Show HN: I’m an introvert – made an app to help maintain connections with people | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I’m an introvert – made an app to help maintain connections with people

cq.mtc.dev

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This is a cool idea. I constantly come across as a dick because a friend will message me, and I'll think about what to respond with, hesitate because I want to come up with the BEST response, then get distracted by another task, forget to text them back until the next day, etc. There are also people I only see every few months and have a blast with, then completely radio silence them for months until I see them again. I really have no idea how to keep up with people.

> I constantly come across as a dick because a friend will message me, and I'll think about what to respond with, hesitate because I want to come up with the BEST response, then get distracted by another task, forget to text them back until the next day, etc.

There are two paradigms I see people use to solve this:

1. Text back as soon as you see the message and be okay with your response not being optimal. This is what I do the most.

2. Don't open the app to read the message until you have time to respond, then commit to responding. This way you'll have the message notification reminding you to respond and you don't leave your friend on read.

> Don't open the app to read the message until you have time to respond, then commit to responding.

Then you end up with unread messages for weeks at a time.

> Then you end up with unread messages for weeks at a time.

If people are a priority for you, then you need to just make time. No one is unable to spare 5 minutes to text back. You just have to sacrifice 5 minutes of something else, whether it's work, a video game, or a hobby.

If you can't spare that, then I guess accept that those people aren't that important to you.

It takes many of us longer than 5 minutes to compose the BEST response (part of option 2), especially if you have a queue built up.

It takes years to compose the best response

5 minutes might be too short, but the idea of waiting until you have time to fully respond makes sense.

Perhaps composing the BEST response isn't the right tradeoff vs being available for your friends and not leaving them hanging?

A person I'm close to does this (takes days/weeks to respond to anything). Important as they are to me, I've basically written them off as someone I can rely on.

The "best" response doesn't objectively exist, but if it did, it would be a function of both time and quality.

For example, when you take 24 hours to respond, the message you're sending is that the person is a low priority, regardless of what text you've composed.

People who feel that anxious about composing the best reply should seek therapy to help them tolerate the distress of doing things imperfectly.

Some perspective: sometimes the best response is signalling to people that they're important to you and that getting back to them quickly is important to you.

> I guess accept that those people aren't that important to you.

The great irony is that when they aren't important, the response is quick and easy. Your poor choice of words can piss them off and you don't have to care.

It's usually 2 for me; I've always hated the implicit idea of phone calls and text messages being "drop what you're doing and talk to me now!" No, I'll respond when I want. (Unless it's an emergency or a business call during business hours.) This sometimes discourages people from calling or texting, which I am fine with. The ones who do still call or text are generally as asynchronous as me, or at least don't care much, so it works out.

I have also gone days without even noticing that I got a text, but it has never led to much trouble.

You needn't feel like a d*ck. Just realize that when people call you or text you it is on there time; however, replying does not need to be on their time - but on your own time. I have found if I forcefully and succinctly communicate that - it works.

I deal with it this way: The people I care about I frankly say "Look, I only prefer to communicate at certain intervals during the day because I'm usually in flow or focused. Please text and call, but realize if I don't answer it was because I was in that state. Sometimes I come out shortly, sometimes it is a few days".

Texts, calls, etc go unanswered until I'm ready on my time.

You'll have to tailor to the person though... some extroverts forget everything they read and/or have low impulse control, some introverts forget everything they hear.

This doesn't help you maintain connections with people, it's emotional forgery and anyone caught using something like this will find their "connections" evaporate instantly.

If you want to maintain connections with people put the effort in, that's the substance of the connection in the first place. If you don't, then don't.

People want to feel like they matter to you, so you contacting them shows that you care about them and fulfills that need. This app is a betrayal of that.

Is this connected to an article from The Onion or something? A joke?

By caught do you mean somebody sifting through your unlocked phone?

If one of the edge cases the author mentions pops up they could deduce from the context of the message that you didn't personally send it at that moment. Short of lying about it and claiming it must have been slow to arrive, I'd say you were caught.

"I use a program to send messages at a programmed time"

I came to this thread earlier and thought I'd taken crazy pills, so I'd check back later. Not a single non-positive comment.

People who use this or think this is a good thing have fundamentally misunderstood social interaction. Your girlfriend doesn't want the signal that you care, she wants you to actually care, and keeping in contact is an expression of caring. If you need to forge something this foundational, I'm sorry but that's not being introverted, that's treating social interaction as a game or trade. I feel like it's bordering on psychopathy.

I mostly agree. When I'm focused on something, I tend to isolate myself. I forget to contact people. I care but I'm just distracted.

I would prefer reminders of "You haven't called your Mom in X days". Set configurable threshholds of how often you want to contact different people but still require you to actually do it.

This is a symptom of caring too much about what you're focused on, though. While I appreciate that sometimes it's easy to forget important things, I think if you need inorganic means to remember to call your mother, you need to take a moment to actually consider that, rather than looking for the nearest software "solution".

Not everyone's brain works in the same way as yours, that doesn't make them a sociopath.

For what it’s worth, the app, by default, will not take any action and largely act as a helpful reminder, and I highly recommend this type of use.

I think the part you're missing is that this is supposed to be followed up by actual conversations and interactions.

There are a great many friends where Life Happens™ and although I genuinely care about them, I haven't contacted them in months / years (and vice versa) because I'm not generally the type to initiate small-talk. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy catching up with friends and going over the little things in our lives, it's just not something I naturally do. Having an app that helps you keep in touch with the people you care about (if you don't care why would you bother to set up an app) seems helpful.

And I think stating that this is not introversion but more like psychopathy is a bit beyond the pale. It can be hard for introverts to kickstart conversations with people they haven't talked to in a while for various reasons, none of which are "because they're a sociopath". They might feel like they're intruding or they might have confidence issues which cause them to feel that messaging people out of the blue will make them seem weird, even if neither of those things are actually true from the other person's perspective.

It may not be because they are being a sociopath but it also isn't just because of being an introvert. What you are describing is social anxiety which some introverts have and others do not.

Nobody said all introverts ("can be hard"). I think you'd classify anyone with social anxiety as an introvert. Therefore this is a problem that introverts have.

Words have meanings, and that's not what introvert means.

> Introvert: a shy, reticent person.

What person with social anxiety does that not apply to?

No idea why the two of you are quibbling over the use of the word introvert here.

The popular and psychological definition are quite different from one another.

To go even further, there are multiple definitions to the word in psychology, depending on what sources you rely upon (ie Jung’s, the "Big Five"’s, and probably others)

So, yes, there is a lot of room for miscommunication

People with social anxiety often come accross as introverted, because they are anxious about interacting - however that doesn't mean they don't want to interact, the desire might be extremely strong, exacerbated be the perceived difficulty in doing so. Compare an introvert who is not socially anxious, who simple has a lower desire to interact. Likewise, some socially anxious people cope by being more extroverted, louder, more interactive. So.. there is a difference in the internal experience, and the external presentation.. and i think when we're talking about a person, rather than their current actions, we normally mean the former but are mislead by the latter.

Introverts don't even necessarily have a lower desire to interact. Many introverts very much desire to interact and do frequently interact with others. They just do so in a different manner than extroverts. Usually more one on one and often for a shorter duration than extroverts.

That's incorrect. Extroverts can also be shy and be affected by social anxiety. Having those conflicting traits together is often more frustrating than for introverts.

This app won't last long enough to remind you to message year old dormant relationships, so if that's important one should find something else.

I also don't see how an automated message helps you keep in touch though. It seems like people with a lot of this anxiety will just fiddle with the settings exactly like they fiddle typing out drafts they never send.

I agree. Most people are happy when I reach out to them, but I have what feels like an irrational feeling that people don't want me to reach out. I don't particularly care about the pre-made messages in the app, but making reaching out to people an obligation by using reminders means I make time for friends.

It’s the same level of psychopathy which demands your “genuine care and interest” in a society where the worst everyday risk is spilling coffee on your desk. Many childish psychopaths (who often call themselves extroverts) simply like you to do these things, they feel great when you put aside everything and message or reply to them on a nonsensical topic like “where you at” or “what you’re doing”. Most people who I attribute to “normal”, and I mean most people in general, never required it.

No offense to anyone, but if you’re vocal and succesful at consuming lots of attention, it doesn’t automagically mean that your behavior is healthy.

Is the effort knowing, when to reach out yourself instead of a tool reminding you? Or is the effort about spending time with a person?

I use a running tracker, but I still have to run myself.

And how often do people reach out on their own? Often it’s seeing a post in a feed or some other trigger. Is that more authentic?

The willingness to add a reminder and spend time shows that you care about a person.

I agree, and many others have seen it this way as well.

If it's just a reminder, why not use any of the other reminder tools? (Because it's not)

It looks like you are trying to trick your person about when you sent your message. Because of an introverted personality concern? Seems like a weird use of a timer to me.

All I see is a privacy respecting solution to the problem Facebook id solving.

Better yet when your "friends" get this as well then neither of you have to waste time actually sending anything.

Just move the message into a folder too so neither of you have to waste time reading the automated message.

Chatbots on both ends. Full AI conversations.

Now you can have millions of friends!

The concept is creepy and hilarious to me at the same time.

Imagine getting a "How's life?" text from your friend when they're taking a nap in the same room.

If there's nothing deceptive about this, the app should append "This message was sent by a bot" to what it sends.

Except then no one would reply, because it's clear that you're not actually invested in talking to them at that particular time, so why should they be? They can contact you when they feel like it, not when your bot believes you two should talk.

> If there's nothing deceptive about this, the app should append "This message was sent by a bot" to what it sends.

I agree it's deceptive if the bot is making the final decision to send the message, and the message fails to make clear that it's been sent by a fully automated process.

Obvious alternative: the app could offer the user a pre-populated message. That way the system is doing more than a calendar would, but the action of sending the message is still up to the user. Looks like the app does support a variation of this:

> CommuniqAI will cleverly send text messages of your choosing to, and smartly prompt you to call and email, those that mean the most to you.

The intent of the app does appear to be to enable 'emotional fraud' though, as it seems they do aim to mislead the person being messaged (about it being an automated message). They would even want to support deceptively impersonating you for the purpose of replying, if only it were possible with current technology:

> Warning: CommuniqAI works well when used sparingly with simple messages—perhaps too well. While it’ll keep you in regular contact with those that mean the most to you, they’ll be inclined to reply back and, at this time, CommuniqAI is not intelligent enough to reply in context—so you’ll need to reply back yourself.

Here, works well is clearly referring to its ability to deceive someone into thinking the message was not sent automatically.

> Imagine getting a "How's life?" text from your friend when they're taking a nap in the same room.

A possibility, but more likely, imagine getting a How's life? text from someone you met up with yesterday.

Great points, and I agree. But… As someone with ADHD one of the less talked about problems is remembering things that aren’t happening right now. Friends and family are the biggest problems in this category. And friends eventually stop reaching out because I just don’t think about contacting them without there being a specific reason for doing so. It’s not because I don’t care, it just doesn’t come up in my busy brain. And the few times I do remember they’re almost shocked that I reached out.

It is very painful to lose friends you care about. It’s much worse to lose them because you made them feel unimportant by not staying in touch. An app like this could really help in that way. Just by being the nudge to start the interaction.

Hello hackers. I wrote the app and I hope it can help others like me.

I’m not very good at keeping in touch with friend and family. Also, my girlfriend likes little text messages here and there, and I’m not good at sending them. So “there’s an app for that,” right? No, there actually wasn’t. So I made one.

I define the app as a smart device automation tool for text messages, calls and email that’ll help you stay in touch.

The story on how the app got started, my eureka moments, repeated failures and a little technical detail is at https://medium.com/@mtc.dev/my-first-android-app-story-331c9....

I’d love some feedback.

Cheers.

Getting a 403 error i'm afraid. I'd love to check it out.

Strangely, refreshing the page after recieving the 403 gets me to the app store. But clicking the HN link always results in an inital 403:/

Thank you for sharing! If you don’t mind - has anyone come back to you concerned about automated notes seeming disingenuous? (This could appear like a generic holiday card on what should be a more personal format) From you Medium post it clearly comes from the right place.

Also - if your girlfriend is ok with this, and encourages you to finish the project, she’s a keeper.

Yes! There are definitely those that don’t see eye to eye with me on this!

Just told my girlfriend your opinion of her ;) !

From personal experience, it will come off better if you ask her rather than wait for the other way around. Even though you’re an introvert!

Very nice! Congrats on launching. Pro-tip: do not let others know you have or use this. In general people will instantly devalue your outreaches, even though rationally that makes zero sense. You still think and care about them, but in a way that’s… you.

Thank you! You might want to check out the story I wrote!

It is rational to devalue automatic communication. The birthday card you get from your dentist is not valued.

That said I have lost touch with a lot of friends I care about. The best friends are those you can pick back up without maintenance I think.

I second that, but follow up reminders and warnings if you are to eager are really helpful, so reframing this app as helper and let people manually edit the messages is much better. I think particularly sentiment analysis on incoming and outgoing messages would be really helpful for many people not so good at casual communication. Maybe the app should start sending automatically if you really cannot decide for an option in order to not let you think too long. I think particularly positive response reinforcement is needed if one manages to keep up communication in symmetrical fashion.

Please know, by default, the app will not take any action and largely act as a helpful reminder, and I highly recommend this type of use.

Right but the bday card from your dentist does not expect a subsequent back and forth.

Hi i'am interested in a subscription model and if you have time an api to consume the data of the app like since how many time i've contacted someone. Add birthday etc ...

Thanks for your work :)

I will keep this in mind!

I keep wondering what will happen if your girlfriend realizes “the app is doing it” - maybe explain to her that it’s hard for you to send those little messages. I think she’ll then appreciate it even more when you do send them.

See my story I posted in the comment!

I almost wrote a similar app (but in a much more limited version) to keep up with friends and family but, ironically, as an extrovert. I wanted to have their birthdays and the last time we spoke so I could keep up with them if our contact was slipping. Congrats on launching! I'll take a look at this to see if it fits my use case.

Thank you so much for this. I've been noodling building something like this for a while but never had the time. Already installed and set up my mom. <3

One question: for the days of the week icons, you have U - M - T - W - R - F - S

What are U and R?

U is Sunday and R is Thursday.

This is what I found: https://eventguide.com/topics/one_digit_day_abbreviations.ht...

I've never seen that in my life. Thanks for the info!

sUnday and thuRsday, to disambiguate them from Tuesday and Saturday.

Not a great disambiguation since satUrday also has a U.

I was hoping for more technical detail other than it uses Kotlin. It'd be nice to know some of the under the hood details.

Disclaimer: I haven't installed the app.

Reading the description and seeing the screendumps I get the impression that the app actually does the messaging for you. For me it would be much more valuable to get a reminder to contact people I love and care about. Time runs so fast, I forget it's been a week or two since I last said hello to that person. With a reminder I would be able to keep in touch with people, yet be the one who actually composes and sends the message.

If I have misunderstood the purpose of the app, please forget this comment.

By default, the app will not take any action and largely act as a helpful reminder, and I highly recommend this type of use.

Thanks!

There's a toggle that stops it from sending messages.

Yuck. If interacting with me is such a chore that someone has to automate it, I'd rather not hear from them.

People don't want to be your duties. They want to be your pleasures.

This changes messages from "I felt like talking to you" to "my scheduled trigger fired; please start a conversation so I can check you off my checklist."

If I found out someone were using this to communicate with me, I'd frankly cut them out of my life -- not out of hatred, but because I'm not a sadist. If it's tedious for you to talk to me, I don't want to cause you that pain.

I feel like you're conflating the friction of starting a conversation with the friction of continuing one, which can be very different things.

Most of the negative views on this app appear to fundamentally misunderstand how highly introverted people socialize. I know several highly introverted people. Having something automatically start a conversation for them which they can then engage in themselves would be very helpful. Especially for people who have social anxiety. My take was never that this app was going to socialize for you, but rather would initiate conversations for you which you could then finish yourself. There's nothing wrong with doing that...

What an interesting point. I highly value your opinion.

-this message was created by an automated bot

There's no friction in starting something you love to do.

If you don't love talking to someone that you don't have to talk to, you shouldn't do it. You're putting them in the awkward position of having to converse with someone that they know doesn't want to converse with them. And yes, they'll know. The dryness of the sample messages is tip-off enough.

Personally, I hate hearing from people like this -- not because I dislike them or they bore me, but because I'm not a sadist. I don't like the pain and boredom that I sense they're experiencing in trying to force themselves to talk to me out of duty.

There are other ways to connect with people besides conversation. As the Fred Rogers song goes, "There are many ways to say I love you....There's the singing way....Cleaning up a room can say I love you; hanging up a coat before you're asked to do it; drawing special pictures on the holidays; and making plays." That will look different for an adult than a child, but the principle still applies.

> There's no friction in starting something you love to do.

That may be true for you; it's not true for everyone. Nobody in this thread who thinks this app might be useful has mentioned people they need speak to "out of duty". I feel like you are projecting how you operate on to everyone else and not actually listening to what they are saying.

I'm sorry you have frequently experienced people that are clearly bored when talking to you. This is not something I have experienced much at all. What I have experienced is friends who lead busy lives and just don't get around to it because they have 10 other things on the docket. When eventually we do get around to talking (usually because of some trigger on either end), the conversations are enjoyable and we are glad to have them. But the idea that someone isn't "important" enough just because you're not consciously thinking about them rather than the many other important responsibilities in your life is one I find silly. We are busy people with a lot of things on our mind. At the same time, some people (clearly) would like a slightly more consistent system that causes them to talk to their friends than a random trigger on social media or what have you.

> I'm sorry you have frequently experienced people that are clearly bored when talking to you.

There's no need for the ad hominem.

Again, the problem with this is not that it's scheduled, it's that it's canned.

It's like training a robot to do foreplay. Is it that joyless that I have to let it kickstart the sex before I come into the room?

Scheduling a reminder to talk is one thing. But sending a canned opener that I thought of another day and in another mood says that I don't have anything interesting or fun to share with the other person, and if I don't, why should I talk to them? It puts the onus on them.

> There's no friction in starting something you love to do.

That's simply untrue in a lot of areas of life, perhaps most of them.

Speaking for myself I often find it incredibly difficult to start the things I love doing the most once I've started.

For many people it's especially hard to start conversations they love to have. There's a high "activation energy" to get over the hump - and it can take significant time as well, it's not just willpower and mood thing.

Combine that intense activation energy hump with a busy, pressured life, and you get high friction for initating conversations with people they love keeping in touch with.

Add "social forgetfulness" (call it focus if you like) where people don't think of their friends and other loved ones until prompted by a context, at which point they remember very fondly and want to keep in touch, but face a high activation energy hump during the moment that thought happens, and you have a recipe for people where social reminders can be helpful.

Unfortunately it's the sort of tool some other people would use to maintain artificial conviviality, for example to keep up "business networking" and remain on prospects' radar. Fake friendships with a motivation. I suspect that's where some of the instinctive animosity to this kind of tool comes from.

The "how long has it been since I talked with" reminder part of this tool is what some people have integrated into their brains by default, and others don't seem to. It doesn't mean the former brains love those they keep in touch with more. It probably means their internal scheduler and memory triggers work differently.

> There's no friction in starting something you love to do.

Man, if that's truly the experience of your life I envy you on an incredibly deep level.

Struggling to start doing things I genuinely love to do has been a continual source of significant frustration throughout my life.

I empathize with this point. But I don't know if the app would really work as a solution - maybe as long as the other party doesn't realize it. In media there's a trope where the relationship began as a joke, a prank, a dare, or something like that, but then the feelings realize and the relationship becomes real. That works until the genuine one realizes that the initial intent was fake, and that ruins the whole thing. While this is a trope, I think it illustrates well how people think about things like this, and why this kind of app is not productive in the end.

It's another case, maybe, if one writes an app for themselves. That, if it ever comes to light, can translate to a genuine effort, if the other party has enough empathy. But using someone else's app for this, to me, would just look lazy and/or fake.

It's funny the divide between this app, but I'll give you my POV. I'm a bit of a spaz and about one of the most forgetful people you'll ever meet. I go out of my way to ask someone their name and I'll literally forget it within a minute. It's not that I intend to. I'm someone with a single-track mind that tends to really focus only on one thing.

I'm in awe of my fiance who can hold a conversation while remembering that we have to feed the meter before it expires and also remember to ask the waiter for more napkins.

I absolutely love my mom, brothers and sisters, dad, etc, but I just can't remember to do so and I've automated my life with reminders that vibrate my phone so I'll give my mom or dad a call every other day.

I don't think I'm a bad person or emotionally evil, I'm just not wired for internal reminders to do so. I'm genuinely pumped for this app.

You use the reminders to counter your personal flaws, but do the contacting yourself - that's good.

But automating sending messages? Fake caring? If you cannot instantly see the problem, that, frankly, comes across as psychpathic. It is creepy as all hell.

It is tedious for me to have to remember friends and family's birthdays. I care about them, but I don't want to have the mental hassle of actually remembering that today is someone's birthday. So I have a calendar remind me of that.

Am I a bad friend because I do that? If not, why is it so different than texting someone because you haven't interacted with them for a while? Would it be better if instead of automatically texting them, it would "remind you" to text them and give you a text suggestion?

I think it has to do with the effort you put in. These things you do for the other person, shows the effort, and your intent behind it. An automated message is devoid of this. Maybe there was effort behind it, maybe there wasn't. So it's not much of a useful signal, in fact, it's the opposite: it signals that you don't care, because you don't put the effort in. I have a friend who feels a duty to keep up with others, in a way that to me feels forced. Therefore, when they ask me what's up, I'm reminded of this dutifulness, and it doesn't feel like a genuine human connection.

To relate all this to your comment: I think a calendar is nice. You have to make an effort to get the dates, and note them one by one. And when the date comes, you make an effort to communicate. Now, compare this to my Facebook experience. Every year, tens of messages wishing me a happy birthday. Feels good, kinda. Last year, I quit Facebook some months before my birthday. The the day came, and I got exactly zero messages. Where did my friends go?

Were the previous messages worth anything?

Absolutely love it. Does it support birthday, anniversary, and other special date reminders? Consider cribbing off of the Monica friends CRM [1] for inspiration.

Any plans for an iOS version?

[1] https://www.monicahq.com/

+1 I would love this app if it did birthdays. I like sending texts, not FB messages, but it's a pain to check Facebook to see who's birthday it is and then find them in my address book. I'd love to sit down once and manually create a list of everyone I want to send a birthday text do, and then have this app either auto-send or notify me with a button to launch a blank text I can type to the person

I use my app for birthdays like that. There’s a button that opens the conversation in whatever app I use for this person (WhatsApp, Telegram, Email, …).

It’s definitely good to maintain your own contact data somewhere. People delete FB accounts and FB changes all the time. They used to have APIs for birthdays, but they’re gone. So there’s no control unless you own the data.

Thanks! I specifically left date reminders out as I felt these were better handled by a calendar. I have not heard about Monica, but will check it out. As for iOS, not anytime soon; Google is very restrictive when it comes to text messaging and calls and Apple is even more so.

Please consider an iOS version even if it’s just a reminder app. I have too many other thoughts on my mind and I need to remember to reach out to people.

I made a personal CRM iOS app for myself and others. It supports these features besides special dates, which is on my road map. It’s basically a privacy and offline friendly UI around a SQLite db.

https://amicu.app/

This is beyond awesome! Downloading now!

Thank you! If you’ve feedback you can reach me at @kaioelfke on Twitter or kai@amicu.app

Something related; I wish "Let's chat, call me when you are available" button for Whatsapp,Telegram etc. Or even better, ability to suggest a few time slots to the callee. That might help with not being able to write "hey my friend, I miss you. Let's chat sometime" messages and unable to decide on that "sometime".

An app with SMS/phone calls wouldn't work well for me as most of my friends are in another country so it needs to be VoIP.

I think your application is awesome. Also, that some people here in comments are offensive and don't understand really what being an introvert is about.

Your application can help not only introverts, but also people who are isolated, depressed, who struggle to regain social connections after last months.

Thank you for that. You put a lot of effort in the app and it works great. It is one of the best ideas and implementations I have seen in five years.

Congrats again! It is far beyond my imagination how positive impact your project can have for millions of people!

Wonderful words of encouragement! Thank you! I realize some people might see this differently, but, at the end of the day, I did what works best for me and felt others could benefit as well.

Love the simple design. $.02 - absolutely require interaction / customization before the app sends messages. Reminding people to send is service enough, and creates an interaction opportunity to refine settings. But sending automatically requires asymmetric attention between sender and recipient - which is almost always bad news for relationships, soon or over time.

Thanks! And I concur! By default, the app will not take any action and largely act as a helpful reminder, and I highly recommend this type of use!

I think the bulk of the negative reaction in this thread wouldn't have happened if it didn't have the auto-send feature at all. It would also make it easier to build an iOS version.

FWIW, I love the idea! Ignore the negativity. There's a lot of misunderstandings.

I am sorry but I really think this is a place where we just don’t need “an app for that”.

This of course if just my view, but if someone uses this to call me the value of that will be super low.

Stay in touch with those that mean the most to you...by automating your interactions with them with AI!

This is straight out of Silicon Valley.

Definitely. I struggle to say this is "peak HN", since HN doesn't like social media in general, but it's definitely something that evolved out of the particular kind of software engineer "optimisation" for productivity that seemingly involves automating the entirety of human existence. I guarantee this idea has been used as a punchline in a TV show.

>automating your interactions with them with AI

It does not do this- it either notifies you to talk to them if you haven't in a while, or it automatically sends a single message to start a conversation.

Note that I don't necessarily agree with this. I simply have a mental list of friends who I currently am keeping in touch with and every once in a while check up on the ones I haven't spoken to in a few days.

Do you suppose there is a "natural max" of connections one is primed to keep in touch with? That after that number, it becomes more or less a task rather than reaching out out of genuine interest.

I think there are more parameters.

Some people's "natural max" for actively calling or messaging on a timescale of, say, weeks or months if there's no feeling of obligation is zero.

But it doesn't necessarily mean that aren't interested. Some of those people love keeping in touch when it happens - and are genuinely interested. Their "natural max" for people they enjoy being in touch with regularly (ie. not being a task) is much higher than the number they tend initiate things with.

Come to think of it that might be true for everyone.

Depends on how social you are and how much free time you have. Mentally, I think it can become taxing to reach out to that many people. So yeah, I suppose there is a natural max that depends on personality, free time, etc.

Many people have an entry in their calendar to call their parents and grandparents. It’s also about making time for people you care about instead of work and other things taking over.

Is the link broken or app is down?

It redirects to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.mtc.ga

And shows "We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server."

I'm sorry, but the app is currently in beta and limited to 88 countries/regions to better support this. Please let me know what country you are in so that I may rectify this.

Can you make it available to Portugal? I would love to give it a try

Done! Please give this a few hours to be effective!

OMG, dude, this has been sitting in my TODO ideas document for a few years. I'm so excited to try it out. Thank you!

Neat. But where in the world do you live that you only need SMS? I'd give it a go if it works with WhatsApp

As a first stab I went with SMS text messages because the functionality is built into the device and the app can easily access the SMS messaging history on the device to make better decisions. I plan to review support for WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and friends in the future.

Same here. I'd be more interested in the reminder aspect of it without integration with any specific chat app.

I feel like most people don't use WhatsApp in the US? Or at least, I don't (regularly).

This is not healthy. Instead the friends should realise that their introverted friends won't always be in contact but that does not change the relationship.

Puts me in mind of an assistant buying birthday gifts for the bosses kids, and the boss has no idea what gift 'they' gave, or even who/when.

Always made me curious why the boss don't request daily/weekly summaries of what their assistants did for the kids. Would be easy enough with an app we control, I think?

You can customize it for your friends.

I'm not sure I'd like to get a message from a friend that was actually written by an automated app. As an introvert, I am ok with people being silent friends with me for a while. But somebody started bombarding me with automatically scripted messages which they didn't personally write and meant to send then and there - if that was a close friend, I'd ask what's wrong with them and whether I can help to fix it, because certainly if it'd be ok they'd never do something so bizarre. Otherwise I'd probably just sigh and block them.

Sorry, I don't mean it as a personal criticism towards you, if it works for you and your friends, all power to you. Just expressing another view on this topic.

"sending 'i love you' once a day" - ewww. I would hate anyone that did that to me.

I use SKEDit to achieve this functionality today on my android phone. It works with phone calls, sms, whatsapp and emails. It's really cool when it activates - it literally will pull downthe search bar, type in 'whatsapp' to select the app, launch the app, search for the contact I told it to message, tap on them to message them, and type in the message I had automated - and you can just watch and follow along as it does all this. V awesome if you have social anxiety, a poor memory, a busy schedule, or all of the above.

I was going to question whether this is really an "AI" application but, given its function - mimicking a human - it literally is artificial intelligence.

Have you tried? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.isoron.uha...

It is enough for me to manage many relationships.

The moment someone realizes you are using this, you may be seen as someone fake. Never let it happen.

I never remember people's birthdays, so I have added them to my calendar, and I make sure to message people to wish them a happy birthday when I get the calendar notification. Does this make my happy birthday wishes fake? Should I never let anyone realize I use a calendar?

You may care about someone but forget their birthday exact date one day ahead.

But you care someone and forget to send a message any day during the month? That’s not possible, that means you don’t really care.

I've been hearing people equate forgetting with not caring for my entire life.

It took me years to realize that they - and you - just can't conceive of someone who's mind operates in a way so fundamentally different from their own. So they put their values onto us, and blame us for not living up to them.

I don't blame you - that level of empathy is a hard thing to find - but damn am I tired of hearing this.

I fully understand where you're coming from - there are others like you. I can fill every moment of my time usefully with learning, work, projects, hobbies, etc. I am high energy (not AD[H]D, etc] and excited about things constantly.

I am task oriented first, but people oriented when they're in front of me (visually bc it causes me to focus).

Heck, my parents, wife, best friends I wouldn't communicate with for weeks, months until we all learned that is my mode or if they just showed up.

Not trying to be judgmental here, just trying to get your take. But if one of your close friends got cancer and died a few months later, would you ever get to say goodbye to them?

Given the other descriptions in this thread, it seems like you wouldn't unless they or someone they were close to reached out to you to let you know. If that was the case and I was your friend and I died with zero contact from you, I would have to strongly consider that you do not care about me and were not there for me as a friend when I needed it the most.

That is how I would feel about it, but I'm curious if what I describe is a fair hypothetical and how you think about that situation.

Not the OP, but have forgotten birthdays, and am a classic introvert.

That's a bit of an extreme take to pivot to; birthdays happen every year and if you have more than 5+ people to remember, that's a lot of days to keep in the head. Quite frankly, there's a lot of people out there (including myself) that see birthday greetings as rather meaningless - or simply not one of their love languages. (It strikes me this whole thread shows the rather diametrically different love languages of people.) Why send a card that's going to be read and tossed, realistically? I'd much rather have a meandringly long coffee chat out of the blue once every few years.

Conversely, cancer is life altering enough to the point you're far more likely to hear through the grapevine of social contacts even if it's an acquaintance, let alone a close friend. There's workplace social circles, family social circles... Then you can adjust to the level of proper severity and be on hand for food assistance, longer chats knowing time is short, and so on.

> That is how I would feel about it

That's also an exceptional circumstance. If I had awareness of my friend's situation, I'd contact them; but that's because the urgency pushes it to the front of my mind making it something that I can't forget or postpone.

Disagree - I am an ambivert who is great when someone is visually within my sight. Terrible if that person is out of visual range.

When you're out of sight, I don't know if that person exists. I have so much work, ideas, hobbies, an active mind, and things to do that the only way I can maintain a relationship is if THEY actually get a hold of me, or I see them. I noticed relationships suffering - and schedule some texts/calls... but calling is so constraining.

Having BDs in the calendar, so you could send a happy birthday message is fine. Having an automated message sent without your doing anything and even thinking about it - is not. There's a big difference.

Is there a function for this to populate the clipboard with the predefined text and maybe open the messaging program (like Signal, Telegram, Wire, WhatsApp)? This way it could also be used relatively easily with these apps which probably can't be automated like SMS...

As an initial start I went with SMS text messages because the functionality is built into the device and the app can easily access the SMS messaging history on the device to make better decisions. I plan to review support for WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and friends in the future.

Not sure about Android, but on iOS some communication apps support this. My app deep links into those.

Did you automate the human connection?

I love it!

Cool app! Is the data of the contacts stored locally or on your servers?

Thanks! Data is stored locally in a SQLite database.

The link is not working.

I'm sorry, but the app is currently in beta and limited to 88 countries/regions to better support this. Please let me know what country you are in so that I may rectify this.

France

Thank you. I made the change, but, unfortunately, it might take a few hours to be effective.

I am introvert but this has never been a problem for me. I have gotten addicted to social media. So when I feel bored.. I call and message my friends .

I do not like the name "CommuniqAI".

Think about how a person would recommend this app to a friend.

    A: "Hey, check this out, it's an app called 'CommuniqAI', it's great".
    B: "How do I spell that?"
    A: "C-o-m-m-u-n-i-q..."
    B: "Sorry, I lost you, start over"
    A: "It starts the same as Communism, but ism it ends in q-A-I"
    B: "grrr, fuck it. I am going to install Signal or Telegram"

Don't make it harder for people to recommend your app.

or give them a link?

That too but the name is an important factor.

The more important factor is the actual execution. And the reality is this is has been done, many, many times. In fact a friend recently wrote a version of this in order to learn Swift.

Ultimately it’s a social problem not a technological problem. I don’t think this is quite hitting the nail on the end. The author said part of the motivation was that his gf wanted periodic reach outs during the day. Automating this isn’t the solution because it’s totally inorganic. They need to figure their communication out themselves — this isn’t the right path that’s sustainable.

I disagree.

Your product is not alone in the world. If you give yourself a handicap (bad name), a competitor will clone your app, use a much easier name, capture all your target audience and leave you holding the bag.

But who is the competitor? And the audience?

My point is this has been done N times, and has never really stuck. So either the idea is bad (but common), the executions are all bad, it’s never been marketed right, or the timing is off.

I’m not saying names aren’t important, but it’s a small part of success. Many big products with terrible names out there.

I’d actually be curious to know if it’s ever been the case where something was identically cloned with a better name and _that_ was the reason for the competitors success.

If this starts making money, the competitors will appear everywhere.

The name is fine; "Communiqué, but with an AI instead of an é"

You belong to a tiny percentage of the population able to make that association.

You should change:

> email that’ll help you stay in touch with those that mean the most to you

into:

> email that’ll help you stay in touch with those who mean the most to you

I appreciate the copywrite feedback! Will do!

Would be amazing if it could interface with web.whatsapp.com as most people I know use WA primarily nowadays instead of sms.

I'm not able to access (play tells me it does not found)? Is country limited app or something?

Yes. I'm sorry. The app is currently in beta and limited to 88 countries/regions to better support this. Please let me know what country you are in so that I may rectify this.

I'm come from France

This should be sorted now! Thank you!

I'm an introvert from Turkey.

Added! Please give this a few hours to be effective.

This cracked me up. haha. Hey bro! I've always wanted to visit.

Relationships-as-a-service?

Wannabe psychologists and communication experts trying to teach others how they should talk to people. Prerecorded messages are fake and people using this app are sociopaths. Judgemental much? I say author and anybody like him in this matter can communicate however they want.

love it the goal. why do you struggle to maintain connections?

I don't think AI generated spam is going to help your relationships... Sorry dude

I can't decided if automated "love you" messages is dystopian af or cute

Intent is the distinguishing factor, IMHO. If I'm using this because I really do wish to reach out more, I see no harm. It's like riding a bike to get somewhere, it helps you get where you want to be, just a little faster. If apps start to doing this on their own, because AI, then we've got a problem...

Relationship as a Service

I mean no hostility or disrespect when I say this.

It is astonishing so many people commenting in this thread cannot see the giant, glaring issue with such a disingenious app.

Everyone no seeing an issue should for his/her own sake do a sociopathy/psychopathy test to check.

introvert != self-absorbed

This seems less a tool for introverts, than for sociopaths.

@dang, HN url parser for extracting domain is borked. This should have play.google.com

Introvert, has gf... next.

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