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Journal

We write what we learn.

Product, tech, and design — how a voice assistant with neural memory is built.

Story

When to water the garden: morning or evening, and how often

Morning or evening, how many times a week, how to tell if the soil is thirsty, what rain changes: simple rules for watering right, in the ground and in pots.

A vegetable garden at dawn: an old galvanized metal watering can standing on a raised bed mulched with hay, a phone lying flat with a dark screen on the edge of the wooden board; behind, blurred rows of vegetables and the sun rising between the treesStory

Reminder app: empty your head without sorting a thing

Ideas show up at the wrong moment and vanish just as fast. How to do a brain dump without filing everything, and a reminder app that sorts and nudges for you.

A small wooden table by a window at dusk: blank pastel sticky notes with nothing written on them, a pencil, two phones lying flat with dark screens, and a glass mug of herbal tea near a lamp; outside, blurred city lights in the blue evening skyStory

Personalized song: written from family memories

A personalized song moves people through its details: the dance where Grandma met Grandpa, her sayings. How to gather those memories and turn them into a song.

An old wooden table in warm afternoon light: family photos lying face down, a phone with a dark screen and a cup of coffee; behind, near the window, a wooden record player, a vinyl record and a slice of apple tartStory

Happy birthday song with their name: a real one, written for them

Birthday videos with a name sing the same thing to every Emma. Where to find one, how to write a verse that rings true, and how XNeuronal composes a song from what you know about the person.

A living room at dusk set up for a birthday: on a low wooden table, a strawberry cake with lit candles, a small round speaker and a phone with a dark screen; behind, a blue sofa, a guitar leaning against the wall, fairy lights and blue and turquoise balloonsStory

Shared shopping list app: you say what's missing, the other one sees it

A shopping list for two often ends up incomplete: the person who notices the milk is gone isn't the one doing the shopping. The fixes people try, the rules that work with any tool, and what changes when you fill the list by talking.

A bright kitchen counter: a canvas bag with leeks, a glass bottle of milk, eggs, two avocados, a baguette and a phone lying flat with its screen off; behind, blue-green cabinets and a hobStory

Reminder notes: the one that reminds you at the right moment, in the right place

The sticky note on the fridge ends up invisible. Why reminder notes fail, how to make ones that work, and what changes with a reminder you dictate that comes back on its own at the right time, in the right place, or when the weather turns.

The entrance of a flat in morning light: on a wooden console by the door, parcels wrapped in brown paper with a bunch of keys, a folded blue umbrella and a phone; the open door looks onto a garden, with a blue parasol in the distanceStory

Never forget a birthday again: a reminder that also says what they love

We rarely forget a birthday for lack of affection, more often because the alert comes too late or not at all. How to stop missing them, what to do when you have, and a birthday reminder that arrives at the right moment with what you need to find the present.

A light wooden table by a window: a small present wrapped in turquoise paper with a ribbon, two white envelopes and a pen, a vase of yellow tulips and a phone lying flat with its screen off, in soft afternoon lightStory

Online diary: tell it out loud, read it back like a book

People start a diary with the best intentions, and often stop after ten days, too tired to write in the evening. How to keep a diary that lasts, and what changes with a diary you tell out loud that reads back like the pages of a book.

A bed in a room in evening light: a closed bound notebook with a ribbon, a steaming cup of herbal tea and a glass of tea, and a phone lying flat with its screen off; a bedside lamp glowing in the backgroundStory

Voice memos and voice notes: dictate them, and above all find them again

You record a voice memo while walking, and never listen to it again: it ends up lost among a hundred unnamed files. How to make your voice notes useful, and what changes when a dictated note becomes a filed text you can find by what it says.

A wooden park bench on an autumn morning: a phone lying flat with its screen off, white wired earphones, a takeaway coffee cup and fallen leaves; in the background, a blurred tree-lined pathStory

You asked for it: reading your phone calendar

The briefing said “no appointments”; the phone calendar had some. How XNeuronal learned to read that calendar, and to write what you dictate back into it.

A phone with a dark screen lying flat on a pale wooden table, next to a set of keys and a cup of coffee, a small spiral desk calendar blurred in the background with coloured markers on its grid, a plant and a window behind, soft morning lightStory

XNeuronal is available on Android

A personal assistant with a memory, built on the way a human memory ranks, connects and brings things back. What it does, what it does not do, and why there is no tab and no folder to create.

A person walks down a street in the late afternoon, phone in hand, the city slightly blurred behind themStory

A memory that works things out is almost here

Our note taking tools keep words, not memories. They know nothing about who, when or where, and they never come back on their own at the moment you need them. Here is what we built instead, and how to hear about it the day it ships.

A kitchen table at the end of the day with an open notebook, a phone lying beside it, the light fading through the windowTech

A memory that does not make up who people are

Until 24 May, a person you mentioned without saying who they were ended up filed somewhere, often among your friends. Since then, the app knows how to say "I don't know yet": one area of life for people who were only named, another for acquaintances, an automatic link between things said in the same breath, and links that have a name. And, the next morning, pitch-black dots on the map.

The entrance hall of a flat at dusk, a small wooden chest of drawers against the wall with a lit lamp, a cream landline telephone, reading glasses resting on an open notebook and a switched-off smartphone, a coat rack holding a knitted scarf and two coats, a door with frosted glass panes at the back, a green plant and a doormatTech

What stays when you delete your account

On 24 May, XNeuronal got a "Delete my account" button that really erases everything on the server, and the big clear-out in the settings stopped leaving reminders and transcripts behind. The story of one morning spent on a family question: what you keep, what you erase, and what belongs to whom.

A wooden kitchen table after lunch, an open tin box full of recipe cards, a blurred handwritten card resting on a plate, two coffee cups, a slice of walnut cake and a switched-off smartphone, soft afternoon light from the windowTech

A memory that does not repeat itself

You tell the same thing three times in three weeks, in different words. Until 22 May, the app kept three separate memories of it, and the mechanism meant to recognise them had never worked once. What was repaired, how a memory is recognised under another wording, and the two gestures that let you tidy up yourself.

A light wooden desk by a window, a neat stack of white index cards with a small illegible scribble on the top one, a sheet of paper and a pencil beside it, a smartphone with its screen off, a wire wastepaper basket holding a few crumpled papers and a blurred open notebook in the backgroundTech

A constellation that grows as you talk

Until 22 May, the middle of the home screen showed the same orb to everyone, a demonstration that never changed, whatever you told it. Since then, it is your memory that draws itself there, point by point, from the very first memory. How the map is animated, why the twenty-memory threshold did not survive the day, and two other fixes from the same day: formatting inside cards, and the question "what have I got next week?".

A smartphone standing upright on a wooden kitchen table in the evening, its screen lit by a shimmering cloud of small golden, orange and green glowing dots, a white cup behind it, a plate with a fork in the foreground, a blurred plant on the left and a blue dusk window in the backgroundTech

What the app chooses not to remember

Tomorrow's weather, the traffic, last night's score: if everything you ask became a memory, your memory would be a drawer full of old receipts. How the app learned to show without keeping, while still leaving the information within reach for as long as the conversation lasts.

An almost bare blue-green refrigerator door with a single small blank sticky note held by a round magnet, kitchen window, potted plant and wire basket blurred in the background, soft natural morning lightTech

When the assistant's instructions ran to a thousand lines

A thousand lines of rules, counter-examples and special cases, reread before every reply, and an assistant that lost the thread two sentences later. On 21 May everything was rewritten as a short specification that says what is true rather than what to do. What that changes when you talk to it.

A thick stack of blank white sheets tied with cotton string on a light wooden desk, a single blank sheet lying flat in front of it, a smartphone with its screen off and a pen with a dark blue cap, a white cup on its saucer, a blurred blue-green curtain and window in the background, soft daylightTech

What were we talking about last time?

The long-term memory held, but the thread of the conversation was lost every time the screen went dark or another app took over. How, in one afternoon, the assistant stopped looking amnesiac when its memories were intact.

A closed notebook and a smartphone with a dark screen side by side on a pale wooden table, a fabric bookmark sticking out of the notebook, a cup of tea and a green plant, soft light from a windowTech

When it isn't you talking

You hand the phone to your wife, your daughter, a friend, and everything they said used to land in your memory as if you had said it. How the app learned to tell who is talking, who it credits with what it keeps, and why the owner never changes.

Two hands in blue-grey sleeves holding a phone with a dark screen above a wooden dinner table, blurred plates, a basket of bread rolls and a glass of water in the background, warm evening lightTech

The conversation that survives dropouts

You are talking to the app on the train, the network drops for ten seconds, the link comes back on its own. Before 19 May, it came back having forgotten what you were talking about. How the thread of a conversation stopped belonging to the cable and started belonging to the person, and why a passing error no longer wipes it.

A fold-down train table at dusk, a smartphone with its screen off and a paper cup set near the window, a blurred landscape streaking past in blue-green light, one orange point of light in the distance, blurred blue seats in the backgroundTech

When one sentence holds three memories

"My wife's name is Claire, my daughter is eleven, my son eighteen": an ordinary sentence, three things to remember, and nothing remembered. How, in one evening, the memory learned to count the facts in a sentence, to stay quiet when it retains, and to light up a whole neighbourhood from a single cue.

Four pebbles of different shapes and colours lined up on a pale wooden table, in front of an open notebook and two white cups, warm light coming from a windowDesign

A briefing you can touch

Every morning the app tells you “you have three events today”. Then what? How that summary became a door to the first appointment, how the calendar's month view stopped running away when you tap a day, and why any text that names a thing should lead to it.

A hand with its index finger reaching towards a phone with a dark screen lying flat on a pale wooden table, a steaming cup of coffee on its saucer to the left, a plant and a window blurred in the background, soft morning lightTech

The links were there, nobody followed them

A memory dutifully wrote down the links between its own recollections, then never read them back when it came time to remember. How one hop through the graph, a threshold of three, and a map pinned to the top changed what it can find.

A cork board covered with blank white index cards hanging from taut threads, lit by a pendant lamp above itTech

The card you can fix by hand

A dictated card is never quite right. How it became editable with a fingertip, from the misheard quantity to the checkbox Android refused to draw.

A handwritten recipe card on a kitchen worktop, a pencil crossing out one line, a ticked box at the edge of the page, late-morning kitchen lightTech

A picture for every card, and why it got it wrong

A recipe deserves a photo, not a drawing. How every card got its picture in one afternoon, and why it first showed everything but the dish itself.

A large dish of choucroute garnie on a pale wooden table, a phone with a blurred screen lying next to it, warm late-afternoon light in a kitchenTech

When the assistant says "OK, I'm looking" before answering

Five seconds of silence look like a crash. How, in one day, the screen and the voice learned to say "I'm listening", "I'm thinking" and "I'm looking".

A smartphone lying flat on a dark wooden desk, its screen dark except for a small blue point of light, a ceramic cup and an open notebook beside it, soft late-morning lightTech

Filling slots instead of writing text

A note that comes back as a wall of text forces you to reread it all. How we reversed the relationship: the screen declares a template, memory fills the slots.

An open notebook on a kitchen counter, a row of hand-drawn boxes with one of them ticked, near tomatoes and a wooden spoonDesign

A list without a tab

You had to be able to look at your memos and your tasks. You could not add a tab. How a sideways swipe settled the contradiction, and why cards stopped arriving empty.

A hand holds a phone at chest height in a bright corridor, the thumb hovering at the edge of the screenTech

The account that keeps you from losing your memory

You can use XNeuronal without an account, and that is deliberate. But a memory tied to a single phone disappears with it. The story of a piece of work on email confirmation, forgotten passwords, and how to invite without forcing.

A phone lying on a wooden table near a cup, in front of a window at the end of the dayTech

Your settings are part of your memory

A choice that disappears on reinstall was never remembered, just stored somewhere. Why preferences left the phone and moved into the memory itself.

Two phones with dark screens lying side by side on a wooden table next to a pair of glasses in morning lightTech

Voice-powered web search

An AI that answers a question without checking its facts will confidently invent. Here's why we've integrated real web search, with cited sources, directly into your conversations.

A smartphone resting against a stack of cookbooks while a person cooks in the blurred backgroundDesign

One Dock, Two Modes

Switching from voice to text shouldn't be a guessing game. Here's how a single small dock, with two nodes connected by a thread of light, replaced a shape-shifting button and a swipe you had to learn.

A smartphone and a small wireless keyboard side-by-side on a light-colored deskTech

The Real Push-to-Talk

A button that cuts you off isn't real push-to-talk. Here's why we moved away from phone-based speech recognition to redefine what "holding the button" truly means.

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A Tiered Memory

A memory that keeps everything eventually drowns in its own noise. Here's how we introduced tiers (and an inbox) so XNeuronal knows what to prioritize for you.

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Real-time, no refreshing

A conversation isn't a series of forms. Here's why XNeuronal relies on an open channel, not isolated requests.

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Building a Voice: Speaking, Understanding, Responding

Behind a simple conversation, there are three layers of processing and a commitment to simplicity. Here's how we built the voice pipeline.

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Where did the idea of a memory that organizes for you come from?

Capturing information has never been the problem. Finding it again, that's the real challenge. A look back at XNeuronal's initial intuition.

A refrigerator door covered with dozens of scribbled paper notes, a scattered daily memoryProduct Philosophy

Why We Removed Tabs

Productivity apps pile on screens. XNeuronal did the opposite. Here's why a single page changes everything.

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How Neurons Work

Everything you say becomes a node connected to others. Let's explore our vector memory architecture.

Deep blue night sky studded with stars above a dark hill, tiny silhouette on the horizonDesign

Designing an Invisible Interface

The best UI is the one you never use. A look back at 14 iterations of the central orb.

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