Karl – A virtual friend you can text
Hi HN! We're excited to introduce "Karl" – a virtual friend you can text to share what's on your mind. We created Karl because we found it incredibly helpful to have a sounding board and someone I could talk to anytime, day or night. Karl isn't meant to replace real friendships but rather to act as a mediator and an additional point of contact. He remembers important details you share and can connect the dots between past events and current decisions. Anyone can message Karl by texting +1 (844) 619-7958 . There’s no separate app or website – just text to start a conversation. The first ten…
In plain words
Karl is a text-based virtual companion that users can message to discuss their thoughts and concerns. Available through SMS at a dedicated phone number with no app required, Karl uses AI to remember important details from conversations and connect patterns across past events and current situations. Designed as a supplement rather than a replacement for real friendships, Karl offers the first ten messages free, then charges ten dollars monthly. It functions as a sounding board available around the clock for anyone seeking an additional point of contact.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN! We're excited to introduce "Karl" – a virtual friend you can text to share what's on your mind. We created Karl because we found it incredibly helpful to have a sounding board and someone I could talk to anytime, day or night. Karl isn't meant to replace real friendships but rather to act as a mediator and an additional point of contact. He remembers important details you share and can connect the dots between past events and current decisions. Anyone can message Karl by texting +1 (844) 619-7958 . There’s no separate app or website – just text to start a conversation. The first ten messages are free, after which Karl charges 10 per month to continue (and to help cover Karl's dining habits). On the backend, we primarily use 4o (OpenAI) to handle message flow and identify important memories. All the code for LLM calls, context management, and tool use is custom-built, as we found frameworks like Langchain to be too much overhead. Moving forward, we plan to run a fine-tuned 4o-mini model and experiment with other providers. Texting is powered by Twilio (and FYI – getting a non-sandbox phone number is quite a process), and we use Postgres (via Supabase) to store conversations and context. The entire service runs on Render. We’re also working on new features like proactive check-ins and smarter memory handling. Karl is currently in early alpha. We'd love feedback from the HN community at [email protected]. Please say hi, and we hope you have some great conversations!
Does the same job
all alternatives →
- SFSudomake Friends, personalized AI personas in a Telegram group chatApr 2026 · github.com · ▲7
Virtual AI friends, personalized to you, that chat you (or don't!) on their own work/sleep schedules based on their timezones. They sometimes initiate chats. They sometimes go silent for hours. Just like real friends. I've been "dogfooding" this for the past week, and I think it's actually kind of neat. It's way better than generically chatting with an LLM. This repo includes a detailed setup wizard. You give it some info about yourself, which can include personal blogs/websites to scrape, github, mastodon, text documents, or just paragraphs you write off the top of your head. It…
- AHAnysphere, home for important, long-form conversations2022 · gist.github.com · ▲14
Hi everyone! I’m Arvid, cofounder of Anysphere (https://anysphere.co). With my two friends Sualeh and Shengtong I have been spending the last few months building a dedicated home for important, long-form conversations. We’re super excited to let the HN community test it out! We think that no existing platform for point–to-point communication prioritizes the conversations that you actually care about and that really matter. Instant messaging is filled with careless texts and stickers, email is filled with receipts and spammers, and physical mail, while better in those respects, is…
- CMChord – Multiplayer AI LLM Chats2025 · chord.chat · ▲10
Hey everyone, I've been hacking on this idea with a friend as we've been using chatgpt and other AI tools in our day to day work and find ourselves copy/pasting to each other frequently. We often share chatgpt links with each other, but it's been frustrating that they are read-only and we can't pickup the conversation or both talk to an LLM with shared context. We built a shared chatroom to explore what it'd be like to talk with multiple LLMs and humans in the same chat, and so far it feels pretty cool, but we're curious if anyone else would find it useful as well. Right now you can: -…
- RRReal-Real-Time ChatApr 2026 · kraa.io · ▲10
Hi HN! Few months ago I've shared a new kind of markdown editor that we (a team of three from the Czech Republic) have been working on (HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144801). What resonated with folks the most was Kraa's unique ‘real-real-time’ chat feature. We have now acted on this feedback, improved the chat features, and made what we call Kraa Trees. Trees allow anyone to create a light-weight community / chat channels. It would be a stretch to call it an alternative to Discord, yet, but we hope that the frictionless nature of Trees will make them…
More life & fun this month
the category →- TL
Life & fun · 10d ago · louisabraham.github.io
Photosynthesis fires two of your iPhone
Life & fun · 29d ago · photosynthesis.camera
SoloUno▲310Take control of hair pulling, nail biting & skin picking
Life & fun · 28d ago · solouno.io
Scroll through all 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 reachable Rubik's Cube permutations.
Life & fun · 27d ago · everycube.alen.is
Hi HN, I built Eigendrum, a web tool that solves the 2D wave equation for arbitrary shapes so you can hear what they sound like as drums. How it works: * Solves -∇²u = λu using finite element analysis (Kφ = λMφ) on a triangle mesh. * Validated to <0.1% error against closed-form solutions for circles (Bessel zeros) and rectangles. * Sound model factors in strike location, Rayleigh damping, and mallet width. * Includes Kac drums I & II to demonstrate identical sound spectra from different geometries. * No frameworks, build steps, or dependencies. Repo and tests:…
Life & fun · 27d ago · baselashraf81.github.io
Launched alongside, October 2024
the whole month →
Softr for Notion▲925Turn Notion databases into portals & apps with no code
Dev tools · 2024 · softr.io
One inbox for all your work discussions
Work · 2024 · generalcollaboration.com