Jyotish Sarathi

02 · Problem

Jyotish is widely consulted but poorly served digitally in Nepal. What exists tends to fall into one of two categories:

• Generic Western astrology apps that use the wrong calculation system and the wrong calendar.
• Local tools that are computationally correct but effectively unusable — dense tables, no explanation, desktop-era interfaces.

The gap is a product that is accurate by the standards of the tradition and comprehensible to someone who is not a practitioner.

03 · Concept

Separate the two problems. Keep the astrological computation strict and unmodified, and put all the design effort into the layer above it — interpretation, sequencing and language.

A user provides birth details once. From there the app produces their chart, explains what each element means in plain Nepali or English, and surfaces daily panchanga information without requiring the user to understand how any of it was derived.

04 · Key features

1. Kundali generation

   Natal charts for locations worldwide, with divisional charts from D1 through to D60.

2. Two calculation systems

   Classical Surya Siddhanta and observational Drik Siddhanta, so a practitioner can work in the method they trust.

3. Dasha and transit

   Dasha period predictions and transit analysis drawn from a 500-year ephemeris database.

4. Faladesh readings

   71 yoga faladesh interpretations generated from the chart itself.

5. Kundali matching

   Compatibility matching between two charts — one of the most-requested functions in practice.

6. Panchanga calendar

   A full astrological calendar alongside the daily panchanga.

7. Works offline

   Every calculation runs on the device; no connection needed once installed.

05 · Technology

• Flutter / Dart — one codebase across Android, macOS and Windows.
• Astrology calculation engine — ephemeris and sidereal computation, running on-device.
• 500-year ephemeris database — bundled, so the software works with no connection.
• Surya Siddhanta & Drik Siddhanta — two calculation methods, user-selectable.
• Local persistence — saved charts and profiles on device.

06 · My contribution

I worked on the application side of the product: screen structure and navigation, integrating the calculation API into the interface, handling the state and caching around saved charts, and preparing release builds.

A significant share of the work was presentation logic rather than feature code — deciding how much of a chart to show at once, what to reveal progressively, and how to keep a dense traditional output from overwhelming the screen.

07 · Screenshots

08 · Challenges and decisions

Accuracy is non-negotiable

Users of this app will check its output against a practitioner. A calculation that is subtly wrong destroys trust instantly and permanently. So the calculation layer was treated as fixed and correct, and every product decision was made around it rather than through it.

Density versus clarity

A traditional chart contains a lot of simultaneous information, and practitioners expect to see all of it. Newcomers need almost none of it at first. The resolution was a layered interface: a readable summary by default, full detail one tap away, nothing removed.

Devanagari in a cross-platform app

Nepali text rendering exposed real differences between platforms — font fallback, line breaking and the vertical rhythm of mixed Devanagari/Latin text. Fixing this properly meant bundling fonts and testing layouts on both platforms rather than trusting the defaults.

Calendar conversion

Bikram Sambat does not map cleanly onto Gregorian dates, and getting this wrong shifts every panchanga value. Conversion is handled in one place and treated as a core piece of infrastructure, not a formatting detail.

09 · Status

The application is active, with ongoing work on content depth and interface refinement based on how people actually use it. The clearest lesson so far is that users care far more about the explanations than the chart graphics.

10 · Links