Just talk
One tap from home. Hold the mic, say what happened. Kept routes it to the right people when you stop.
The mic is held, never open. There is no other mode.
Private voice journal · Android
Remember what they told you.Weeks after they told you.
Nine seconds of talking after you see someone. Kept files it against the right person and hands it back the day before it matters — her interview, his move, the surgery in March.
Get it on Google Play
Half a personal network turns over every seven years, and almost none of it to a falling-out. See the research →Free for 14 days, no card needed.
Friendships don’t end.They lapse.
Almost nobody loses a friend to a falling-out. The shared context evaporates, nobody initiates, and one day it has been two years.
Seven years on, 48 of every 100 people in someone’s network were still in it. The network didn’t shrink — the names changed.
You’re not cold. You’re just wrong about them.
To: Sam
Hey! We should catch up sometime soon!
Draft · 14 months
The thing stopping the message isn’t indifference. It’s a prediction — and three separate research groups have measured it leaning the same way every time. People are more pleased to hear from you than you expect.
The loop, end to end
You confirm first
Every note passes through extraction review. Nothing saves without your OK.
It stores what you noticed, never a recording of them.
It fills in behind you.
The same screen at one, six and fourteen days. You are never asked to set it up, pick your close friends, or import a contact list — the people arrive because you mentioned them.
Day 1, 2 people
What’s in it
Journaling by person
The unit is a person, not a day. Notes file themselves against whoever they were about, so a page is that person’s facts and their thread in date order.
Nothing to search. You open a name.
Voice transcription
Hold the mic and say what happened. What you said is kept word for word, and the notes it turned into sit underneath — editable, and re-runnable if the summary missed something.
The transcript stays, so you can always see what it heard.
Nicknames
Say “Soph” and it files under Sophie. Kept matches the names you actually use out loud, so you never have to reach for anyone’s full name to be understood.
Matched, and shown to you as a match before anything saves.
Multiple languages
Thirty languages in the picker, most with their regional variants, and an auto-detect option for anyone who switches mid-sentence. The app’s own interface is in seven.
Family words are fed to the recogniser per language, so “Schwiegermutter” and “mormor” come back spelled rather than guessed at.
Gentle resurfacing
Stored details come back before a birthday or after a quiet stretch. A memory, never a red badge.
Anchored to a moment, carrying the actual detail.
Also in there
Adding from contacts
Pick someone from your phone instead of typing their name. On iOS the system picker needs no contacts permission at all — Kept only ever sees the one card you hand it.
Export
One CSV holding every person, note, fact, nickname and place, sorted so each person’s history reads as a block. Written to disk before the share sheet opens, so it survives a cancelled hand-off.
What the evidence told us not to build.
Every one of these is a feature we could ship this month, and every one of them is ruled out by the same literature the rest of this page rests on.
No streaks.
Measuring an activity makes people do more of it and enjoy it less — and in the experiments, they did less of it once the counter was taken away. A streak on your friendships would turn them into homework.
Etkin (2016), Journal of Consumer ResearchNo relationship scores.
Tracking inputs and balances is how exchange relationships work. Close relationships run on a different rule, and importing the ledger damages them. Kept holds needs and details — never who owes whom a message.
Clark & Mills, communal versus exchange relationshipsKept never writes your message.
Messages known to involve AI are judged less authentic, less trustworthy and less useful. The AI here faces inward only: it transcribes and organises what you said. The words that reach your friend are yours.
Hancock, Naaman & Levy — AI-mediated communicationNothing is ever listening.
Around a fifth of people don’t realise their voice devices are always on, and privacy concern jumps once they find out. The mic in Kept opens when you press the button and closes when you let go. There is no other mode.
Malkin et al. — privacy controls for always-listening devices
Go further in.
None of this needs the app. It is here because we had to work it out to build Kept, and it is more useful published than sitting in a document.
Reading8 pieces
The questions people arrive with, answered from the research — leading with the answer rather than the preamble.
The research25 studies
Every study behind this site, with its method, its finding and what it doesn’t show — including the ones that cut against us.
How it compares6 comparisons
Against personal CRMs, AI journals and a Notion template — each one saying plainly where the other product wins.
Start keeping the details.
Nine seconds of talking after you see someone. Kept does the filing, and the next time it matters, you’ll remember.
Free for 14 days, no card needed.