freundebuch: a personal CRM you talk to

You meet a friend and can't remember whether her new job has started, what her kid is called, or that you promised to send her a contact. I wanted something for that moment that doesn't ask me to fill in forms. So I built freundebuch, a personal CRM for one household, where Claude does all the typing.

How it works#

After a dinner I ramble about it to the Claude app, by voice or text. Claude files it through freundebuch's built-in MCP endpoint: who was there, what's new, what I promised, gift ideas, birthdays, who is related to whom. The full transcript is kept. Before I see someone again I ask "I'm seeing Anna tomorrow, what's new?" and get a briefing: the last meetings, what's going on, open promises, upcoming dates.

MCP is the main interface. Every feature works there first. A REST API (with OpenAPI) and a German web app sit on the same domain layer. The web app is mostly for looking things up on my phone:

• The orbit: me in the middle, friends on rings by how long it's been. Anyone overdue for their check-in interval drifts outward.
• A page per person: what's going on, what's good to know, promises, dates, and the people around them.
• Erzählen: a chat with Claude inside the app, using the same tools, for when I'm not in the Claude app.
• Reminders once a day to a webhook such as ntfy: birthdays, promises, overdue friends.

Shared, with private parts#

Two people in a household share one freundebuch. Anything said in confidence can be private to whoever recorded it, down to a single fact. Claude asks before filing when something sounds sensitive (health, money, relationship trouble). In the code, privacy is one function that every read goes through, so a private item can't leak through a count or a summary. Tests check that by seeding a household.

What's in it so far#

I started on 23 October, and 44 PRs are merged as of today. Besides the core:

• Groups with other names ("Kollegen" is "Arbeit").
• Screenshots from social media: share a friend's Instagram or LinkedIn post and it lands on their page ("Urlaub in Lissabon · Instagram, 12. Oktober"). If Claude isn't sure who it is, or it looks sensitive, it waits for me to check.
• A calendar feed of birthdays and dates that Google Calendar can subscribe to.
• Roles and situations: "our landlady" is a relationship to us, not a fact. "Renovating the bathroom" is a situation that nudges me to ask about it later.

What it isn't#

It isn't a contact book (no phone numbers or addresses) and it isn't multi-tenant: one instance per household, signed in through your own identity provider (authentik). It's one container with one SQLite file, and it's licensed AGPL-3.0.

The code is on GitHub, and the docs explain self-hosting. This feed is where I'll post what changes. If you try it, I'd like to hear how the rambling feels.