App idea · not built

Ichie, an app that stops after 90 days.

One prompt in the morning, two lines at night, and after ninety days it ends and asks whether you want to go again.

一期一会 · いちえ · “one time, one meeting”

Where it came from

I read an article about ichigo ichie, an idea from the Japanese tea ceremony. Roughly: even if the same people meet again in the same room next week, it won't be the same gathering, because everyone will be slightly different. So treat the one you're in as the only one you get.

The research it cites is pretty limited, but it points the same direction. People report better days when they've had more small talk with acquaintances. Coffee shop customers who spent thirty seconds actually talking to the barista came away happier than the ones who kept it quick. And students who were told to imagine graduation was close paid more attention to the life they already had. Nothing changed except how much time they thought was left.

The awkward part

The article is basically telling you to put your phone down. So building an app out of it is a little ridiculous, and I had to decide what would make it not ridiculous.

Two rules. You never open it while you're with someone. And it never treats a person as a record you're supposed to keep up with.

That second one rules out the version I'd probably have built by default: a lightweight CRM for your personal life. Log people, set follow-up reminders, get nudged when you haven't talked to someone in a while. It's the obvious product and it gets the idea exactly backwards. The article says outright that none of these conversations has to go anywhere. Once you're tracking last-contacted dates you're running a pipeline.

Things it won't do

Left out

Import your contacts
Remind you to follow up
Streaks, scores, levels
A feed, or anything shareable
Notify you more than twice a day
Search, sync, or a cloud account

How it works

MorningOne prompt

A suggestion you can ignore

Something small and specific, like learning the name of someone you see every day and have never asked. It doesn't name anyone, and it disappears at the end of the day instead of piling up. Skipping it is fine and the app should say so.

EveningTwo lines

Who you ran into, and what was different about them

Thirty seconds of typing. The second question is the one that matters, since it's asking you to notice something rather than just log an event. One entry is enough. Missing a night doesn't cost you anything.

Any timeThe record

By day, not by person

You can read back through it. You can't search it, and there's nothing in it to act on.

The ninety days

Season one

Day 61 of 90

At the end it shows you everything you wrote and asks if you want to start another season. Starting again is something you choose on that screen, not something that renews while you're not looking.

I put the limit in because the usual ways of keeping people coming back all assume the app goes on forever, and the whole idea here is that things don't. Streaks especially. An app about not taking time for granted that also guilts you about a broken streak would be a bit of a contradiction.

It also fixes the thing I hate about habit apps, which is that abandoning one feels bad. There's no streak to break and there's an end date either way.

What it would take

Platform

iOS. SwiftUI, no backend, no account. Four screens and a local database.

Data

Stays on the phone. That's also why there's no search or sync, which saves me a lot of work.

Price

One-time, around $8, either per season or for good. Not a subscription, because then I'd need people opening it every day for the money to work.

RiskThe big one

That nobody types anything at night once there's no streak nagging them. I can test that with text messages and a spreadsheet for a month before writing any code, and I should.

RiskThe other one

The prompts. There'd need to be something like 120 of them and they'd all have to be specific and not sound like homework. That's writing, not coding, and it's probably what decides whether the app is any good.

Not sure yet

The name. Ichie is short and I like it, but it means nothing to you unless you already know the phrase, and borrowing a tea ceremony term is the kind of thing that can come across as decoration. Once is the boring safe option.