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Getting started

The quickest path to a useful LifeFile is: sign up → register your house → connect Gmail → upload a couple of documents. Five minutes, end to end.

1. Sign up

Go to lifefile.fly.dev and choose:

  • Continue with Google — fastest; uses your Google identity. The OAuth scope is "sign in only" — at this stage we don't read your inbox.
  • Create one — username + password if you'd rather not use Google.

You'll land on the dashboard. It'll be mostly empty.

2. Register your first house

Click Add another house in the Houses section.

Use the address as the name (16 High Street, Standlake). The address is what your buyer's solicitor, your insurer, and HMRC all care about.

Once added, the house tile appears in the dashboard with a completeness bar at 0% and a "Tell us about this property" prompt. Click into it.

The 4-question setup ("freehold or leasehold?" etc.) takes about 30 seconds and tunes the Still to get list to your situation. Skip it if you don't want to bother — the list will be a little noisier (e.g. you'll see leasehold-only items even on a freehold) but everything still works.

3. Drop in a document

From the dashboard's Get documents in panel, click Upload. Pick any document — a council tax bill, your gas safety certificate, your mortgage statement.

LifeFile will:

  1. Open the file and read it (we use Claude Sonnet for this).
  2. Suggest a topic, document type, provider, dates, and which property it belongs to.
  3. Show you a confirmation page.

If we got it right, click Confirm. If we got something wrong, edit it — the correction helps us classify your future documents better.

4. Connect Gmail (optional, big win)

Most UK property documents arrive by email. The DocuSign confirmations, the council tax bills, the EPC, the management company demands — all there in your inbox.

From the dashboard's Get documents in panel, click Connect Gmail. You'll be redirected to Google to authorise read-only access (we never write to your inbox, never delete or move emails, and never read messages that don't have an attachment).

When you come back, LifeFile starts scanning in the background. Within 10–60 seconds you'll see a Triage badge appear in the top nav with the number of documents we found.

The Triage page groups them by lifecycle:

  • Signed and final — DocuSign-style completed contracts and other definitive docs. Usually safe to Accept all.
  • Needs your eye — anything that isn't unambiguous. Click each to confirm.
  • Drafts — interim or unsigned versions; usually skip.
  • Low signal — auto-flagged junk; mostly hidden by default.

Each accept files the document; dismiss removes it. You can come back to Triage any time.

5. Sweep /topic/home/

After you've accepted a few, visit the Home topic page from the navigation. It groups documents by property. Each property block has a Confirm all N as filed correctly button — sweep through, confirm what's right, Move anything that landed in the wrong block.

Once a block is confirmed it disappears from the queue. Re-runs of the Gmail scan only resurface property blocks for new documents to review.

6. Look at the completeness panel

Back on the property page, click the Setup helper tab. You'll see a list of every document a UK homeowner ought to keep — split by what you have, what you're missing, and what doesn't apply.

Click Why & how on any missing item for a one-paragraph explanation of what it is, why it matters, and where to get one.

That's it. As you upload more documents, more lights turn green. When you're ready to sell — you'll have a tidy pack.