A foreword warns you what's in the book

Read it — forewarned.

Choose the content you'd rather see coming. Foreword checks any book against your list and tells you what's there — plainly, by name — before page one.

FreeNo accountsNothing trackedNow in TestFlight

How it works

Set it once. Search anything.

No sign-up, no setup beyond choosing what matters to you. From there, every search is answered against your own list.

01

Choose your notes

Pick from a curated list of the content you'd rather know about — grief, harm, abuse, whatever's yours. It's stored only on your device.

02

Search any book

One field for every book — the novel you're starting tonight, a recent read, or a recommendation you're not sure about.

03

See what's there

We tell you in plain words which of your notes the title contains — before you start. Calm, specific, never a wall of warnings.

Our approach

No flashing red.
No scary badges.

Most tools shout in colour: a red dot, a yellow triangle, an alarm before you've even decided you care. Foreword does the opposite. We name what's there, in plain language, and let you decide. Calm by design.

  • Triggers are shown by name, not by colour — so the information is in the words, for everyone.
  • Colour is supportive, never the signal — a soft khaki accent, never a red alarm.
  • Fully legible if you're colour-blind: the same meaning reaches everyone from the text alone.
  • You only ever see the notes you chose — no judgement, no noise.
The usual way — colour alone
Title…what does any of that mean?
Titleguess and brace yourself
The Foreword way — named, in plain words
Contains: A dog dies, Grief, Self-harm
Contains: Abuse, + 1 more from your list

Where the notes come from

Four trusted sources, always labelled.

Every result tells you where its information came from. We lean on the communities who've done this work for years, and use AI only to fill the gaps.

Reader-curated

Trigger Warning Database

Book-focused content warnings, carefully curated by readers. A community-run resource built specifically for books — our primary source.

Visit the database
Community-voted

DoesTheDogDie

The original crowdsourced trigger source — thousands of titles voted on and discussed by the community, including a growing catalogue of books.

Visit DoesTheDogDie
AI-assisted · labelled

Claude, by Anthropic

For books not yet in either database, we ask Claude to identify the book and describe what's in it — always clearly flagged as AI-assisted, never mixed in silently.

Learn about Claude
Reader-contributed

The Foreword community

Readers add their own trigger notes in the app and vote each other's up or down. Notes that don't hold up get voted down and hidden — always shown anonymously.

These communities do this work for love, not profit. If Foreword helps you, please consider supporting them directly.

Community notes

Readers keep the shelf honest.

Alongside the databases, Foreword readers add their own content notes and vote each other's up or down. Browsing and voting never need an account — adding a note takes a quick, anonymous sign-in.

01

Vote from anywhere

Agree or disagree on any note — right here on the web or in the app. No account, no sign-in. One vote per reader, and coordinated pile-ons are detected and blunted automatically.

02

Add what's missing

In the app, sign in with Apple or Google (Google on Android) and add a content note — choose how much detail it goes into and where it appears. It goes live immediately.

03

The crowd sorts it out

Solid notes rise; off-topic ones get voted down and hidden automatically. Every community note is shown anonymously as “Reported by the community” — never under a name.

Accounts

Reading, searching, and voting are always anonymous and account-free. To add your own notes you sign in with Apple or Google (Android uses Google) — Foreword stores only an anonymous id from them, never your name or email. You can ask us to delete it any time. See how sign-in data is handled ↗

Privacy

Built to know as little as possible.

The people who reach for a tool like this are often in a vulnerable moment. So Foreword is designed to hold almost nothing about you — by default, not as a setting.

  • No account to read or vote
    Browsing, searching, and voting need no sign-in. Contributing takes only an anonymous sign-in — never your name or email.
  • No trackers
    No ads, no analytics SDKs, no third-party trackers.
  • Your list stays put
    Your notes and name live only on your device.
  • We never sell data
    There's nothing tied to you to sell in the first place.
Your result matched to your notes
A Little LifeBook
2015 · Hanya Yanagihara
Contains: Self-harm, Abuse, Grief, + 2 more from your list
DoesTheDogDieCommunity-verified · only your notes are shown

Be an early reader.

Foreword is in private beta while we polish it. Join on iOS or Android to help shape it — and to start every book a little more prepared.

Free on iOS and Android. Browse, search, and vote with no account — signing in (Apple or Google) is only needed to add your own notes.