Discussion

Nurture the relationships that matter most ✨

paulhebert: This looks lovely! I've been meaning to do a better job of calling friends and family. I'll try it out!

seism: 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?

bahador: Is this a CRM for your friends? FRM? FriendsForce?

jonners00: 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.

dddddaviddddd: It would be nice if the homepage loaded more gracefully with Javascript disabled -- as it is, it's completely blank without JS.

adi2907: 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.

dvt: "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.

jamilton: 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.

SeriousM: 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.

nullbyte808: How do you know its AI? Who cares, sounds fine too me.

wincy: 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.

thih9: The copy feels shallow and pointless at places[1], at least to me.But perhaps you’re right and it doesn’t matter who produces watered down content.[1]: E.g. there are empty colorful circles next to the “Trusted by 2,400+ thoughtful connectors [heart emoji]” text. They were maybe meant to be avatars for testimonials? But to me it feels like some leftover from a generic template.

opto: You just need a tickler file.

swaminarayan: 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?

kingkawn: AI writing = nobody will read it. The lure of easy perfection is death to meaningful interaction.

downboots: Duolingo for relationships

diimdeep: [delayed]

marvin-hansen: 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.

togido: 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

mekaoro: Love the idea! Contrary to the comments i have seen this first time, just the website copy is AI generated hence it feels off.

listic: > This is a neat idea that has been tried about 300 times overCould 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.

Madmallard: The solution to fostering relationships is getting off the computer and your phone and social media for a prolonged period of time.

paulglx: 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 :)

bobbiechen: 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

worthless-trash: We do mate, we do.

alabhyajindal: 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.https://alabhya.me/myfriends

apsurd: 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.

bengale: 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.

pousada: I’ve been meaning to build a personal selfhostable version of this. I’ll vibecode it as simple webapp someday and OSS it, should be easy enough.I see the merit in this project as well but no way in hell i share this data with a third party

billyjobob: 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?

wolvoleo: 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.But it's a nice idea especially with ADHD.

dreadnip: 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.

paulglx: 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

mriet: 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.

wolvoleo: 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.

fpauser: Yes!

fpauser: But they have to make money somehow! ;)

dolebirchwood: The avatars in the "testimonials" are all AI-generated by pravatar.cc, so take that into consideration. The site is bull shit.

crispyambulance: > Like all things that irk overly technical people it [AI-written copy] will be completely missed by the masses...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.

edelans: 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.

wolvoleo: I just put that stuff into obsidian here. Only thing I miss are the birthday reminders but there's probably a plugin for that :)

edelans: oh interesting, I never thought about using my obsidian vault for that.Can you share a bit more about how you structure this and how you would recommend getting started ?

AdrianB1: 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?

lelanthran: Well, if someone can't bother to write something, why should anyone bother to read it?

testbyhuman_tor: 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.

bko: 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.

endymion-light: 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.

loloquwowndueo: > AI just does it better, it's meant to communicate and people are not always great communicators.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.

BoxFour: I'll bite: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.

termwatch: The review section looks very unpolished: no x-padding at all, a random black a rrow..

contagiousflow: > Writing copy is painfully time consumingI 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 meIf 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.

biofox: "Privacy isn't a feature — it's the foundation.""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..."

gumboshoes: Even the word "intentional" alone is an AI tell.

patcon: 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

1shooner: >do your taxes.Are you not using software to do your taxes?

goodmythical: That's awfully able-ist isn't it?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?

nerali: 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.

lelanthran: > 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?

dolebirchwood: I revisited the site and noticed that the testimonials section is now deleted. What a punk coward.Please do not engage with this fraudulent clown-show of an app.

bananamogul: You can also self-host Monica, either via Docker or on metal if you're comfortable with Laravel.

mahirhiro: Firstly I just want to say thank you to all of you who took the time to comment/ download / review the app/ send me feedback. Positive or negative feedback this was pretty cool to receive.This is the first app I built and it’s cool to see something which I initially built for myself resonates with other folks here!!A few quick responses:On the AI copy: Fair criticism. I did use LLMs to help structure some of the landing page text. Writing marketing copy is honestly not my strongest skill and I spent most of my time building the app itself. That said, the comments here made it clear the tone feels generic, which is the opposite of what the app is trying to do. I’ll probably rewrite a lot of it in a simpler, more direct voice.On reminder fatigue: This was one of the main things I worried about when building it. A lot of apps in this space turn into “nagware.” My approach was: - You only add a small subset of contacts (not your whole address book). - you adjust the frequency to what feels comfortable and start muting or snoozing people as they either leave your circle in life, or you feel like it’s becoming annoying. Of course I’m open to feedback here!On privacy: Everything lives locally on the device. No accounts, no backend. The app literally has no way for me to see your data. For something this personal, that felt like the only acceptable design.Again I built it mostly because I personally struggle with the “out of sight, out of mind” problem with friends who don’t live nearby anymore. If it ends up useful to others, that’s a bonus, I’ve already gotten 500 downloads in my first day which is so cool because I had a target of 100, now my next target is 1000 (post bug fixes this weekend haha)Really appreciate the bug reports and feature suggestions in this thread keep’em coming.

mahirhiro: Funnily enough, while I definitely prompted but finding other website designs I liked and color schemes. I specifically wanted the hover effects because I love quirky animations. On the garden in the app try holding on a flower/ seed or click on a butterfly and enjoy the Easter egg ;)

mahirhiro: Thank you for the feedback and trying the app!I’ll be working on fixing this :). Unfortunately I didn’t bother tested with the SE, only the 11 onwards, lesson learned.

mahirhiro: Very interesting idea! One of the features of the app is the no signup no data associated to you which has to change if I want to allow peeking into your friends garden to see “anonymous views” of their garden.

mahirhiro: Appreciate the feedback! Good advice which I appreciate on my first app. Since I have a full time job I don’t have the time right now to support it as much as I’d love to but I’ll make it work!

mahirhiro: If get a chance to read the website / privacy policy you’ll find that I actually don’t have access to any data, you don’t need to sign up to begin using the app. The sales pitch is entirely privacy first :)

mahirhiro: Please give it a good and let me know which parts don’t work for you :)

mahirhiro: LET’S GO! Appreciate the fact that you gave this app a go.What features would you even expect in the paid version?Also generally if you think of anything please email me for app improvements / suggestions

kstrauser: I agree completely. When I'm thinking of my friends, I'm quick to contact them. But when life gets busy and I'm heads-down doing stuff for weeks at a time, anything outside my line of sight tends to get forgotten about.Frankly, "just remember to do X" strikes me like "have you ever tried just not having cancer" in terms of useful advice. And given the number of generalized to-do apps like Reminders, OmniFocus, Todoist, etc., it seems like there's a huge market for people who need an app to remind them of stuff.

mahirhiro: interesting idea, got a link to what you read?

mahirhiro: > where it will take me around half hour to figure outWould love feedback on what parts are confusing :)

HaloZero: I love this! It’s a fantastic little free app. Any reason you don’t open source it? I’d love to help fix some bugs that I encounter.

mahirhiro: Good point. Honestly, I might consider open sourcing it. I'd like to leave it in a stable place and go from there. Can you also reach out with your contact @ poppynudge@gmail.com for the future :)

mahirhiro: Thank you!

mahirhiro: Cheers for the honest feedback. Would love to chat to hear some of your UI/UX input. If you have some time please reach out on poppynudge@gmail.com.

mahirhiro: Thank you for giving the app a try and especially for the feedback :)I'll consider add an extra checkin from the flower too.Interesting idea for the checkin date. I personally like it but I'll let it sit for a while more. In the mean time for a given contact you can scroll down to the "important reminders" part and set a date for the event. Maybe that was hidden?

mahirhiro: Interesting idea. DM me @ poppynudge

mahirhiro: > I see the merit in this project as well but no way in hell i share this data with a third partyIf get a chance to read the website / privacy policy you’ll find that I actually don’t have access to any data, you don’t need to sign up to begin using the app. The sales pitch is entirely privacy first :) so all the data stays on your device.

phs318u: Probably because its not War and Peace. It's the hook for some app you're probably going top spend all of 2 minutes on deciding whether it may or may not be functionally useful, and that equation is going to be largely solved independent of the quality of that marketing copy.

throwaway290: since when the world only has english speaking people?

samrus: Good execution, but i kinda dont like the core concept of gamifying socialization. Its weird.If i had to put my finger on soemthing id say the most uncomfortable part is bypassing the long term rewards of maintaining a healthy social life in favour of short term gamified rewards. I think alot of tech already does this and its rotting peoples brains. Id rather not go further down this roadI think this core probpem is better solved by having a sense of community, by being able to see the people in your life more pften and having third spaces to interact with them regularlyObviously thats not something that can be solved with the resources available to a hobby project. And i might be too harsh saying this is braintrot, its obviously coming with good intentions. Idk. I feel like some problems arent jsut not solveable by more tech, but tech is causing them in the first palce

citadel_melon: Is there a way you can make custom time-intervals? One month seems too short for one of my friends, but 3 months is too long.

mahirhiro: > yepin the app you can configure custom time intervals just like in google calendar :)

togido: Sent an email to the email contact on your website :)

Muhammad523: Btw, this project seems to be a solution looking for a problem.

mahirhiro: Yep, that was actually a placeholder (eventually with real people, and now soon with 500 downloads!) I didn’t comment out properly hence what someone else pointed out with the html commenting. Mistakes happen and I agree I should do a better job to proof read :)

Muhammad523: I truly don't think it's possible for new software to have testimonials... especially good ones.

Muhammad523: Deleted? Well, the Wayback Machine comes to rescue.https://web.archive.org/web/20260305052854/https://poppy-con...

rkangel: Looks lovely, but unusable by me as I'm on Android.

mahirhiro: There's a waitlist on the website :)

mahirhiro: Thank you @paulhebert! Please feel free to send me any feedback or ideas after trying it out

zlies: Nice Idea! I noticed a bug during contact import. The month of birthdays are shifted -1 :)

mahirhiro: Thank you for the feedback and bug report!!! It's going to be fixed in an update 1.1.0 (waiting for apple to approve it)!

MrDrMcCoy: Why is it only for iOS? That fully cuts me and many others off from even trying it.

mahirhiro: There's a waitlist for Android on the website :)

mahirhiro: Heya, just released 1.1.0 where you can add an extra checkin from the flower by clicking on it.

relvio: Check out https://github.com/Relvio-AI/relvio, its an open-source personal CRM that connects to Gmail and automatically extracts your contacts. You can add notes, tag people by relationship, set follow-up reminders with overdue tracking, and see who you're losing touch with. LinkedIn import works via CSV.Free, runs locally on your machine with no cloud or subscription, takes a couple minutes to set up

relvio: Check out https://github.com/Relvio-AI/relvio, its an open-source personal CRM that connects to Gmail and automatically extracts your contacts. You can add notes, tag people by relationship, set follow-up reminders with overdue tracking, and see who you're losing touch with. LinkedIn import works via CSV.Free, runs locally on your machine with no cloud or subscription, takes a couple minutes to set up

nerali: Sure, I’d be happy toI’ve installed the app, I’ll spend some more time with it and share my thoughts once I’ve had a proper look.

mahirhiro: Thanks Nerali! Much appreciated.