Feed, Nudge & the Graph
This is the heart of Ember: a quiet system that helps you notice the people drifting out of reach — and reach back — without ever nagging you or connecting anything on your behalf.
Relationship intention
Not every relationship should be measured the same way. Each person carries an intention that decides whether — and how — Ember tracks the time since you were last in touch:
- Tending — an active relationship you want to keep warm. This is the only intention where fading applies.
- Rooted — permanent bonds, like close family. No fading, ever.
- Seen — a one-time, memorable connection you want to keep but not tend. No fading.
- Quiet — someone you've intentionally let fade. No fading, no nudges.
How fading works
For a Tending person, Ember watches the time since your last meaningful contact — an entry that mentions them, a shared story, or a logged interaction. When that quiet stretches past the relationship's decay threshold, they begin to fade.
The threshold comes from the person's world(s): each world defines its own rhythm of contact, a person can override it, and multi-world membership is resolved by the rule you pick. Fading is always recomputed live from your real entries — never guessed, never backfilled.
The Feed
The Feed (⌘5) is where you look back — a gentle stream of what you've written and the moments you've logged. It's for remembering, not for doing.
Needs a Nudge
The Nudge tab (⌘6) gathers the people who are fading — those you're tending who've gone too long without a meaningful moment — shown beside your own last words about them. That's the whole prompt: a reminder made of what you wrote.
There are no suggested messages, no AI, no generated anything. Ember nudges you toward people, never toward the app — and it will never remind you to write.
The Graph
The Graph (⌘2) draws your relationships as a living, force-directed map: people as nodes, grouped by world and coloured to match, with fading relationships shown as they cool. Drag a node to reposition it; Ember remembers where you place things.
Because it's a picture of your whole life at once, the graph is often where people notice a world they've been neglecting — or a person they've quietly let go.