Custode

Is your tree getting better, or worse?

Not a one-shot "what's wrong with this leaf" app. A per-tree record that watches the same tree over months, so something changing shows up before it's obvious by eye.

In development — running on one real grove in Western Australia

The wrong question

Every plant-ID app answers what, never whether

Point a phone at a leaf and a dozen free apps will tell you what it is and guess what's wrong with it. That part is solved, and it's free — it will stay free. It also isn't the question anyone who actually cares about a tree is asking.

One-shot diagnosis

  • Answerable from a single photo
  • Every competitor already does this
  • Tells you what it is, today
  • No reason to come back

Custode

  • Needs a registry, an anchor point, and history
  • Nobody else builds the boring part underneath it
  • Tells you whether it's changing
  • Worth more every month you keep it

The record

How it works

01

Register the tree once

A name, a spot on the map, a tag on the trunk. GPS alone isn't accurate enough at typical planting spacing — this is what keeps every later photo pointed at the right tree.

02

Same three shots, every visit

Canopy, foliage, trunk — from the same anchor point, with a ghost overlay of last time so framing stays consistent. Consistency of capture matters more than sophistication of model.

03

A structured assessment, not a guess

A health score, specific findings with the evidence behind them, and a confidence level — never a bare verdict.

04

It says when it doesn't know

Marginal photos and low-confidence findings get flagged for a human look, not quietly resolved. Triage, not diagnosis — a wrong "it's fine" costs you the tree, and that's the one mistake this is built to avoid.

Why the on-grove test comes first. Before this is anyone else's tool, it has to prove one thing on real trees: does the change detection actually catch something you'd have otherwise missed by eye? That's running now — 80 olive and fruit trees at Piccolo Paradiso, near Collie, Western Australia.