Tbilisi Gifts: Never Forget Who Got What

Flying to meet your partner's family is already a lot. Flying to meet a Georgian family, with grandparents, cousins, uncles, an aunt, and a pair of twins who expect LEGO, is a completely different project. Nadia had a notebook. She had a group chat. She had a running mental tab of who got what at Easter. None of it was in the same place, and she kept discovering new relatives with about two weeks to shop.

So she described the problem in one sentence and got a working app back. Tbilisi Gifts is a simple, offline-first tracker that maps her entire gift plan across Giorgi's family: who she's buying for, what she's getting them, how far along she is, and what she already gave each person last time. Open it now and you'll see the whole family laid out, ready to use.

The problem with a shopping list

A shopping list tells you what to buy. It does not tell you that you gave Zurab whisky at New Year and that repeating it in September would be fine, or that babia Nino received a scarf last Easter and would love amber jewellery this time, or that the twins are older now and want something more involved than they got before. A list is flat. Gift-giving inside a family is layered.

Nadia needed something that could hold a person, not just an item. Each relative in her tracker has their own card: the gift she's planning, where that gift is in the process, and a note about what she brought on her last visit. That distinction matters. It turns a to-buy list into a relationship ledger, and it makes the difference between a gift that lands and one that feels careless.

Who still needs a gift? One look tells you

The home screen is the whole point. Every person in Giorgi's family is visible at once, and each card shows its current stage in a colour you can read across a room: idea, bought, packed, given. The people with no gift decided yet sit at the top, clearly flagged, so nothing slips through.

Try it in the demo below. Tap a card and you'll see the gift detail, the history note, and the stage buttons. Mark something as bought and watch the card update. Add a new cousin if Giorgi just remembered someone, set a gift idea, and come back to it later. The whole flow is two or three taps, and it works entirely offline, which matters when you're in a Georgian village with patchy signal and a bag to pack.

The stage system earns its keep in the last few days before the flight. Nadia wanted to know, at a glance, what was still sitting at 'idea' on the Thursday before departure. That single view closes the gap between having a plan and executing it.

The amber, the LEGO, and the whisky

The gifts in this app are specific because the people are specific. Babia Nino has a taste for amber, which is personal and memorable. The twins are at a LEGO age. Zurab is a whisky drinker. These are not interchangeable details, and the app does not pretend they are. Each gift record belongs to one person and carries the context that makes it meaningful.

That specificity also protects you on the history side. If you note that you gave Nino amber earrings this visit, you'll see that next September when you're trying to think of something different. The history field is a short text note, not a complicated log, but it's enough to jog your memory and steer you somewhere new.

Social stakes, managed quietly

Arriving at a family gathering and not having something for someone is a specific kind of awful that no amount of explaining makes better. It is worse when it's your partner's grandmother. The app does not remove the social stakes, but it removes the uncertainty that causes the mistake.

Nadia's roster kept growing as the trip got closer. Giorgi would mention a cousin, or an uncle she hadn't met would be joining for the weekend. In a list, that's a new line. In Tbilisi Gifts, it's a new person card, slotted into the family view, immediately visible alongside everyone else who either does or does not have a gift decided. The structure holds as the roster grows.

Built from a single description

Nadia described her problem once, and the app exists. That is not a small thing. Most people who have this problem either cope with a spreadsheet or improvise and hope for the best. A purpose-built tool that maps to the actual shape of the task, the people, the stages, the history, would normally take weeks to spec and build.

The live demo in this article is the real app. It loads with Giorgi's family already in place so you can see immediately how it works. Tap through it, edit a gift, mark something as packed. If you have your own version of this problem, a family visit with a lot of people and real stakes, you can have your own version of this tool.