What's new at Dovetail
Everything we've shipped, what's coming next, and a place to suggest what we should build.
What's new
Making your inventory editable and easier to use
I'm actively getting moving quotes, so the adjustments are based on my real experience. Just like everything here. The Moving Inventory got simpler and easier to fine-tune. The box estimate is now yours to adjust — nudge the wardrobe boxes up if you've got a deep closet, or trim a number that looks high, and the total keeps up. You can rename any item in place instead of deleting it and starting over. And we dropped the cubic-feet and weight figures: your mover settles those during the in-home or virtual survey, so the list now sticks to what actually speeds up a quote — what you've got, room by room, and roughly how many boxes it will take.
Your move now carries across Dovetail
Enter your move once, and it follows you. Your addresses, dates, and home size are now shared between your plan and your moving inventory — start in either one, and the other already has the details, with nothing to retype. Built them separately? You can link a plan to an inventory. Moving is enough work without having to enter the same thing twice.
Build one moving inventory, take it to every mover
Getting estimates means listing everything you own — and every mover's site makes you start that list from scratch, then forgets it the moment you try the next company. Build it once here instead. The new Moving Inventory tool walks you room by room, captures quantities and handling notes (fragile, heavy, disassembly, high value), and gives you an adjustable box-count estimate for your home size. Export it as a clean PDF, copy it as plain text for a quote form, or save a private link to come back to — no account needed. One list, every estimate.
Two guides for exchange students
Two new companion guides, one for each direction. /exchange-student-moving-abroad is for US students heading overseas — passports and visas, packing for a year as a guest, and what coming home is really like. /exchange-student-moving-to-us is for students arriving in the US — the J-1 and F-1 visas, SEVIS and the paperwork, and living with a host family. Both are built partly from lived experience.
Summer camp packing list, with a find-a-camp tool and a printable journal
A new guide at /summer-camp-packing-list for parents and campers — what to pack, what to label, what to leave home, and the small analog things (a pre-stamped postcard, a disposable camera, a journal) that make camp stick. It includes a Find a Camp tool that points you to the American Camp Association's directory of accredited camps, and a free printable Camp Journal to tuck into the trunk. There's a section for counselors and summer staff moving to camp for the season, too.
College moving checklist
A new guide at /college-moving-checklist covering both ends of the school year: what to pack for move-in, what to leave home, how move-in day actually works, and how to handle end-of-year move-out and summer storage. Includes a dorm essentials list, a realistic cost range, and the twin-XL-sheets reminder everyone learns the hard way.
Travel nurse and medical professional moving guide
A new guide at /travel-nurse-moving-guide for travel nurses, allied-health clinicians, and locum providers — the people who move every 13 weeks. It covers finding furnished short-term housing, packing a reusable kit for a 13-week assignment, handling multistate licenses and the nurse compact, and protecting the tax home that keeps stipends tax-free.
Reorder and customize your change-of-address steps
The change-of-address section now works the way the rest of your plan does. You can reorder the sections and add, edit, delete, or customize each to-do — so the list matches who you actually need to notify, in the order that makes sense for you.
Make any plan your own
Every plan is a starting point, and now it bends to your move. You can add, delete, and customize the sections and tasks in your plan — rename a task, drop one that doesn't apply, or add something specific to your situation. The plan is yours to shape, not a fixed list to follow.
Edit your whole plan, not just the tasks
Plans change — a date slips, a goal shifts, you find a place in a different neighborhood. You can now edit the details of an existing plan instead of starting over: change the move dates, update your goals and parameters, even swap the cities. The plan reshapes itself around your changes, so a moved closing date or a new destination doesn't cost you the work you've already done.
Box inventory and label maker
Pack room by room and know exactly what's in every box. The new box inventory tool lets you name a room, add boxes to it, and list what goes in each one. Boxes label themselves automatically — the first box from the kitchen becomes KIT-01 — and you can generate a printable PDF of box labels plus a full inventory list to tape up or hand to the movers. Use it inside your plan, or on its own. A standalone inventory gets its own private link you can bookmark, share, and come back to edit, with no account required.
Address change checklist
A comprehensive guide at /address-change-checklist covering every place you need to update an address — personal and business. The same list appears as a personalized section in your plan, with direct links to USPS, IRS, voter registration, and other official forms.
Personalized plan PDF
Download your full plan as a printable PDF — with your move title, dates, intro paragraph, tasks, work blocks, and the Welcome Home note at the end. Filename includes your move title (e.g., dovetail-brooklyn-to-austin-2026-08-14.pdf) for easy filing.
Pets and Kids sections in the address change guide
The “Where to change your address” section now includes Pets (microchip registries, pet insurance, city pet license) for plans with pets, and Kids (school district transfers, daycare, 529 plans, pediatric specialists) for plans with kids. Both shown only when they apply to your move.
PCS Move Checklist
A new guide for military families covering HHG vs PPM, weight allowances, the paperwork that matters, and the things military spouses say they wish they'd known. We're also asking PCS families to help shape the guide — and the future PCS personalization layer — via email.
This updates page
You're reading it. From now on, every meaningful change to Dovetail will land here. If you've used Dovetail and want to know what's new, this is the place.
Plans now match your actual timeline
For shorter moves, plans used to start at “8 weeks until move” regardless of how much time you actually had — which meant a user 30 days out saw tasks meant for a longer planning window. Now plans collapse past-window tasks into a “Start here” front section and pick up where you really are. Plan generation is also noticeably faster.
Tasks collapse for easier scanning
Long sections feel calmer when they're not packed wall-to-wall with text. Task cards now show just the title and checkbox by default — tap to expand for the full details. Each section has an “Expand all” toggle if you'd rather see everything at once.
Contact, Privacy, and Terms pages
Three small but important pages: a Contact page with hello@movedovetail.com (replies usually within a day or two), and Privacy and Terms in plain English, not legal-speak.
Tip jar (buy me a pizza)
Dovetail is free, and we'd like to keep it that way. If a plan helps with your move, you can now buy Bradford a pizza — it covers hosting, AI costs, and the domain. Tips help keep Dovetail free for the next family.
Tier 1 polish pass
Several small upgrades shipped together: a “Pet stuff” category in the box estimator, direct deep links from address-change tasks to USPS, IRS, voter registration, and other government forms, a feedback prompt on the plan page so you can tell us what's working, and a clearer save-URL block with a one-click Copy link button.
Welcome Home message
Your plan now ends with a small calm note acknowledging the move — quiet, personal, and meant to land at the moment you actually need it. The day you're sitting on a floor in a new place.
Brand rename to Dovetail
The product is now called Dovetail. (It was “Move Plan” during the build, but that name was generic enough to confuse both search engines and AI tools.) New name, new tagline: Most move plans are generic; we dovetail yours to fit your life.
About page
A short story about why Dovetail exists — written by Bradford, the person building it. Includes the origin story and the reasoning behind the name (dovetail joints in woodworking).
Tipping calculator and box estimator
Two interactive tools that do real math: estimate the appropriate movers' tip given crew size, hours, and service quality; estimate how many boxes and supplies you'll need given your space size and what you own.
Eight new guides and tools
A full guide library shipped: the Moving Checklist (week-by-week), How to Pack for a Move (room-by-room), How to Move (universal sequence), Moving Out Checklist (for renters), Tipping Movers (with calculator), Box Estimator (with supplies and cost estimate), and a free downloadable PDF moving checklist.
Dovetail launches
The first version of Dovetail goes live: a no-auth, URL-based moving planner with a four-step wizard and a week-by-week plan that lives at a unique URL you bookmark. Built in 48 hours with Lovable + Claude. Personalized intro paragraphs, generated tasks, and check-off interactions all working.
Calendar export, move titles, and work blocks
Your plan now exports to your calendar as an .ics file. You can give your move a title (auto-suggested as “From → To” but customizable). And large packing tasks break into manageable work blocks for 2BR+ moves.
Coming soon
Coming soon
A few things we're actively building:
- Email your plan to yourself — a simple way to keep the URL where you can find it later. Optional weekly check-in email with this week's upcoming tasks.
- PCS personalization for military families — branch-aware, OCONUS/CONUS-aware, weight-allowance-aware. We're holding the build until we've talked to more military families first (see the PCS guide if you can help).
- More guides — cross-country moves, downsizing, first-time movers, moving with pets specifically.
- What you suggest — submissions to the form below shape what gets built next.
Have an idea?
Dovetail is built by one person, with input from the people who use it. If something would have helped your move — a guide we don't have, a feature that's missing, a calculator that doesn't exist yet — write it down below. Same goes for the words: if something we wrote doesn't feel right, tell me. We care about the language too. I read everything. Not every idea ships, but the ones that do usually start here.