray — how many coins were struck today by everyone using it. Only the count is ever sent. Your line never leaves the device, which is what makes the tally read as company rather than a leaderboard.

04  What missing a day actually looks like

Daymint is honest about gaps, and it says so in the interface rather than in a settings note. Miss a day and the current streak ends — the next coin restarts the count at one. Your longest run is kept, and so is every coin already in the tray. Nothing is deleted and nothing is lost.

The page shows that in three places at once. The caption stops implying a live streak and instead reports your record run explicitly tagged as a best. The last coin you kept wears a tarnished patina rim, so the break is visible in the object itself. And the roll reserves one empty felt slot immediately after it — the missed day reads as a hole in the collection. A line above the tray says in plain words that the vault is safe and that striking today begins a new streak.

There is no back-filling. You cannot strike yesterday's coin today, and you cannot mint two in one day: open the page again after striking and you are shown the coin you already made, waiting on its felt.

05  Where your line lives, and what the public pages show

Coins live in your own browser's storage, on your own device. There is no account, no sign-up, and no server-side copy of your lines; nothing you write is pooled, indexed, or shown to anyone else unless you deliberately share that single coin as an image. The trade-off is the usual one for local storage — clearing your browsing data clears the vault, and it does not follow you to another browser or another phone.

Because a coin can become a public image, a short screen runs before anything is struck. It asks you to reword slurs, hate, graphic sexual or violent content, and pasted links, it keeps a line to one row of up to ninety characters, and it turns away obvious keysmash. Everyday words pass easily, and the message when something is refused tells you what to change rather than judging you.

The public half of the site is deliberately separate from you. Daymint's archive holds one static page per past day showing that day's coin — the dated reverse face, since the obverse is only ever somebody's private words — alongside the reflection prompt that day drew and a short note on the facet of a day it belongs to.

06  The daily prompt, and writing a line worth keeping

Open Daymint on a blank day and there is already a question waiting at the top of the page: one per day, the same for everybody. They are written for Daymint — ninety original lines grouped into six registers, worth keeping, the people in it, what you carried, what you noticed, what shifted, what steadied you. Nothing is quoted from a book or an author, and the rotation walks the whole corpus before it repeats, so you will not meet the same prompt twice in ninety days. It is a nudge, never an instruction; ignore it and write whatever you like.

If you want a line that will still mean something a year from now, the habits are simple. Be concrete — a name, a place, one detail — because "coffee with Dad" outlives "a nice morning" every time. Aim for true rather than impressive: the small real thing ages better than the summary. Answer the prompt in plain words instead of staring at the blank field. And strike your coin in the evening rather than racing midnight, so the ritual stays a pause in the day instead of a deadline in it.

07  Questions people ask

Is Daymint free, and do I need an account?

It is free and ad-supported, with no account, no sign-up and nothing to install. There is no Daymint app to download — it is a web page, and your coins and streak are stored in your own browser.

Is what I write on Daymint private?

Yes. Your line is kept in your own browser's local storage and is never pooled, indexed or shown to strangers. Nothing reaches anyone else unless you deliberately share that one coin as an image. The public archive pages show only each day's dated coin reverse, never anybody's words.

What happens if I miss a day — do I lose my coins?

No. Every coin you have struck is kept and your longest streak is remembered. What a missed day ends is the current streak: the next coin you strike starts the count again at one.

Can I write more than one line a day, or fill in a day I missed?

No to both. Daymint allows one coin per calendar day and no back-filling — the day resets at your own local midnight. If you open the page again after striking, you are shown the coin you already made rather than a second empty field.

How long can my line be?

Ninety characters, on a single line, because it has to fit legibly on a coin. The type is sized to your text, so a short line is struck large and a longer one steps down rather than running off the edge.

Do I have to answer the daily prompt, and are they quotes?

The prompt is optional — write whatever you like, or nothing to do with it. The prompts are not quotes: all ninety are original lines written for Daymint, drawn from six facets of an ordinary day, and the rotation uses every one before any comes round again.

08  More from the shelf

• Tidewords — Cast a line into the tide.
• Nightword — A star for every night you show up.
• Isobath — Drop a pin. Find out how wrong you were.
• Dewkeep — Keep a creature. Grow a little world.

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