A model can draft a card from one conversation. They can pause, skip, stop, and review it before anyone else hears it. Applying does not enrol them.
Applying is permission for Tellby to contact you only. It does not enrol or consent for them.
A story from Nan · 12 March · sample
Hear it in Nan's original voice
0:00 / 1:49
Betty sewed her own dress the week before the 1962 Camperdown dance, working at night so no one would see. She wore it with her sister's good shoes, a size too small. Tom asked her to dance twice — she said yes both times.
“I didn't tell my mother — she'd have said it was too much fabric for one girl.”People & places
Tellby is on their tablet. One tap opens a story session.
A voice asks one question at a time. Every word appears in large print. They can pause, skip a question, or stop.
Written story and original recording stay together. Pauses and all.
The person who told it can correct names, dates, and anything the draft got wrong. Their correction matters more than what Tellby thought it heard.
Nothing is shared with the wider family until the organiser has read it. That rule is enforced in the product, not offered as a setting.
During the conversation
After they have told it
Family cannot see the card until they have reviewed it and you have approved it.
During the early pilot, a researcher may also guide or support parts of the session. We say so beforehand.
Pause, skip, or end the conversation.
If they say a topic is off-limits, it is not asked again — not reworded, not revisited.
Memory is messy. The person who lived it has the last edit.
No story is shared with family until they have had the chance to review it.
Applying is permission for Tellby to contact you only. It does not enrol or consent for them.
You (the person who set it up) see a card only after the storyteller has had the chance to review it, and you approve before the rest of the family sees it.
Tellby staff see what is needed to run an early pilot session. We do not use family stories as advertising.
Most family-story tools ask someone to write for a year, or they hide the model. Tellby is smaller: one conversation, the original voice kept next to the written story, and a person decides what is shared.
The fear worth answering is not “does it use a model?” It is: will something polish, invent, or publish a parent without them.
Other tools hide the model. Tellby puts the controls on their side, where they can see them: pause, skip, stop, off-limits, review, then organiser approval.
One relaxed 10–15 minute conversation. A private written-and-audio card. They can pause, skip, stop, and review.
Applying does not enrol or consent for your parent or relative.