This is great, but also not well suited (in terms of visuals, name, language) to some of the audiences that need it most. A version that resonates more with middle aged men would be great. Oak or something.
This is a bit off-topic and not a direct response to your very reasonable suggestion, but I always find it weird and uncomfortable when companies go over-the-top on the gender stereotypes -- even as someone whose interests admittedly overlap with those very stereotypes.
For example, barber shops that serve bourbon. I'm a fan of bourbon, but it almost feels like they're calling me out for being "basic!" Or I feel like I'm being targeted like those Axe body spray commercials thought they were targeting me when I was a kid in the 90s.
Anyway, I'm not anti-oak, or having it be a farm or something. But also, flowers can be nice.
Beautiful. I am a little worried that you’ll soon lose interest and stop supporting the app without a business model. Do you plan to at least get sponsored, e.g. by some kind of foundation, like ones that are behind mental health initiatives?
This is definitely very useful, and something i've been thinking of to build myself. A personal CRM. Issue is when I see something like this - where it will take me around half hour to figure out - while i can vibe code something in an hour which will do much more and personalize it for me, I hold back on trying it out.
Website looks nice. The copy being so painfully AI-written is a turnoff, enough that my first thought was "oh yeah, I remember hearing about this kind of app, I should look at the other one I'm thinking of". I do like that it's local and free.
Imported some contacts, doing quick setup, first contact, can't scroll down to confirm/finish setting them up. I'm on the SE, which is a slightly smaller screen, sometimes apps seem to have trouble with it, I assume they're assuming a larger screen.
AI tends to be a buzz kill on products because it sends the signal "i can't be bothered to craft this deliberately."
So why then should we bother to interact with the product deliberately.
Around here most know how hard and time consuming it is to ship a production grade experience. AI helps a ton. it's not "wrong" per say, but it undeniably leaves an odor.
The whole website was prompted. You can tell by the overload of emoji's on the page and every section having cards with hover effects. It's classic LLM design.
How do you know that the author is capable of communicating fluently in english?
What if it were the case the the author was so excited about sharing a project but didn't know how to properly explained it and so took the extra effort to learn how to get a piece of software to explain it for them?
Would that then satisfy your requirement that the human behind the project has done enough work to earn your interest?
But AI provides the illusion of communication. Since the AI has no direct access to the user's brain, and has to go off the words they provide, if we're assuming that the person isn't capable generating words that accurately communicate their thoughts, the AI is getting all its information from the same flawed words we'd have access to if they didn't use AI, but destroying any signal encoded in the specific mistakes or choices they've made in its process of shaping their thoughts into something more polished.
AIs don't violate entropy, and can't create information from nothing. They can interpret, and expand, and maybe, just maybe, tease out meaning that a human would have missed. But the more sensitively they're tuned to pick up on small nuances, they more likely they're going to interpret a pattern that isn't there, and the more they're tuned to avoid over-interpretation, the more likely they are to miss something that is there, the same as how a human can aim to interpret something with high or low context.
The difference is, by filtering it through an AI, you're taking that capability out of other people's hands, you're (often intentionally) flattening and damaging signals people usually use to choose how to distribute their attention (often with the cry of "But it's not fair that people want to spend their attention on things that I'm not good at, I have to use AI to convince people to look at my work that they would prefer not to!!"), and when you do that without acknowledging the use of AI, it feels a lot like you don't care about any negative effects your actions have on the existing ecosystems of human creativity and communication, and you're going to get an appropriately hostile response.
> How do you know that the author is capable of communicating fluently in english?
Irrelevant; they can do the best they can and I'll do the best I can.
If the best they can do is have it ghost-written, then the best that I will do is not read it.
> What if it were the case the the author was so excited about sharing a project but didn't know how to properly explained it and so took the extra effort to learn how to get a piece of software to explain it for them?
That's not extra effort, that's less effort.
> Would that then satisfy your requirement that the human behind the project has done enough work to earn your interest?
Look, if someone isn't going to bother to write something, why would others bother to read it?
Writing copy is painfully time consuming. AI just does it better, it's meant to communicate and people are not always great communicators. I know it'll write better copy than me.
Terminally online people need to get over this weird aversion to anything generated w/ help of AI. Do you have similar misgivings, like "this guy obviously used auto correct", or "he's using speech to text, I'm not reading anything unless its hand-written"
Get over it. It's here, it's useful, judge the product on its merits. I get if you see spam email messages that are overly tailored and ignoring them because the person obv didn't do the work. But this dude created a free app that looks pretty cool, maybe he didn't want to spend another few hours to create a pretty standard boilerplate website with app information.
THere's a level of AI generated copy that makes the website look unpolished. I think it's right to critique, in the same way i'd critique an obvious bootstrap css website.
There's loads of factors that may implicitly turn someone off using an app, and I think it's important to let the OP know a critical one.
Copy can signal that a real person spent time on the details and cared about the product. Auto-correct and speech-to-text still carry that idea.
Even boring corporate PR language communicates something. It says the company wants to project stability and predictability, which can be reassuring. Slightly awkward, unpolished copy also sends a signal. It suggests a person speaking directly off-the-cuff rather than polished corporate messaging, which some people prefer.
LLM-generated copy sends a signal too, and not always a good one. To me, it often suggests the author didn’t care enough to think carefully about the message - not even enough to edit something that came out of an LLM.
At that point it starts to feel like someone just prompted Claude to build a reminders app with no care or thought put into it, which I could do myself if I find this idea valuable at all and even personalize the hell out of it. Maybe that's an unfair first impression! But it's not a crazy one given how quickly the cost of code is approaching 0.
> Auto-correct and speech-to-text still carry that idea
Why? You didn't spend real time consulting a dictionary or using penmanship, since writing is often slower than speaking. You didn't do your own memory management? Wow, guess you don't care about the details. Used a compiler? Wow dude, please spend the time to actually build the product the right way. These are all levels of abstraction, the idea is the idea. The LLM has no agency, it has no ideas, you give it your idea. It packages it out and communicates it effectively, which is respectful to the final user.
I don't owe you anything. Why am I wasting my time on this so you can feel somehow important. The copy is not the product. Its communication and should be done clearly and respectfully, and if an LLM facilitates with that, I would hope people use LLM for my sake.
> Even boring corporate PR language communicates something
Yes I want to communicate. I do so with the LLM. I might have a rant "stress privacy, go through the app and highlight the privacy features. Mention it's good for kids. Oh and also mention its local first (I would make this first actually),... " Whats the point of spending literally hours structuring, writing, re-writing etc. Communicate to the LLM, and use it to be respectful of your audience.
I think this is an illuminative statement from you, so I’m going to just explain that I (and many of the people responding to you likely) will vehemently disagree: The copy is an extremely important part of a product like this.
Unlikely we’ll see eye-to-eye on this which is fine, but I would encourage you to do some reflection on that. I’ll certainly be reflecting on what might’ve led to you your position as well.
It's exactly the same "back in my day" bullshit that's always existed.
What do you mean you typed this? If it isn't handwritten, I won't accept it. What do you mean you drove to work? Do you not have the dedication to walk? You can't be a good fit for this company if you're so lazy that you have to drive to work.
As someone who taught marketing for almost 2 decades, I've learned that if the copy does not bring in the people that the product wanted to help, then there might as well be no product.
I literally do not understand this sentiment. Do you not enjoy anything that takes time to do? Do you not enjoy putting time in for things that other people will look at?
> I know it'll write better copy than me
If this is the case I am desperately pleading with you to please read and write more. If you think the copy on this page is passable, let alone good, please read more.
I like building apps, I don't necessarily like writing the same boilerplate BS for a necessary landing page for every app I make.
Again, I'm not saying no one should write marketing copy, if that's your thing, go for it. Take your time, wordsmith. But for others they don't enjoy it or are not particularly good at it (i.e. English isn't someones first language). So let's be accepting and get over it.
> If this is the case I am desperately pleading with you to please read and write more.
If you're making apps for yourself, sure. But the purpose of a landing page is to convey information to humans. Slopping together some drivel to attempt the appearance of professionalism isn't just lazy, it's dishonest. Have some respect for the things you make and the people who may interact with them. And if you don't want to write boilerplate or copy: don't!
> I'm not saying no one should write marketing copy, if that's your thing, go for it. Take your time, wordsmith. But for others they don't enjoy it or are not particularly good at it
The problem is that the generated "marketing copy" ends up being bland and ineffective (nobody "buys", so the copy fails at its single job) when using generalist LLM tools like eg. ChatGPT.
So in the end, you don't achieve the goal of "getting better copy" from it because neither version (neither the copy you'd have done naïvely without knowing anything about marketing, nor the LLM copy) converts anyone.
There's way way way more human slop complaining about AI than there is AI in the first place.
It would be so much nicer if people didn't feel compelled to add the 32nd iteration of whining about the methodology used to produce the content.
I'd say I can't wait until the fad passes, but it's always something, isn't it?
I guess because anger/irritation/outrage are such popular sentiments people tend to resort to that kind of content because it makes them feel good to participate in trends. There's always going to be the group of people who seek popularity by aping whatever the latest fad is.
"Poppy turns your contacts into a living garden. Gentle reminders, zero guilt."—bleh, at least write your own taglines :/
This is a neat idea that has been tried about 300 times over, but since it's contingent on already being cognizant of keeping up with relationships, people that install it aren't going to people that need to be using it.
I mean, I’m a pretty ADHD guy, very in the moment, and although I sporadically invite friends or old colleagues to catch up for lunch, I mean to do it regularly, but I might forget to invite them for years at a time, so this might be good for me. I could really used an “Anki for lunch”, spaced repetition reminders for people in my Rolodex, as it were.
> This is a neat idea that has been tried about 300 times over
Could you share the top 3 attempts that tried it and are better at it? I only know that things like this should exist, but didn't look any further into this class of things, yet.
My idea of what to look into is some kind of CRM for my personal contacts.
Not sure if it's top 3, but I use Monica https://www.monicahq.com/ which does advertise itself as a personal CRM. I certainly underutilize its features but things like birthday reminders + a place for a few notes (where do they live again? who's their partner?) is nice
I recommend keeping it simple. The Obsidian "Bases" feature is a good fit for this if you don't want to go deep w plugins and DIY (which is also viable but has more learning curve and overhead).
Well I just have a folder in obsidian and a template for friends. So I can fill in the various fields like address, names of kids/pets, things they like for when I need to buy a present etc.
Makes me think about a neat feature possibility -- a constraint that means having a garden means others can see into it in some sense, just like a real life garden in your yard. A garden demonstrates to others your care and attention toward it
I really appreciate this work. Yes, it's AI language and it seems it's not polished to run on every device -yet.
And it does one thing really good: be there. Sounds silly, I know, but an app that tries to make the world better AT NO COST is so much more than "well, I could vibe code that myself".
Thanks fellow creator of this app. Thanks for believing that this app may have an impact on the important part of our life:
re/connecting people.
A lot of apps try to solve the “stay in touch with people” problem, but in my experience the novelty usually wears off after a while and the reminders start feeling like noise. Curious how you approached this in Poppy — did you design anything specifically to avoid reminder fatigue and make it sustainable long-term?
Totally love this app. I've always struggled with fostering relationships over time and keeping track of all the little things different people value. I actually tried a friend journal a week ago but that didn't worked as planned either. Once I installed this app, I pinged some folks, had a great unexpected call and now my garden is growing. I value the privacy & local first paradigm. I would have not installed a cloud SaaS app or hidden subscription. However I'm okay with paying a reasonable one time fee for an upgraded version. I did paid for IA Writer on Mac and iphone because their product is exactly right. Your app is similar in the sense that it solves one particular problem for one specific group of people really well. Therefore please consider a paid version at some point.
Hey it’s an amazing app. I was trying to make an app where user can send notifications to friends when they think about them. I think it would be a great additional feature to your app! Reach me if you want to talk about it
The AI writing is a big turn-off: if the app is crafted with the same care as the copy on the website, I'm not sure I want to trust the owner with VERY personal data like that :)
I built something very similar recently but eventually lost interest because I couldn't find customers. It's main focus was sending email reminders to users to contact their friends.
So, I respect the entrepeneurship and technical skills to make this. Well done!
That being said, this is insane.
Maintaining your social network is a skill, just like being able to swim, doing math, being able to hold a good conversation, being able to code or cook or do your taxes.
The "promise" and "illusion" of silicon valley is that all problems (including and maybe even especially social ones) can be solved with technology. This is not true.
Having to use your brain to think about things is definitely painful. It also has incredibly good long-term effects -- and also negative short-term effects because it costs energy. It's similar to eating well, regularly exercising and other aspects of taking care of yourself.
Making sure you can remember to think about other people is not a problem -- it's a REALLY valuable skill that is gradually disappearing.
The problem is not remembering other people, it's contacting them. One always has a thousand excuses to not do the right thing. By gamifying it, and setting reminders, it gives a nudge in the right direction.
It's not different to setting reminders to go to the gym, take your medicine, or any other thing you should do regularly.
And by using this clutch you can train your social muscles so you end up not needing it.
I've used something similar in the past, setting up reminders during the day to keep in contact with someone, using them enough so now I can keep in touch with them without needing the reminders (I no longer have them set up).
For some people there are "basic" things that are hard, these kind of tools are for them.
Basically you're telling people to not be ADHD. Well thanks but it doesn't work like that. I wish. Reminders definitely help especially because our minds are so bad at prioritising. Tools like this can definitely help.
The page specifically mentions ADHD and the design is also a bit too quirky for neurotypicals anyway.
Realising the irony of complaining about the complaining; can we not just have one comment that moans about AI writing and then consider it said?
It's going to be and endless circular discussion going forward, AI is not going anywhere, people are going to use it to write copy. Like all things that irk overly technical people it will be completely missed by the masses so none of the pushback will have any effect.
The issue isn't exactly using some technology, it's more the jarring copy style it outputs. It's extremely impersonal and it signals low care about quality
Hmm if I were to use this I'd want it synced with my desktop (self hosted). I don't spend so much time on the tiny screen of my phone. When I'm at home or the office I have glorious 24" displays and real keyboards so I just use those. It wouldn't work if the phone is the only way to get to this.
Also I'd want it to connect to my messaging apps so I don't have to tell it when I connected with someone. I have better things to do than keeping logs up to date. I have all my messaging apps integrated into a self hosted matrix instance.
I recall a post recently that suggested rather than a fixed contact interval ("message this friend every 2 weeks") it was better to use a Fibonacci spiral (2 weeks, 3 weeks, 5 weeks, etc). Perhaps you could implement that?
very nice! I'll give it a shot! I thought about something similar in the past few years. I like the fact that you insist on "no social pressure" and a "gentle" nudge. The goal is not to make the user feel bad :). I also like that you make me import just a small subset of my contacts, to not feel overwhelmed right from the beginning (start small! make it work then make it better).
some quick feedback:
- I feel a more natural path to add an "extra checkin" would be from the "flower" in the garden (home page).
- I would love to be able to add a date in the checkin. Let's say I know the person I just checked in with told me she has an important event coming up (exam, interview, work deadline, baby...) I'd love to be able to add a specific date for a future checking on a specific topic.
I am probably too old for this, so I don't understand the purpose of this app. As life goes on, old relationships are either maintained naturally or fade away, new ones replace them, etc. If I don't remember or feel like calling someone, I don't. The only thing I need an app for, is to keep track of birthdays, any calendar can do that.
Genuine question: for someone who finds this useful, how and why?
Most of the feedback here is about AI-generated copy, which is a valid signal from HN users but probably not representative of your actual target audience. If you're building for people with ADHD who struggle to keep in touch, their first 60 seconds in the app will tell you everything: can they import contacts and set up a first reminder without getting stuck?
jamilton already found a real onboarding bug on iPhone SE. Get 5 more people like that trying it cold and you'll learn more from watching them than from 50 HN comments about your taglines.
Thanks so much for this! It’s exactly the kind of think I’ve looked for many times. There are slick alternatives that I abandoned due to their (to me) insane pricing models, like “add a few friends for free, then unlock unlimited friends for only $20/mo!” I get that they want to make money, but I’m not paying hundreds per year to remember to call my sister.
The main competitor here is plain old Reminders, or OmniFocus, or any other task manager. A repeating reminder to text that cool coworker you want to stay in touch with isn’t as shiny, but it gets the job done.
I don’t know if there’s an Apple API for getting metadata about recent calls and texts, but that would be the final piece for me: if I texted Joe yesterday, reset the timer on his reminder. I wouldn’t touch that idea with a ten foot pole for other apps, but your privacy policy of “everything you do stays on your own device and we see none of it” is perfect and compatible with the feature.
I like it! It’s aesthetically pleasing and has a nice concept.
There’s still quite a lot that could be refined in terms of UX, visual details, and even the AI-generated texts, as others in the comments have pointed out, but it works well as an MVP. With some polishing over time, it could become a really great app. Great work.
paulhebert | 16 hours ago
dddddaviddddd | 16 hours ago
jonners00 | 16 hours ago
elicash | 8 hours ago
For example, barber shops that serve bourbon. I'm a fan of bourbon, but it almost feels like they're calling me out for being "basic!" Or I feel like I'm being targeted like those Axe body spray commercials thought they were targeting me when I was a kid in the 90s.
Anyway, I'm not anti-oak, or having it be a farm or something. But also, flowers can be nice.
bahador | 16 hours ago
seism | 16 hours ago
zlies | 16 hours ago
adi2907 | 16 hours ago
jamilton | 16 hours ago
Imported some contacts, doing quick setup, first contact, can't scroll down to confirm/finish setting them up. I'm on the SE, which is a slightly smaller screen, sometimes apps seem to have trouble with it, I assume they're assuming a larger screen.
nullbyte808 | 15 hours ago
worthless-trash | 12 hours ago
apsurd | 12 hours ago
So why then should we bother to interact with the product deliberately.
Around here most know how hard and time consuming it is to ship a production grade experience. AI helps a ton. it's not "wrong" per say, but it undeniably leaves an odor.
dreadnip | 11 hours ago
dolebirchwood | 10 hours ago
dolebirchwood | an hour ago
Please do not engage with this fraudulent clown-show of an app.
biofox | 10 hours ago
"No feed, no doomscrolling — just intention."
"Not your whole address book — just the ones you'd hate to lose touch with"
"You care deeply—you're just terrible at follow-through."
"You care deeply—your ADHD brain just doesn't..."
rigrassm | 9 hours ago
Well shit, that solves everything! What a revelation -_-
gumboshoes | 7 hours ago
accrual | 7 hours ago
lelanthran | 9 hours ago
red-iron-pine | 6 hours ago
Low effort interactions just aren't worth it. IF it's not worth writing at least 3 sentences chances are I don't care - and won't ever care.
Like yeah it's cool to see what some guy I knew in high school is up to, but ultimately that connection ain't making my life better.
HN is an exception in the signal to noise ratio is far higher than a lot of other social media - though the bots are hitting it hard these days.
goodmythical | 4 hours ago
How do you know that the author is capable of communicating fluently in english?
What if it were the case the the author was so excited about sharing a project but didn't know how to properly explained it and so took the extra effort to learn how to get a piece of software to explain it for them?
Would that then satisfy your requirement that the human behind the project has done enough work to earn your interest?
BobaFloutist | 2 hours ago
AIs don't violate entropy, and can't create information from nothing. They can interpret, and expand, and maybe, just maybe, tease out meaning that a human would have missed. But the more sensitively they're tuned to pick up on small nuances, they more likely they're going to interpret a pattern that isn't there, and the more they're tuned to avoid over-interpretation, the more likely they are to miss something that is there, the same as how a human can aim to interpret something with high or low context.
The difference is, by filtering it through an AI, you're taking that capability out of other people's hands, you're (often intentionally) flattening and damaging signals people usually use to choose how to distribute their attention (often with the cry of "But it's not fair that people want to spend their attention on things that I'm not good at, I have to use AI to convince people to look at my work that they would prefer not to!!"), and when you do that without acknowledging the use of AI, it feels a lot like you don't care about any negative effects your actions have on the existing ecosystems of human creativity and communication, and you're going to get an appropriately hostile response.
lelanthran | an hour ago
Irrelevant; they can do the best they can and I'll do the best I can.
If the best they can do is have it ghost-written, then the best that I will do is not read it.
> What if it were the case the the author was so excited about sharing a project but didn't know how to properly explained it and so took the extra effort to learn how to get a piece of software to explain it for them?
That's not extra effort, that's less effort.
> Would that then satisfy your requirement that the human behind the project has done enough work to earn your interest?
Look, if someone isn't going to bother to write something, why would others bother to read it?
bko | 9 hours ago
Terminally online people need to get over this weird aversion to anything generated w/ help of AI. Do you have similar misgivings, like "this guy obviously used auto correct", or "he's using speech to text, I'm not reading anything unless its hand-written"
Get over it. It's here, it's useful, judge the product on its merits. I get if you see spam email messages that are overly tailored and ignoring them because the person obv didn't do the work. But this dude created a free app that looks pretty cool, maybe he didn't want to spend another few hours to create a pretty standard boilerplate website with app information.
loloquwowndueo | 8 hours ago
Sorry, no. It doesn’t do it better. It’s like chewing cardboard. All fluff, not a lot of actual well-presented information.
AI is also not a great communicator- it learned from people, which you said are not great.
endymion-light | 8 hours ago
There's loads of factors that may implicitly turn someone off using an app, and I think it's important to let the OP know a critical one.
BoxFour | 8 hours ago
Copy can signal that a real person spent time on the details and cared about the product. Auto-correct and speech-to-text still carry that idea.
Even boring corporate PR language communicates something. It says the company wants to project stability and predictability, which can be reassuring. Slightly awkward, unpolished copy also sends a signal. It suggests a person speaking directly off-the-cuff rather than polished corporate messaging, which some people prefer.
LLM-generated copy sends a signal too, and not always a good one. To me, it often suggests the author didn’t care enough to think carefully about the message - not even enough to edit something that came out of an LLM.
At that point it starts to feel like someone just prompted Claude to build a reminders app with no care or thought put into it, which I could do myself if I find this idea valuable at all and even personalize the hell out of it. Maybe that's an unfair first impression! But it's not a crazy one given how quickly the cost of code is approaching 0.
bko | 6 hours ago
Why? You didn't spend real time consulting a dictionary or using penmanship, since writing is often slower than speaking. You didn't do your own memory management? Wow, guess you don't care about the details. Used a compiler? Wow dude, please spend the time to actually build the product the right way. These are all levels of abstraction, the idea is the idea. The LLM has no agency, it has no ideas, you give it your idea. It packages it out and communicates it effectively, which is respectful to the final user.
I don't owe you anything. Why am I wasting my time on this so you can feel somehow important. The copy is not the product. Its communication and should be done clearly and respectfully, and if an LLM facilitates with that, I would hope people use LLM for my sake.
> Even boring corporate PR language communicates something
Yes I want to communicate. I do so with the LLM. I might have a rant "stress privacy, go through the app and highlight the privacy features. Mention it's good for kids. Oh and also mention its local first (I would make this first actually),... " Whats the point of spending literally hours structuring, writing, re-writing etc. Communicate to the LLM, and use it to be respectful of your audience.
BoxFour | 5 hours ago
I think this is an illuminative statement from you, so I’m going to just explain that I (and many of the people responding to you likely) will vehemently disagree: The copy is an extremely important part of a product like this.
Unlikely we’ll see eye-to-eye on this which is fine, but I would encourage you to do some reflection on that. I’ll certainly be reflecting on what might’ve led to you your position as well.
goodmythical | 4 hours ago
Can't wait until people give up this lunacy.
It's exactly the same "back in my day" bullshit that's always existed.
What do you mean you typed this? If it isn't handwritten, I won't accept it. What do you mean you drove to work? Do you not have the dedication to walk? You can't be a good fit for this company if you're so lazy that you have to drive to work.
sebastiennight | 54 minutes ago
As someone who taught marketing for almost 2 decades, I've learned that if the copy does not bring in the people that the product wanted to help, then there might as well be no product.
contagiousflow | 8 hours ago
I literally do not understand this sentiment. Do you not enjoy anything that takes time to do? Do you not enjoy putting time in for things that other people will look at?
> I know it'll write better copy than me
If this is the case I am desperately pleading with you to please read and write more. If you think the copy on this page is passable, let alone good, please read more.
bko | 6 hours ago
Again, I'm not saying no one should write marketing copy, if that's your thing, go for it. Take your time, wordsmith. But for others they don't enjoy it or are not particularly good at it (i.e. English isn't someones first language). So let's be accepting and get over it.
> If this is the case I am desperately pleading with you to please read and write more.
Please stop moralizing.
contagiousflow | 6 hours ago
sebastiennight | 46 minutes ago
The problem is that the generated "marketing copy" ends up being bland and ineffective (nobody "buys", so the copy fails at its single job) when using generalist LLM tools like eg. ChatGPT.
So in the end, you don't achieve the goal of "getting better copy" from it because neither version (neither the copy you'd have done naïvely without knowing anything about marketing, nor the LLM copy) converts anyone.
duskdozer | 7 hours ago
SunshineTheCat | 5 hours ago
I'm just counting down the days until no one can actually tell how much AI was involved so we can get to discussing whether the thing is good or not.
goodmythical | 4 hours ago
It would be so much nicer if people didn't feel compelled to add the 32nd iteration of whining about the methodology used to produce the content.
I'd say I can't wait until the fad passes, but it's always something, isn't it?
I guess because anger/irritation/outrage are such popular sentiments people tend to resort to that kind of content because it makes them feel good to participate in trends. There's always going to be the group of people who seek popularity by aping whatever the latest fad is.
dvt | 16 hours ago
This is a neat idea that has been tried about 300 times over, but since it's contingent on already being cognizant of keeping up with relationships, people that install it aren't going to people that need to be using it.
wincy | 15 hours ago
opto | 15 hours ago
listic | 12 hours ago
Could you share the top 3 attempts that tried it and are better at it? I only know that things like this should exist, but didn't look any further into this class of things, yet.
My idea of what to look into is some kind of CRM for my personal contacts.
bobbiechen | 12 hours ago
wolvoleo | 11 hours ago
edelans | 10 hours ago
Can you share a bit more about how you structure this and how you would recommend getting started ?
chrisweekly | 7 hours ago
wolvoleo | 2 hours ago
The rest I just freeform.
But reminders would be nice.
bananamogul | 53 minutes ago
patcon | 7 hours ago
SeriousM | 15 hours ago
And it does one thing really good: be there. Sounds silly, I know, but an app that tries to make the world better AT NO COST is so much more than "well, I could vibe code that myself".
Thanks fellow creator of this app. Thanks for believing that this app may have an impact on the important part of our life: re/connecting people.
HaloZero | 15 hours ago
kingkawn | 15 hours ago
swaminarayan | 15 hours ago
downboots | 15 hours ago
marvin-hansen | 14 hours ago
togido | 14 hours ago
MagicMoonlight | 13 hours ago
mekaoro | 13 hours ago
Madmallard | 13 hours ago
fpauser | 11 hours ago
paulglx | 12 hours ago
fpauser | 11 hours ago
alabhyajindal | 12 hours ago
https://alabhya.me/myfriends
mriet | 12 hours ago
That being said, this is insane.
Maintaining your social network is a skill, just like being able to swim, doing math, being able to hold a good conversation, being able to code or cook or do your taxes.
The "promise" and "illusion" of silicon valley is that all problems (including and maybe even especially social ones) can be solved with technology. This is not true.
Having to use your brain to think about things is definitely painful. It also has incredibly good long-term effects -- and also negative short-term effects because it costs energy. It's similar to eating well, regularly exercising and other aspects of taking care of yourself.
Making sure you can remember to think about other people is not a problem -- it's a REALLY valuable skill that is gradually disappearing.
JaumeGreen | 12 hours ago
It's not different to setting reminders to go to the gym, take your medicine, or any other thing you should do regularly.
And by using this clutch you can train your social muscles so you end up not needing it.
I've used something similar in the past, setting up reminders during the day to keep in contact with someone, using them enough so now I can keep in touch with them without needing the reminders (I no longer have them set up).
For some people there are "basic" things that are hard, these kind of tools are for them.
wolvoleo | 11 hours ago
The page specifically mentions ADHD and the design is also a bit too quirky for neurotypicals anyway.
1shooner | 5 hours ago
Are you not using software to do your taxes?
bengale | 12 hours ago
It's going to be and endless circular discussion going forward, AI is not going anywhere, people are going to use it to write copy. Like all things that irk overly technical people it will be completely missed by the masses so none of the pushback will have any effect.
paulglx | 11 hours ago
crispyambulance | 10 hours ago
I find the opposite is true. AI-written copy is an instant turn-off to non-tech folks but many tech-focused people tolerate it.
rkangel | 12 hours ago
pousada | 12 hours ago
I see the merit in this project as well but no way in hell i share this data with a third party
wolvoleo | 11 hours ago
Also I'd want it to connect to my messaging apps so I don't have to tell it when I connected with someone. I have better things to do than keeping logs up to date. I have all my messaging apps integrated into a self hosted matrix instance.
But it's a nice idea especially with ADHD.
billyjobob | 11 hours ago
edelans | 10 hours ago
some quick feedback: - I feel a more natural path to add an "extra checkin" would be from the "flower" in the garden (home page). - I would love to be able to add a date in the checkin. Let's say I know the person I just checked in with told me she has an important event coming up (exam, interview, work deadline, baby...) I'd love to be able to add a specific date for a future checking on a specific topic.
AdrianB1 | 9 hours ago
Genuine question: for someone who finds this useful, how and why?
testbyhuman_tor | 9 hours ago
jamilton already found a real onboarding bug on iPhone SE. Get 5 more people like that trying it cold and you'll learn more from watching them than from 50 HN comments about your taglines.
termwatch | 8 hours ago
aristofun | 6 hours ago
kstrauser | 6 hours ago
The main competitor here is plain old Reminders, or OmniFocus, or any other task manager. A repeating reminder to text that cool coworker you want to stay in touch with isn’t as shiny, but it gets the job done.
I don’t know if there’s an Apple API for getting metadata about recent calls and texts, but that would be the final piece for me: if I texted Joe yesterday, reset the timer on his reminder. I wouldn’t touch that idea with a ten foot pole for other apps, but your privacy policy of “everything you do stays on your own device and we see none of it” is perfect and compatible with the feature.
So, nice job, and thanks for sharing!
MrDrMcCoy | 6 hours ago
nerali | 2 hours ago
There’s still quite a lot that could be refined in terms of UX, visual details, and even the AI-generated texts, as others in the comments have pointed out, but it works well as an MVP. With some polishing over time, it could become a really great app. Great work.