RigBook is out

I built it alone. No team, no investor — one phone and a lot of evenings. That’s why it took as long as it took. And that’s why this isn’t a celebration post. It’s a line in the sand: one thing is behind me, the next one starts now.

What RigBook does today

A real-time inclinometer. You see your pitch and roll while you drive. This is the main thing for me. Map apps tell you where you are. RigBook tells you how sideways you are.

An offroad trail map we build together. Anyone can add a trail they know. The more people add, the more it’s worth to everyone. That’s the whole idea.

Hiding the start and the end. When you publish a trail, you can hide where it begins and where it ends. Not every trail is for everyone, and not every place survives twenty cars showing up tomorrow. This mattered to me from day one — not as a feature, but as basic decency.

From here on I’m working on the next versions

Version 1.0 isn’t the finish line, it’s day one. Until now every hour went into getting the app out at all. That’s done. From today I’m sitting on the next version.

Two things at once.

Protected areas on the map. So you can see where you have no business driving. I’m not doing this just for Slovakia — I’m pulling data for the whole EU and part of the Balkans. It’s a pile of work nobody sees until it works. But this is exactly the kind of thing that separates an app that just lets you go somewhere from an app that tells you whether you should be there at all.

Marking screw-ups on the trail. You drop a pin where something went wrong — “this is where my diff let go”, “this is where I tore a sidewall”, “this is where I got winched out”. Other people see it before they get there. And you end up with a map of your own damage, which is honestly half the fun.

Only once those two are done do I move on. The order looks like this:

• Garage and service log. You add your vehicle and keep a service log for it — what you changed, when, what it cost. I don’t want you keeping that in a notebook in the glovebox.
• Trail difficulty ratings.
• Then route planning, achievements, CarPlay.

I’m not promising dates. I’m promising I keep working on it, and that you’ll hear when something’s done.

About paid features

The app is free, and I want what’s in it today to stay usable without paying. Some of the more advanced things I’m building will sit behind a paid account — otherwise I can’t keep this going on my own. I don’t have the pricing figured out yet, or exactly what lands where. When I do, I’ll write it here plainly, not bury it in a changelog.

What you can do now

Download it. Add a trail you know. If something’s broken or missing, write to me — I read everything, and most of what’s on the roadmap got there exactly that way.

See you out there.