Ties
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Why I built Ties

· Stavros announcement personal

I’ve been maintaining a mental map of the people in my life for years. Names, faces, context, how we met, what we talked about, what they care about. It’s exhausting to keep in your head, and every app I tried either felt like a CRM for salespeople or demanded my data live on someone else’s server.

So I built Ties.

The core idea

Every contact in Ties is a Markdown file. Something like:

---
name: Sarah Chen
birthday: 1990-03-15
tags: [friend, colleague]
---

Followed by whatever notes you want to write. Free-form. Wikilinks to other people. Journal entries referencing her. It’s just text.

That matters for two reasons:

1. Longevity. Text files will still be readable in 30 years. The app might not exist. Your Dropbox subscription might lapse. But the files are yours.

2. AI compatibility. The best relationship apps in five years will be the ones your AI assistant can actually read. With Ties, that’s true from day one — via MCP, Claude and other AI tools can see the same context you can.

What’s built

The desktop app works on Linux, macOS, and Windows. There’s a mobile app for Android (iOS in progress). Sync works across devices. There’s a social graph view, reminders, birthday notifications, and full journal support.

The Plus tier adds a hosted MCP endpoint — meaning you can ask Claude “what did I last talk to Sarah about?” and get a real answer, sourced from your own notes.

What’s next

This is a soft launch. The app is functional and I use it daily. I’m looking for feedback, especially on:

  • What’s missing from your relationship-management workflow?
  • How do you currently keep track of the people in your life?

Reach out on GitHub or find me as @tiesmd wherever you prefer.

Thanks for trying it.

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