I spent 13 years keeping a paper service book for my own car writing down oil changes, dates, mileage by hand. When I finally decided to build something, I didn't start with an idea. I started by testing dozens of niches through ASO data: search volume, competition, how weak the current top players actually were.
Car maintenance tracking checked every box. The top 20 apps in the App Store are mostly small players with 0 300 ratings a real gap, not a hypothetical one. And AI is barely showing up in this space yet. Most competitors still make you type in every field by hand after you take a photo of a receipt, if they let you attach one at all.
So that's what I built Docaro around: snap a photo of any receipt, AI reads it and fills in the record automatically date, mileage, work done, parts, cost. Works in any language, since I wanted something that'd hold up for people who travel or live in multilingual places. Plus a one-tap PDF export, since "prove your car was maintained" is a real thing that affects resale value.
I'm building this solo, using an AI-assisted, multi-agent dev process I'm still refining as I go.
Curious what maintenance or expense-tracking apps you've personally tried and dropped and what made you give up on them?
The receipt scanning idea is genuinely useful, but it would be even better if Docaro could pull service history directly from dealership portals or shop management systems when you give it permission. That would backfill years of records most people have completely lost.
@benjamin_barton Really appreciate this — it's actually one of the ideas I've been thinking about for a later version. The tricky part is that dealership portals and shop management systems don't share a common API or format, so pulling data automatically would mean integrating with dozens of different systems one by one — realistic, but not a quick win.
A more universal first step I've been considering is VIN-based history lookup (like CarFax) to backfill at least the high-level record, even without full receipt-level detail. Manual photo scanning stays the fast path for everything going forward.
Really useful to hear this validated as a real want, not just a nice-to-have — helps me prioritize it for the roadmap. Thanks for taking the time to dig in on day one 🙏