DreamSeed gently steers what you dream about. You pick a theme, settle in to sleep, and as you drift it whispers that theme back to you at the exact edge of sleep where the mind is most suggestible. When you wake, you tell it what you dreamed, and it tracks how much of your theme found its way in.
As you fall asleep you pass through a brief, dreamy in-between state called hypnagogia - the first minutes of sleep where you see drifting images and half-thoughts but are still suggestible. Sleep researchers found that a theme repeated to you in that window tends to show up in the dreams that follow. DreamSeed finds that window and uses it. That is the whole idea: the right words, at the right moment, lightly repeated.
That is one full loop. Do not worry about doing it perfectly the first time; catching the window is a knack that comes with a few tries.
The best themes are one clear, concrete image or scene, not an abstract idea. Your sleeping mind thinks in pictures, so give it a picture.
| Try this | Instead of |
|---|---|
| "a tree growing out of my hand" | "creativity" |
| "flying low over a city at night" | "freedom" |
| "a red door in a white hallway" | "making a decision" |
| "my grandmother's kitchen" | "the past" |
If you are working on a problem, seed the object of it - the broken machine, the blank canvas, the person - rather than the abstract worry. Keep it short enough to picture in one breath.
DreamSeed can guess when you are drifting off and time its cues to that, instead of to a fixed timer. You never have to use these - the timer alone works - but they make the cues land at a better moment.
| Option | What it is | You'll need |
|---|---|---|
| Timer | cues on a simple wind-down estimate | nothing |
| Fingertip | a quick resting-pulse baseline before you start | cover the rear camera for 45s |
| Heart strap | follows your heart rate live as you relax | a Bluetooth HR strap |
| Face camera | watches your eyelids and pulse from the front camera | front camera, a little light |
| Bedside camera | a second phone watches from the nightstand | a spare phone; scan the QR |
Once you settle, the app waits. When it senses you slipping under - or when the timer reaches the window - it speaks your theme softly, a handful of times, spaced out. If you stir or your heart rate jumps, it backs off and waits for you to settle again, so it does not yank you awake. After the cue window a gentle tone brings you up to report.
After each report DreamSeed reads it for how much of your theme showed up and gives you a score from 0 to 100, with a simple level:
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A "trace" means a related feeling or image surfaced; "direct" means your actual theme appeared in the dream. The scoring happens privately on your device. Treat it as a friendly signal, not a grade - incorporation is gentle and varies night to night, and a low score is just information for next time. Do not chase the number.
The lab protocol is a deeper practice for when you have time to lie down undisturbed. Instead of one loop, it walks you through several short drift-and-wake cycles: you sink toward sleep, a voice gently asks what was on your mind, you answer half-asleep, it re-seeds the theme, and you drift again - up to several rounds, each one captured. It is the closest thing to harvesting the hypnagogic stream, and it tends to surface more material than a single loop. It is part of the Lucid tier.
Your sessions and scores build a history you can look back on. Over time you will see which themes take, what time of day works for you, and whether your recall is sharpening. The history lives under your device and needs no account.
| What happened | Try |
|---|---|
| I never drifted off | lower the lights, try a nap or early morning, and let the wind-down run longer |
| the cues woke me fully | turn the volume down a notch; they should be just barely audible |
| the camera won't start | allow the camera permission, add a little light, and make sure you opened the app over https |
| no pulse reading | hold steadier and add faint light; it stays quiet rather than show a bad number |
| my bedside phone won't pair | put both phones on the same wifi and rescan the QR |
| I forgot the dream | next time, report the instant you wake, before moving - it fades fast |