kith
i go quiet and people drift.
kith is a small pendant that notices who's texting you and hears what you say you'll do. then, gently, it tells you who's slipping away, while there's still time to reach them.
kith and kin
old english. kin are the ones you were born to. kith are the ones you know: the friends you chose, the people who'd notice if you disappeared. they're also the ones you lose without meaning to, one unanswered message at a time.
not a memory. a short list.
other wearables want to remember everything you say. kith doesn't care about the transcript. it cares about the people.
the output is a few names and a reason. someone wrote last week and you never answered. you said you'd call someone and didn't. a friend you used to talk to every few days has been silent for a month.
"you said you'd call her back. that was four days ago."
three nudges a day at most, and never after midnight. it never sends anything for you. you tap, it opens the right app with a first line drafted, and the rest is yours.
yours, all the way down
your audio never touches a lab. transcription runs on a machine you own, and so does the brain that keeps track of your people. no cloud copy of your life, no one training on your friendships.
how it works
- 01the loophole. an iphone won't let apps read your notifications. it will hand every one of them to a bluetooth accessory, over apple's notification service (ANCS). so the pendant is the accessory.
- 02the pendant. a tiny board on a cord, with a mic, one button, and one light. it receives your notifications and listens for the things you promise.
- 03the phone is a pipe. the app just holds the connection and passes things along. one screen: your people, how long it's been, one line about why it matters.
- 04the brain. on your own compute, it keeps a graph of people: who wrote, who you answered, how often you usually talk, what's still open.