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.
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.
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.
Can you share a bit more about how you structure this and how you would recommend getting started ?
The rest I just freeform.
But reminders would be nice.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 see the merit in this project as well but no way in hell i share this data with a third party
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.
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.
The page specifically mentions ADHD and the design is also a bit too quirky for neurotypicals anyway.
Genuine question: for someone who finds this useful, how and why?
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.
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.
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.
"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..."
Well shit, that solves everything! What a revelation -_-
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.
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?
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?
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.
Please do not engage with this fraudulent clown-show of an app.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.