The store●
Sealed
Everything Clarence learns about your people lives in one encrypted database on your Mac, keyed to your macOS Keychain and held out of Time Machine and iCloud. Not a copy of your messages. What it worked out from them.
Three people to catch up with today.
Staying in touch has two problems. Remembering who to reach out to, and staying with it once they answer.
The second one is the one that hurts. You finally send the message, they write back warmly, and then a week disappears. Now you have gone quiet on someone who came back to you, which is worse than never sending it, and it makes the next one harder to start.
Clarence holds the whole loop, three people at a time.
Take the survey
Sixteen short questions, about three minutes. I am building this on my own and I want to know whether the problem is what I think it is.
For Mac. Reads Messages on your Mac, so an Apple Silicon Mac and macOS 13 or later. $10 a month when it ships.
Thursday
Three people to catch up with today.
Catch up3 Just in2 Loops3
P MayaShe told you she was moving to Lisbon. Say hi
S SamReplied to your photo on Tuesday. Reply
M Marcus"I'll send you the photos this week." Do it
the rest are resting: nothing is piling up
The problem
Keeping up with someone is a loop. It breaks in three places.
the drift
You never notice it happening
Your inbox only shows people who wrote. The friend going quiet sends nothing at all, so nothing ever surfaces.
the reply
They wrote back, and life buried it
You meant to answer. Now you have gone quiet on the person who came back to you, and that is the one that really stings.
the promise
You said you would, and didn't
The photos, the dinner, the question from March. Small things, and they accumulate into something that feels like character.
The whole app
Three screens, one for each place it breaks.
What the drafts sound like
Openers, not paragraphs.
Each one is written from the last thing that actually happened between you, which is why it can be short. A message that has to carry everything is the one that never gets sent.
Grey is theirs. Blue is what Clarence wrote for you.
Maya, seven months ago ok also I think we're moving to Lisbon?? tell you everything soon okay the tent story still gets me. how did the Lisbon move go?
your brother, six weeks ago they made me an offer. it's more money but it's london did you end up taking the job or are you still stewing on it
Priya, three months ago dad's back in hospital. sorry, been off the grid been thinking about you. how's your dad doing, and how are you doing
The rule
Why it only ever shows you three.
Reminder apps and personal CRMs hand you your whole address book and ask you to set a cadence for each person. It ends the same way every time: you fall behind by Wednesday, the badge turns into a small daily accusation, and you either delete the app or forget it is there.
Clarence gives you three. When you have done them it says the rest are resting, and it means it. Nothing accrues, nothing counts against you, and there is no streak to break.
Three is not a target. It is small enough that you will actually do it, and doing it once is one more person than you would have reached today.
today
resting
How the AI actually works
Four things happen to a message. Here is all of them.
The read◯
Then gone
- you ask for a draft
- it reads the recent thread
- it writes
- the thread is discarded
kept afterwards: nothing
When Clarence writes a draft→
De-identified first
One excerpt goes out for that one draft. This is the actual transformation, not a simplified version of it.
what you wrote
hey Maya, mom's surgery is Thursday. call me on 415 555 0133 when you land in Lisbon
what leaves your Mac
hey [name], mom's surgery is Thursday. call me on [number] when you land in Lisbon
Names, numbers, emails and links, stripped where found. One exception, on purpose: the first name of the person you are writing to goes too, because a draft cannot be addressed without it. Not the topics either: it still says surgery, and it still says Lisbon. Automated redaction is best-effort, and we would rather show you than promise you.
The send⇮
Straight into Messages
Clarence sits on top of the Messages app you already use. When you press send it hands the text to Messages and steps out of the way, so the message travels over Apple's iMessage, end to end encrypted by Apple, exactly like every other text you send. There is no Clarence server anywhere in the path of a message.
Clarence Messages them
It lands in your own Messages thread, in your own history. If someone is on Android the message falls back to SMS, which is a plain carrier text, the same as any other green bubble you have ever sent.
The whole of it, including what could go wrong, is written down in how Clarence treats your messages and the published threat model.
A note from the person building it
I have always had a lot of friends, and I have always been a bad communicator. Both of those are true at once, and for years I assumed they cancelled out. They do not. You can care enormously about people and still be the one who does not text back.
What happens is that months go by without you thinking about someone. Then you notice it has been a year. Then two. And you sit there thinking, where did that time go, and how did I let it get that far with someone who mattered that much to me.
Read the whole note
Questions
The things worth asking before you install it.
What is Clarence?
A Mac app for the people you are drifting from. It reads your Messages history on your Mac, works out who has gone quiet, remembers what matters about each of them, and writes the first line so you actually send it. Three people a day, never a list.
What Macs does it work on?
An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) running macOS 13 Ventura or later, with Messages signed in on that Mac. That is what it has been built and tested on. Intel Macs are untested, and there is no Windows or Linux version.
Is there an iPhone or Android app?
No, and not for a while. iOS gives third-party apps zero access to your messages, so an iPhone version cannot see the thing Clarence is built on. Android could, but Google Play's policy forbids using message access for exactly this, unless the app replaces your SMS app entirely, which would break RCS for you. The Mac is the only place this is both possible and allowed.
Does it work with WhatsApp, Instagram or Slack?
No. Clarence reads iMessage and SMS through the Messages app on your Mac, and that is all. If your closest friendships live in WhatsApp, Clarence will not see them, and you should not buy it yet.
Does it ever send anything by itself?
Never. Clarence drafts, you edit, you press send. There is one send path in the whole app and it needs your click every time. It hands the text to Messages, which carries it over Apple's iMessage exactly like any message you type yourself.
How does it know what to say?
From your real history with that one person: how you two actually talk, what you last said to each other, and anything you have told Clarence out loud about them. It writes an opener, not a paragraph, because the long ones are the ones that never get sent.
Where is my data processed?
What Clarence knows about your people lives in one encrypted database on your Mac and never leaves it. To write a draft, a de-identified excerpt of one recent thread goes out, with names, numbers, emails and links stripped where found, plus the first name of the person you are writing to, and nothing is kept. Onboarding switches that on, and Settings switches it back to on-device whenever you want.
Do you train on my messages?
No. Nothing you write is used to train anything, by us or by anyone else. There is no telemetry either, so we cannot see how you use it, which is deliberate.
Why does macOS ask for Full Disk Access?
Because your iMessage history lives in a protected file, and macOS will not let any app read it without you granting that permission by hand. The name is scarier than what it does here: Clarence opens the Messages database and your contacts, and nothing else on the disk. It is the same permission your backup software already has. Clarence does not work without it, so if that is not a trade you want to make, this is not the app for you, and I would rather say so here than after you have paid.
Somebody is one message away from still being in your life.
Just want to know when it ships?
One plan, 14-day trial, no spam. Ever.
$10 a month when it ships, with a 14-day trial. What you get.