Show HN: A tool to help me find ways to connect with friends

2 baochicabowwow 2 5/5/2025, 4:27:02 AM krestrel.com ↗
A while back, I posted about Krestrel — a lightweight tool I built to help me stay in touch with friends more regularly (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41639339).

The feedback I got was helpful, people don't generally know how to reach out to friends or make friends, not just remembering to meet with friends. I made this tool in hopes to help people find ideas and events to engage their friends with.

For example:

If a friend is into dogs, the app might suggest: “There’s a local dog walk every Sunday.” If you met someone at tennis, it might say: “Tennis lessons for beginners at the local tennis club” ” The goal isn’t to automate your friends interactions, but to provide you with a starting point to talk to your friends. You'll still have to do the hard part and overcome any fears you might have asking people to hang out.

Everything runs privately — nothing is posted, no names are shared, and the suggestions come straight to you. I’ve been using it myself and it’s helped me find new activities.

I would love feedback.

Caveat - It often takes around 30 seconds to get a response. I know this isn't the best and if you have ideas on how to speed things up, I'd be happy to hear it!

Comments (2)

learningmore · 8h ago
Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).
baochicabowwow · 7h ago
Ah, I ran into a gunicorn issue with timeouts and worker timeouts. Thanks for that.