Rewind
For your hardest days. A letter Beacon writes that reminds you of wins, of when you coped, of who your kid is on the good days.
When to use this
Use Rewind in the middle of a bad day, not at the end of a good month. Playback is the monthly retrospective; Rewind is the short read for the moment you forgot why you started. Beacon pulls from your wins, your steady journal days, your kid's small breakthroughs, and writes you a letter. Read it once. Keep it for the next bad day. Generate a new one when this one stops landing.
How it works
Generate when you need it
Tap Generate from the Rewind page. Beacon reads the last 60-90 days of your wins, journal entries, and behavior logs. Picks the steady days and the breakthroughs. Writes the letter. ~15-30 seconds.
Keep the last 20
The list shows the 20 most recent Rewinds, sorted newest first. Tap any to re-read. Old Rewinds drop off as you generate new ones; this is intentional, the surface stays focused.
Different from Playback
Playback is monthly, structured, share-able: a retrospective letter. Rewind is on-demand, single-prose, private: for you in the moment. Different shape, different job. Both pull from the same logged data.
No share option (by design)
Rewinds stay private. There is no share button. They are written for your reading, not for forwarding. If you want to share what you logged, use Playback instead.
What Beacon stores when you use it
rewinds: One row per generated Rewind. Beacon writes content as a single prose blob (not card-structured like Playback). RLS-locked to you with no share-token column.
| Column | Type | Example |
|---|---|---|
| id | UUID | 4f1a... Auto-generated; used in /rewind/[id] URLs. |
| user_id | UUID | your-user-id RLS-locked. No public access path. |
| content | text | Avery has been autistic for as long as you have been a parent... Beacon's letter to you. ~400-800 words. Plain text, no markdown. |
| generated_at | timestamp | 2026-05-16T14:23:00Z Sorts newest first. Driver for the rolling 20-record window. |
A real example
Maya generates a Rewind during a hard Wednesday afternoon. Here's the source material Beacon pulled and what came back.
| Source | Pulled | Beacon used |
|---|---|---|
| Wins (last 60d) | 8 wins | 3 most representative |
| Journal (last 30d) | 5 entries (3 Steady, 2 Heavy) | Steady days as evidence of coping |
| Behaviors (last 60d) | Meltdown 32, Stimming 47, Elopement 4 | Stim shift from 60 -> 47 (down) as a signal |
| Profile | Age 4, dx 18mo ago | Frames letter to a 2.5-year arc |
| Output | 1 prose letter ~600 words | (this is what you read) |
What Beacon auto-knows
- Your last 60-90 days of wins, journal entries, behavior logs.
- Patterns: which days you coped, which behaviors trended down, which wins clustered.
- The arc since onboarding: how long your child has been in Beacon, what the early days looked like vs now.
How it fits with Chat
- Rewinds do not have a Discuss button on the rewind itself; the letter is for reading.
- But Discuss from any OTHER feature with a Rewind open in another tab is fine; the chat does not auto-attach the Rewind content (unlike Playback, which attaches its cards).
- If you want Beacon to talk through what's in a Rewind, paste the relevant lines into a new chat manually.
Try these with Beacon
“Write me a rewind I can read tonight, today was hard.”
Pulls the Generate path. Returns a single prose letter starting from your wins of the last 60 days, naming 2-3 specific moments, ending with what is true about you and your kid even on hard days. Saved to the rewinds table; appears in your list.
“I read the last Rewind 3 times this week. It stopped landing.”
Suggests generating a new one with different source emphasis. 'Try generating a new Rewind. The last one leaned on the brushing-teeth wins. New one will pull from this week's data, so it will speak to right now, not last month.'
“Why are old Rewinds gone? I had one from March I liked.”
Explains the 20-record rolling window. 'Rewinds keep the 20 most recent. March's was probably bumped. If a Rewind is one you want to keep forever, copy the text into Journal or a notes app the day you read it.'
“Should I generate a Rewind or a Playback right now?”
Routes by mood. 'Hard day, need a hug: Rewind. End of a month, need to make sense of it or share it: Playback. Both pull the same data, different output for different jobs.'