About Fortune Found
Fortune Found is a private collection for the fortune cookie slips you keep. It is an iPhone app for photographing, preserving and annotating the physical slips you are handed at restaurants. It does not generate digital fortunes.
Photograph a slip and the app reads the words for you. Add when it found you, where you were, and a note if there is something about the moment you want to remember. Each fortune joins your collection in order, so over time it becomes a record of the messages that entered your life.
We do not generate digital fortunes
We think the cookie, the meal, the place, and the people around you are part of the experience. A fortune is meant to be encountered, not requested. You cannot eat a cookie on a screen.
Fortune Found exists to preserve that ritual, not replace it. We hope it gives you another reason to go somewhere new, try a restaurant you have never been to, explore more of the culture around you, and see what message happens to find you there.
Why the slips are worth keeping
People have kept fortune slips in wallets, books, and drawers for decades. Sometimes the words are funny. Sometimes they are forgettable. And sometimes a sentence from a stranger arrives at exactly the right moment and changes what you notice, what you think about, or what you do next.
That is what we care about preserving. Given enough time, a collection becomes more than a collection. It becomes another way to tell your story, through the words, meals, places, people, and moments that crossed your path.
Permanence
We care about permanence: giving wisdom, rituals, words, and small artifacts somewhere to live long enough to gather meaning. Fortune Found is one of those tools. Something designed to stay with you, age with you, and become more valuable over time.
Questions people ask
Why do people keep fortune cookie slips?
Rarely for the prediction. The slip is evidence of a particular meal on a particular day, and it turns out to be a better record of that evening than a photograph of the food. It is kept because of who was at the table, or what was being decided at the time.
What should you do with old fortune cookie fortunes?
Photograph them, then stop handling them. Nobody has published what fortune slips are actually made of. Not the manufacturers, not any conservation body. So the safe assumption is cheap uncoated paper of unknown acidity. What is documented is that handling is one of the greatest causes of damage to paper, that light damage is cumulative and cannot be undone, and that chemical decay roughly halves for every 5 °C drop in temperature. So: a drawer beats a wallet, flat beats folded, dark beats displayed. The full version is here.
Does Fortune Found generate fortunes?
No. It invents nothing. Every fortune in a collection came off a physical slip that its owner was handed and photographed. It is an archive, not a divination tool.
How much is it, and is there a subscription?
$11.99 once. No subscription, no free tier, nothing to cancel.
Where do the fortunes live?
On your phone. An account is optional and only used for backup. Collections are private.
Support
Write to support@fortunefound.world and you will get a reply from the person who made it.