An / About

We’re building software that
tells you the truth.

YIYIII
Hangzhou · Founded 2024
Bootstrapped
No outside investors
Pre-launch
iOS & Mac · later this year
Origin

An is named after a real person.

An is named in memory of someone close to one of our founders — a person who remembered every birthday, every dosage, every grudge worth holding and exactly how long to hold it. She did this without notifications, without engagement metrics, and without ever once asking how you were sleeping.

What made her useful turned out to be a surprisingly short list — and uncannily close to a product spec.

"She paid attention. She remembered. She told you what mattered without explaining herself."

Most software does the opposite. It demands attention. It forgets you between sessions. It explains itself constantly because it is, in fact, hiding something.

An is the attempt to build the other kind.

What we mean by truth

Three things, mostly.

1. We don't fabricate. If An doesn't know, she says so. No filler, no plausible-sounding numbers, no "approximately" hiding a guess.

2. We show our work. Every priority decision can be traced. Every memory An holds is in the Memory Center. Nothing An does is supposed to be a black box, even when the underlying model is one.

3. We admit when we're wrong. The changelog has a category for it. It is not empty.

None of these are unique. The unusual part is treating them as constraints, not as values you'd put on a slide.

Read the changelog →

Principles

Six rules we use to decide.

When two paths look equally good, these are the tiebreakers. They've each killed at least one feature.

01
Quiet beats clever.
If a feature is interesting in a demo but loud in daily use, it loses. An's job is to free attention, not to be impressive.
02
One brief is more than five.
The temptation to send another notification is always there. Resist it. Two briefings a day is the contract; everything else is failure mode.
03
Show before you store.
If a piece of memory cannot be made visible to the user, An is not allowed to keep it. Memory Center predates the priority engine on purpose.
04
Boring defaults.
An's voice stays calm — observant, never preachy. The default briefing length is short. The default permissions are minimum-viable. Excitement should always be opt-in.
05
Local by default.
If An can do it on your device, she does it on your device. Cloud is a fallback, not a strategy. We pay for this in development time so you don't pay for it in privacy.
06
Friction on irreversible things.
Forgetting a memory takes two taps. Forgetting all memories takes a typed phrase. Asymmetric friction is honest UI; symmetrical friction is a tax.
Pre-launch

Where we are, honestly.

iOS · Mac
Platforms at launch
iOS 17+ and macOS 14+. Watch and iPad come later.
2
Briefings a day
The contract: morning + evening. Everything else is failure mode.
0
Engagement metrics tracked
No DAU goals, no streaks, no "daily check-in" psych tricks.
0
Outside investors
Subscription-funded. No exit pressure.
Press kit

If you're writing about us.

Take what you need. We don't require approval. We do appreciate a heads-up via the email below — not for editorial control, but so we can correct anything we got wrong before it ships.

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One-line description
"An is a daily co-pilot, made by YIYIII (Hangzhou). She listens, prioritizes, and never lies. iOS and Mac. Pre-launch."

If you want to work with us, write about us, or
just tell us we’re wrong — there’s a person at this address.