Frequently Asked Questions

Gearlogue is a gear intelligence platform for anyone serious about their equipment. Catalogue your full inventory, build purpose-built kits for trips or projects, collaborate with teams, and let AI help you optimise your loadout. Whether you hike, climb, photograph, sail, or play music — Gearlogue brings all your gear management into one place.

Yes. The Free tier includes the core gear, kit, project, sharing, and AI experience with tighter limits than the paid plans. If you need more capacity, web search, AI imports, data export, or team ownership features, you can upgrade to Pro or Team at any time from the Subscription page. Current limits are shown on the Pricing and Subscription pages.

Click 'Get Started' on the home page and enter your email, name, and a password. You'll receive a confirmation code by email — enter it to activate your account. You'll land on your dashboard right away. You can pick a username later, when you first try to add a friend or invite a teammate by username.

Usernames are optional — you pick one just-in-time the first time you add a friend by username or invite a teammate by username. Once set, it can't be changed (other people may already reference it). Your display name, however, can be changed at any time from Settings → Profile.

Go to Inventory and click 'Add Item'. Fill in the name, brand, type, weight, price, and condition. You can upload photos or take one with your camera on mobile. Items are private by default.

Owned items are gear you physically have. Wishlist items are things you're considering buying. When the AI recommends new gear (e.g. via 'Find Alternative'), those items are automatically added as wishlist so they don't mix with your actual inventory.

Yes. Go to Settings → Profile and change your preferred weight unit (metric or imperial) and default currency. Weight display follows your preference. Each gear price keeps its own stored currency; your profile currency is used as the default for new and legacy items, not as an automatic currency conversion.

Open the gear item and click the delete button. If the item is part of any kits, it will be removed from those kits as well. This action cannot be undone.

Yes. Every gear item supports up to 10 photos (uploaded directly or captured with your phone camera) and up to 5 reference videos via YouTube or Vimeo URLs. Videos render as click-to-load previews — no third-party scripts run until you press play. TikTok, Instagram, and X embeds aren't supported yet.

We track where each value came from. A small icon next to weight and price tells you the source — values you've entered yourself, values from Gearlogue community or reference examples, values pulled from web search, or AI estimates. You can replace any non-user value with your own measurement at any time, and the source updates automatically. See the Help Centre article 'Where do gear values come from?' for the full breakdown.

Gearlogue extracts values from your imports where they're present in the source. Anything you didn't tick "these are my own" against — file imports, starter templates, AI-extracted URL imports, or values you explicitly asked the AI to estimate — is flagged "estimated" in the rollup so the total doesn't look more certain than it really is. Open any item with the sparkles icon and tap "Replace with my measured value" to upgrade it — your number replaces the unconfirmed value and the rollup updates.

A kit is a curated collection of gear for a specific purpose — like a weekend hiking kit, a photography travel kit, or a festival camping setup. Each kit has its own activity type, destination, and total weight calculation.

Open the kit and click 'Share'. You can share directly with a friend (auto-accepted) or any user by username (they'll see it in 'Shared with Me' as pending). You can also make a kit public so anyone in the community can see it.

Yes. Open the kit and use the duplicate option. This creates a new kit with the same gear items, which you can then customise for a different trip.

The 'Analyse List' button sends your kit to the AI assistant, which evaluates your gear selection. It provides an overall score, identifies missing essentials, flags heavy items with lighter alternatives, and suggests optimisations based on your activity and destination.

From the Kits page, click 'Create with AI' and describe what you need (e.g. '3-day winter hiking kit for the Highlands'). The AI creates the kit and populates it with recommended gear items based on your description.

Yes. Each kit supports up to 10 photos and up to 5 YouTube/Vimeo video links — useful for trip footage, walkthroughs, or pack-out videos. Both render on the kit page and on its public/shared view.

A project represents a real-world trip or expedition that involves multiple kits and potentially multiple people. For example, a PCT thru-hike might have separate kits for shelter, cooking, clothing, and electronics — all organised under one project with a timeline.

You can invite participants by linking a team to the project, or by asking the AI assistant to invite specific friends. Friends are auto-accepted; non-friends receive a pending invitation.

Yes. Open the AI assistant on any page and describe your trip. The AI will propose a kit structure, create the kits, populate them with appropriate gear, and link everything to a new project. You can guide the process step-by-step or tell it to build everything at once.

When a kit is linked to a project, you can override quantities and confirmation status per participant without changing the original kit. This lets different people carry different amounts of shared gear items.

Yes. Each project supports up to 10 photos, web links (with optional labels), and up to 5 YouTube/Vimeo videos — handy for trip reports, route information, or planning notes.

Go to Inventory and click 'Import Gear', then choose 'Import with Template'. Download the CSV template, fill in your gear, and upload — the import preview shows you exactly what will be created before saving. This works on every plan and doesn't use any AI allowance.

On eligible plans, the AI can extract gear from CSV, TXT, HTML, PDF, DOC/DOCX, and XLSX files. Open 'Import Gear' → 'Import with AI' and upload the file or paste a URL. The AI groups what it finds into a project → kit → gear preview that you confirm before anything is saved. Each import handles up to 200 items.

Yes. AI imports are charged from your monthly AI allowance like any other AI activity. Spreadsheet (XLSX) imports run on a cheaper model so they're typically the lightest. URL and document imports use the same model as the chat assistant. The included monthly allowance covers many imports — your AI Credits page shows current usage.

Nothing is saved until you click confirm. The import preview shows the project, kits, and individual gear items the AI extracted — you can cancel the whole thing if it's not right and try a different source or split a long file. Once saved, you can edit or delete any item just like any other gear in your inventory.

Friends are a mutual relationship — both users must agree. Friends get auto-accepted kit shares and team invitations. Following is one-way — you follow someone to see their public kits and projects in your feed. They don't need to follow you back.

Go to Network → Friends and click 'Add Friend'. Enter their username to send a request. Once they accept, you're connected. You can also discover users through the community feed or search.

Team creation is currently available on the eligible plans. Members on any plan can join teams and collaborate on projects, but creating a new team requires the right plan. Upgrade from Settings → Subscription if needed.

Only the team owner pays — there's one Team subscription per owner, covering all the teams they create. Members don't pay anything extra to join a team; they contribute their gear and kits with whatever plan they're on.

Yes. Team members keep their own plan (Free, Pro, or Team) — joining a team doesn't change anyone's subscription. Each member's own quotas still apply to the gear and kits they personally own. Access to shared team projects and kit contributions is driven by team membership, not by the member's tier.

If the owner downgrades from Team to Pro or Free, their teams are frozen — invites, updates, and new kit contributions are disabled, but no data is deleted. Existing projects, kits, and gear stay intact and members can still view them. The owner can re-upgrade to Team at any time to automatically unfreeze all teams with their full history preserved.

Team members can see projects linked to the team, including the kits and gear within those projects. They cannot see your private inventory or unlinked kits.

Yes. Public kits and projects have an engagement bar with like, save, and share actions. Saved items are collected in your 'Saved' page for easy reference. Shares generate a link you can send to anyone — no account required to view a shared kit.

If you verify a supported social account in your profile settings, a platform badge appears on your public profile and feed cards. Verified badges currently support YouTube, TikTok, and X/Twitter. Instagram can still be added as a public social link even when verification is unavailable. Verification proves you own the account by completing a brief OAuth flow — Gearlogue never stores your social passwords.

Included AI usage is managed through your plan's allowance rather than a simple per-message counter. The assistant button shows your current usage ring, and the AI Credits page shows your included allowance, any prepaid balance, and monthly spend controls. Daily and weekly safeguards may still apply depending on your plan.

The AI is a global assistant available on every page. You control what it can use via the data source toggles in the AI panel: My Data (your gear, kits, projects), Community (public community items and Gearlogue reference examples), AI Knowledge (the model's built-in knowledge), and Web Search (live web results — eligible plans). You can turn any of these off at any time.

Yes, on eligible plans. When Web Search is enabled in the AI panel, the AI can look up current gear specs, prices, reviews, and product information from the web. It will tell you when it's using a web result. Plans without web search can leave the toggle off — it won't be used regardless.

Yes. Tell the AI to remember something (e.g. 'always recommend ultralight options' or 'I prefer metric weights') and it will store that preference and apply it in future sessions. To remove a preference, ask it to forget it. Stored preferences persist across sessions and are separate from your conversation history.

Yes. Conversations are stored per user and automatically deleted after 90 days. If you ask the assistant to remember a preference, that preference may persist separately so it can be reused in future sessions until you ask it to forget it or delete your account. Our AI provider does not use your conversation data or gear information to train models. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

No. Gearlogue sends only the relevant context needed to answer your request to Amazon Bedrock / Anthropic Claude, and that provider does not use your prompts, completions, or gear data to train models. Conversation history is stored by Gearlogue so the assistant can keep context, then automatically expires after 90 days.

You can ask the AI to create gear, kits, and projects; add or remove items from kits; analyse your loadout; find lighter or cheaper alternatives; search the community for inspiration; search the web for product info where enabled; manage teams; invite collaborators; and more. You can guide it step by step or describe what you want and let it build everything at once.

No — AI can make mistakes. It may produce inaccurate gear specifications, incorrect weights, or hallucinated product details (stating something confidently that is factually wrong). Always verify critical information — especially weight, compatibility, and safety specs — from the manufacturer or a trusted source before a trip. The AI is a starting point, not a substitute for your own judgement.

Only when you've already pasted the URL into the chat. The AI is explicitly instructed to never invent video URLs, never pull them from training memory, and never call web search just to find one. If you want a video attached at create time, paste the YouTube or Vimeo link yourself and the AI will include it. Editing videos on existing items is currently UI-only — open the edit form and use the Videos section.

The Creator Programme recognises users who build a following and share high-quality public content on Gearlogue. Eligible creators receive a verified badge on their public profile and feed cards, access to a creator dashboard with engagement analytics, and additional profile fields (social links, promo link) visible on their public gear listings.

Eligibility is based on your follower count and the number of public items you've shared. Check your progress on the Creator page — it shows exactly how close you are to the threshold. There is no application; eligibility is granted automatically when you meet the criteria.

The creator dashboard shows your total views, likes, saves, and shares across all public kits and projects, broken down by individual item. It's updated in real time as community members engage with your content.

Go to Settings → Subscription and click 'Upgrade' on the plan you'd like. You'll be taken to a secure Stripe checkout page. Once payment completes, your new limits take effect immediately.

Annual billing may be discounted; check the Pricing page for the current figure. You can switch billing intervals from the Stripe customer portal in Settings → Subscription → Manage Billing.

You have two options. On the Subscription page there's a 'Switch to Free at period end' button that cancels your plan cleanly — no Stripe portal needed. Alternatively, click 'Manage Billing' to open the Stripe customer portal and cancel from there. Either way, you keep your paid features until the end of your current billing period, then revert to the Free tier.

We don't offer partial-period refunds. When you cancel, your subscription simply runs to the end of the period you've already paid for, then stops. You'll keep all Pro/Team features until that date, then revert to Free. If you were billed by mistake or a payment looks wrong, contact support@gearlogue.com and we'll look into it.

At the end of your current billing period — the exact date is shown on the Subscription page as 'Cancels on: {date}'. Before that date you still have full Pro/Team access. After that date you're on the Free tier; no data is deleted, but new items beyond Free's limits are blocked until you re-upgrade.

Upgrades happen immediately — you get Pro or Team features straight away. Stripe charges a prorated amount for the rest of the current billing period based on the difference between the two tiers. Your billing date stays the same; your next full charge will be at the new tier.

Downgrades (Team → Pro) are scheduled to take effect at the end of the current billing period, not mid-cycle. You keep paying for and using Team features until the cycle ends, then automatically move to Pro at the next renewal. You can cancel the scheduled downgrade any time before it fires.

Stripe will retry the payment automatically for a few days and send you email reminders with a link to update your card. During this window your subscription status shows as 'past due' but you keep access. If all retries fail, the subscription cancels and you revert to the Free tier — no data is lost.

Free users see an upgrade prompt and the assistant pauses until next month. Pro and Team users with prepaid AI credit balance keep going seamlessly — usage beyond the included allowance is charged from the prepaid balance at a small margin (the floating AI button switches to show your prepaid balance). You can buy more credits any time on the AI Credits page (Settings → AI Credits) and set your own monthly cap to stay in control.

Pro and Team users can buy prepaid AI credits in custom amounts via the AI Credits page (Settings → AI Credits). Credits are stored as a balance and only spent once your monthly allowance is used up. They never expire. The same page shows a transaction log of every charge and lets you set a monthly spending cap that applies to AI consumption (purchases are always allowed regardless of cap).

Your data is never deleted when you downgrade. However, if you exceed the Free tier limits, you won't be able to create new items until you're within limits. Existing items remain accessible, and teams you own are frozen (read-only) rather than deleted — re-upgrading automatically unfreezes them.

Go to Settings → Profile and click 'Export Data' (available on eligible plans). This downloads a JSON file containing all your gear, kits, projects, teams, and profile information.

Go to Settings → Profile and click 'Delete Account'. This permanently removes all your data including gear, kits, projects, teams, AI conversations, and your public profile. This action cannot be undone.

We do not use third-party tracking cookies. Gearlogue uses browser local storage for things like your authentication token, UI preferences, consent choice, and a small subscription cache. Signup and contact forms use Google reCAPTCHA to reduce spam and abuse.

Gearlogue gives you tools to access, export, and delete your data. We don't sell personal data, we don't use third-party tracking cookies, and our AI provider doesn't train on your data. Read the Privacy Policy for details about how your data is processed and what controls are available to you.

When you're signed in, open the sidebar footer and choose 'Send feedback'. You can submit a bug, feature request, feedback, or other report with a title and details. If you're not signed in, or the question is about billing, privacy, account access, or copyright, use the Contact page instead.

Yes. Feedback reports can include up to 5 image attachments, 10MB each. Supported types are JPEG, PNG, WebP, and GIF. Screenshots are stored privately for support/admin triage and automatically expire after 90 days.

Along with what you type, Gearlogue records basic context such as the page URL, browser user agent, and app version so we can reproduce the issue. Admins use the report queue to triage status, priority, and notes.