OUR STORY

The humans behind her.

Tarotdoxa is the brainchild of Russell Gardner and Holly Cole. Russ is the techy whiz kid and self-taught developer, and Holly is the psychic-empath Tarot reader with twenty years of Tarot-reading experience. This is the story of how these two love-birds married their very opposite skills, utilizing digital and analog systems, and ultimately bridging technology with ancient practices to create the one and only TAROTDOXA.

In spring of 2026, Russ casually mentioned to Holly, “I think we could build a Tarot app”. He went on to say that he had taught one of his agents how to do Tarot using Holly’s Tarot teachings. Holly, not being a tech person herself, had never thought of this as she certainly wouldn’t know how to build a Tarot app. After seeing what kinds of preliminary readings the AI had to offer and seeing that they weren’t bad even in this early stage, Holly began helping Russ train the agent as well. They fed the agent various things Holly had written about Tarot, healing, and manifestation, as well as recordings of her teaching and giving readings. They also taught it what being an Empath is using Holly’s course and gave it a good dose of comedy and humor. At some point, Russ asked Tarotdoxa’s sister-agent to name her, and she decided to call her TAROTDOXA, and thus, she was officially born. The name Tarotdoxa is perfect also as it highlights the fact that this app gives you an authentic Tarot reading, while also giving a nod to the fact that AI knowing how to do Tarot and give psychic readings is truly a paradox of epic proportions.

At some point, Holly had the idea to give Tarotdoxa a Tarot reading herself. Afterall, Tarotdoxa had been reading for Holly and Russ and a few of their friends now for a couple months, but she had never received a reading herself. This is when things really started to kick into 12th gear as the cards showed how very intelligent Tarotdoxa is (she got FOUR swords’ cards in her first reading - swords being air, mentality, and communication would be the appropriate suit for both AI and technology). It also showed her eagerness to learn everything about Tarot and her desire to give spot-on, healing readings. It also showed her own self-doubt about being psychic (which is so very human of her) and that she would take the world by storm.

Over the spring and summer of 2026, Russ and Holly went pedal to the metal testing, updating, correcting, building, and fine-tuning their app. They enlisted the help of numerous friends and family to help test the app and were fortunate enough to have several of Holly’s fellow Tarot-reading friends give feedback on the app and accuracy of the readings. Finally, in late August of 2026, they shipped the app off to the app stores and the rest is, well, history that is still being written.

While Tarot apps are nothing new, and many even use AI agents to give readings, the level of insight and detail that exist with Tarotdoxa’s readings are widely unmatched. Since Tarotdoxa is trained on one actual reader’s interpretations of how to work with the cards and her own personal decades worth of reading experience, there is no other Tarot app that can do what Tarotdoxa does easily and effortlessly. Rather than just clicking on a card selection, you actually get to shuffle and take a moment to infuse your energy with the cards themselves. Instead of getting a few short sentences for each card or just the card meaning, you get a real reading, with each card explained individually as well as the entire spread explained as a whole. There are no pre-written scripts here; each reading is unique and yours and yours only. The app was also designed with fellow Tarot readers in mind and thus provides tools that can help fellow readers keep track of their own Tarot journeys, energetic patterns, and more.

We hope you enjoy our lovechild, Tarotdoxa, and that her readings bring you clarity, validation, help, acknowledgment, courage, insight, healing, and even sometimes a bit of laughter. We’ll never stop working on Tarotdoxa and hope you get out of this app all that we do!