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Show HN: Poppy – A simple app to stay intentional with relationships
I built Poppy as a side project to help people keep in touch more intentionally. Would love feedback on onboarding, reminders, and overall UX. Happy to answer questions.
- paulhebert 7mo agoThis looks lovely! I've been meaning to do a better job of calling friends and family. I'll try it out!
- mahirhiro 7mo agoThank you @paulhebert! Please feel free to send me any feedback or ideas after trying it out
- dddddaviddddd 7mo agoIt would be nice if the homepage loaded more gracefully with Javascript disabled -- as it is, it's completely blank without JS.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- jonners00 7mo agoThis 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.
- elicash 7mo agoThis 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.
- bahador 7mo agoIs this a CRM for your friends? FRM? FriendsForce?
- mahirhiro 7mo agobasically :)
- seism 7mo agoBeautiful. 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?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- zlies 7mo agoNice Idea! I noticed a bug during contact import. The month of birthdays are shifted -1 :)
- mahirhiro 7mo agoThank 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)!
- adi2907 7mo agoThis 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.
- mahirhiro 7mo ago> where it will take me around half hour to figure out Would love feedback on what parts are confusing :)
- jamilton 7mo agoWebsite 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.
- nullbyte808 7mo agoHow do you know its AI? Who cares, sounds fine too me.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- worthless-trash 7mo agoWe do mate, we do.
- apsurd 7mo agoAI 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.
- Muhammad523 7mo agoBtw, this project seems to be a solution looking for a problem.
- dreadnip 7mo agoThe 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.
- dvt 7mo ago"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.
- wincy 7mo agoI 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.
- listic 7mo ago> 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.
- bobbiechen 7mo agoNot sure if it's top 3, but I use Monica https://www.monicahq.com/ 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
- SeriousM 7mo agoI 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.
- mahirhiro 7mo agoThanks mate! I really appreciate your words! It’s been months in the marking and I’m so happy to see people also find it helpful like me! Please let me know if you think of any cool features you’d like to see :)
- HaloZero 7mo agoI 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 7mo agoGood 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 :)
- kingkawn 7mo agoAI writing = nobody will read it. The lure of easy perfection is death to meaningful interaction.
- swaminarayan 7mo agoA 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?
- mahirhiro 7mo agoThis is definitely a valid concern. Since I mostly built the app for myself I wanted to have 2 easy features. 1. The ability to snooze someone who I don’t feel like reaching out for a certain period of time 2. Having an easy mute global notifications option in the app and configurable per person I was also considering the idea of grouping contacts to maybe say “hey out of these people you should reach out to someone next month”. Basically to keep you social/ in touch with someone. I’m very open to feedback if you think folks might get tired of those too?
- downboots 7mo agoDuolingo for relationships. The word engagement is hot lately.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- marvin-hansen 7mo agoTotally 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.
- mahirhiro 7mo agoLET’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
- togido 7mo agoHey 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
- mahirhiro 7mo agoInteresting idea. DM me @ poppynudge
- citadel_melon 7mo agoIs 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 7mo ago> yep in the app you can configure custom time intervals just like in google calendar :)
- togido 7mo agoSent an email to the email contact on your website :)
- MagicMoonlight 7mo agoYou definitely slopcoded this entire thing, including all the text. It ha that weird AI tone to it.
- devcraft_ai 7mo ago[flagged]
- mekaoro 7mo agoLove the idea! Contrary to the comments i have seen this first time, just the website copy is AI generated hence it feels off.
- mahirhiro 7mo agoThank you!
- Madmallard 7mo agoThe solution to fostering relationships is getting off the computer and your phone and social media for a prolonged period of time.
- fpauser 7mo agoYes!
- paulglx 7mo agoThe 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 :)
- alabhyajindal 7mo agoI 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 https://alabhya.me/myfriends
- mahirhiro 7mo agoCool stuff though!
- mriet 7mo agoSo, 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.
- JaumeGreen 7mo agoThe 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.
- wolvoleo 7mo agoBasically 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.
- kstrauser 7mo agoI 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.
- bengale 7mo agoRealising 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.
- paulglx 7mo agoThe 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
- squeefers 7mo ago[dead]
- crispyambulance 7mo ago> 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.
- rkangel 7mo agoLooks lovely, but unusable by me as I'm on Android.
- mahirhiro 7mo agoThere's a waitlist on the website :)
- pousada 7mo agoI’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
- mahirhiro 7mo ago> I see the merit in this project as well but no way in hell i share this data with a third party 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 :) so all the data stays on your device.
- wolvoleo 7mo agoHmm 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.
- mahirhiro 7mo agointeresting. My main USP was that I didn't want folks to even sign in or me to have any database where to stored your private data. > Also I'd want it to connect to my messaging apps so I don't have to tell it when I connected with someone. That's a valid feature request. For the first approach I didn't want poppy to access any external apps (if that's even possible with some API? / I wonder how that works in different regions.) It's currently supported on Mac so technically if you have that you can try it on the desktop only.
- billyjobob 7mo agoI 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?
- mahirhiro 7mo agointeresting idea, got a link to what you read?
- edelans 7mo agovery 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.
- mahirhiro 7mo agoThank 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 7mo agoHeya, just released 1.1.0 where you can add an extra checkin from the flower by clicking on it.
- AdrianB1 7mo agoI 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?
- testbyhuman_tor 7mo ago[dead]
- mahirhiro 7mo agoAppreciate 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!
- termwatch 7mo agoThe review section looks very unpolished: no x-padding at all, a random black a rrow..
- aristofun 7mo agowebsite looks exactly like a millions of others ai coded tools, that may be a turn off for someone like me
- kstrauser 7mo agoThanks 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. So, nice job, and thanks for sharing!
- mahirhiro 7mo agothank you for taking the time to comment, definitely got me hyped haha. I’m so happy you see the value I find in the app. That’s definitely an interesting idea. I initially wanted to avoid the app from accessing any external data (tbd if that’s even possible) for the MVP, but as the app grows I’ll see if the check-ins are a pain point for people.
- MrDrMcCoy 7mo agoWhy is it only for iOS? That fully cuts me and many others off from even trying it.
- mahirhiro 7mo agoThere's a waitlist for Android on the website :)
- nerali 7mo agoI 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.
- mahirhiro 7mo agoCheers 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 7mo agoFirstly 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.
- samrus 7mo agoGood 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 road I 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 regularly Obviously 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
- relvio 7mo agoCheck out https://github.com/Relvio-AI/relvio 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