Why I built a friendship tracker instead of using a notes app

About two years ago I ran into an old friend at a coffee shop. We hadn't seen each other in maybe eight months — which is wild, because we live in the same city. We talked for twenty minutes, exchanged the usual "we should catch up properly" line, and went our separate ways.

I got home and opened my notes app. I had a note called "People to keep in touch with" that I'd created at some point. His name was on it. So were a dozen other names. The note hadn't been touched in eleven months.

That was the moment I realised that a note is just a note. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't know when someone's birthday is approaching. It doesn't notice that three months have passed since you last reached out. It just sits there, slowly becoming irrelevant.

The problem with notes apps

Notes apps are genuinely great tools — for ideas, shopping lists, quick captures. But they're passive. You have to remember to check them. There's no structure to how information about people gets stored, and no system to surface that information when it matters.

I tried adding contacts to a shared Notion database. I tried keeping a Google Doc with "people notes." I tried calendar reminders set months in advance. None of it stuck — not because those tools are bad, but because maintaining any of them required constant manual effort that I'd inevitably forget to do.

A system you don't maintain is just a graveyard of good intentions.

What I actually needed wasn't another place to write things down. I needed something that understood people. Something that knew that Jamie's birthday was in three weeks, that I last spoke to my cousin six weeks ago, and that I'd been meaning to message an old colleague for two months.

Why existing CRM tools didn't cut it either

Personal CRM apps have been around for a while. I'd tried a few — Monica (a brilliant open-source project), Clay (polished and powerful), some others. They're well-built apps designed for exactly this problem.

But almost all of them store your data in the cloud. Your contact's medical history, your notes about their relationship struggles, details about their family — all of it synced to a server you don't control. That felt wrong to me. Relationship data is some of the most intimate information we generate. I didn't want it on someone else's infrastructure, even if encrypted.

There was also a design philosophy mismatch. Most personal CRMs are built for people who are networkers — professionals managing LinkedIn connections and business contacts. I wasn't trying to optimise my network. I was trying to be a better friend to the people I genuinely care about.

So I built Starlings

Starlings is the app I wanted to exist. It stores everything on your device — locally, in SwiftData on your iPhone. There's no server, no account, no email required. Your data doesn't go anywhere unless you explicitly back it up to iCloud, which is opt-in and off by default.

The core idea is simple: a place for the people in your life. For each person, you can store notes, quick facts, their birthday, their address — whatever matters. You can set a contact cadence and Starlings will nudge you when it's time to reach out. There's a journal where you can log memories and link them to people. There's a message template library for when you want to say something meaningful but aren't sure how to phrase it.

It's not trying to replace your calendar or your messaging app. It's the layer underneath — the context and memory that helps you show up better in the relationships you already have.

What I've learned building it

The most surprising thing is how much of friendship is just memory and intention. You don't need to call everyone every week. You just need to not forget who matters, and actually follow through when you think of them.

A lot of people worry that using an app to manage friendships feels cold or transactional. In practice, the opposite is true. When you have context — when you remember that your friend just started a new job, that their parent was ill, that they mentioned wanting to try that new restaurant — conversations feel warmer, not colder. You show up knowing things about them. That's what good friends do.