Blog
Building Clarence in the open
Clarence is a private Mac app that notices who you’re drifting from and drafts the message to bring them back — on your Mac, never uploaded. This blog is where I build it in front of you.
Why in the open
Clarence asks for something serious. To notice a friendship going quiet, it has to see the rhythm of your messages — and an app that touches your messages doesn’t get to be mysterious about how it’s made. Trust isn’t a paragraph in a settings screen; it’s a paper trail.
So the paper trail is public. The manifesto says what Clarence believes. The privacy page says exactly how it treats your messages — read on request, used, discarded, never stored — and that page will always change before the software does, not after. The changelog says what shipped. And this blog says why: the decisions, the reversals, the things I got wrong in public.
What Clarence actually is
Not a reminder app — you already know you should text her back; a ping adds guilt, not help. Not a personal CRM — your friends aren’t records to file, and the truthful history already lives in your message threads. (Why filing your friends fails is its own essay.)
Clarence is closer to a quiet workroom. It notices which of your friendships are actually fading — from real rhythms, not settings you configure — and when you’re ready, it hands you a first line that isn’t blank, drafted the way you and that friend actually talk. You edit. You press send. It’s your friendship; Clarence just carries the part that was keeping you from starting.
Two commitments hold the whole thing up, and they’re worth stating on day one. Assisted, never automated — no message ever leaves without your hands on it. Calm, never nagging — Clarence is a place you go, not a thing that pings you. No streaks, no guilt, no “you’re falling behind on your friends.” You don’t have to catch them all. The rest can keep.
What this blog will carry
Build notes as honest as I can make them — including the numbers when there are numbers, and the dead ends when there are dead ends. Essays on the problem itself: why friendships fade without anyone deciding they should, what the silence does to the person on each side of it. And the occasional piece about making software you can trust with something tender.
What it won’t carry: growth hacks, engagement mechanics, or anything I wouldn’t want done to my own friendships. The product refuses to manufacture anxiety about the people you love; the marketing doesn’t get a different rulebook.
If any of this is your problem too — the friends you keep meaning to text, the threads that trailed off — the guides are the useful part of this site today, and the waitlist is where you’ll hear when the app is ready.