A fixed point in a shifting situation

Coordination tools were built for companies or for individuals, never for a small group of people who have to organise themselves without a hierarchy and sometimes without liking one another. That is the blind spot Repère occupies.

The problem

About four million children in France have separated parents. Who picks the child up on Wednesday, who paid for the school canteen, who holds the health record, who signs the outing consent form: all of it is settled by text and messaging apps.

When the relationship is strained, every exchange becomes a negotiation, every oversight becomes evidence against someone, and the file that goes back to the family court judge is a pile of unverifiable screenshots. That last point is what Repère addresses first: a timestamped record neither parent can rewrite.

What the product refuses to do

The number one risk for a tool like this is to become a weapon in the conflict. Four constraints therefore bind every feature, present or future.

• No read receipts: timestamping proves sending and availability, never reading.
• No “online” status, no “last seen”.
• Complete symmetry: no feature open to one parent and not the other, no account that owns the file.
• No scores and no fault counters. Facts are recorded; interpreting them belongs to people — parents, lawyers, the judge.

Where it runs

In France, backups included, with no transfer outside the European Union. The site sets no cookie and calls no third-party service; the service uses no advertising tracker and no external analytics. For a file that holds children’s lives, technical discretion is a commitment, not an option.

Who builds it

Repère is developed in France by the studio le-lab.net, the one named at the foot of every page. The publisher’s identifying details — legal form, registered office, publication director — will be published in the legal notice before the service opens.

Where the project stands

The service is not open yet. The version and build time of the page you are reading are shown right at the bottom: this site describes a product under construction, and says so. Join the waiting list to be told when it opens — and told nothing else.

Legal notice