https://rekindly.de/blog/ 2026-10-13T12:00:00Z Rekindly https://rekindly.de/blog/rekindly-0-1/ 2026-10-13T12:00:00Z 2026-10-13T12:00:00Z

The first public version of Rekindly: what it does today, what it deliberately leaves out, and what I would like to hear from you.

<p>Today I am publishing the first version of Rekindly. It is a small, self-hosted app for the people in your life, and it has one main job: when you are about to talk to someone, it should tell you where you left off last time.</p> <p>That sounds modest, and it is. But it was the part that was missing for me. Contacts lived in the phone, notes in a couple of different apps, the things I had promised to follow up on somewhere in my mail. Before a call I would scroll through all of it and still forget to ask about the one thing that mattered. Rekindly puts these pieces in one place and shows the few lines you actually need at the top of each person's page.</p> <h2>What is in 0.1</h2> <ul><li>People and organizations, with the details you would expect and a few you might not, such as how you met or who introduced you.</li><li>A timeline of notes, calls and meetings, written in Markdown and linked to everyone who was there.</li><li>Follow-ups and a contact rhythm, so that the Today page can show what is due and who you have not spoken to in a while.</li><li>Spaces, to keep private and business contacts apart.</li><li>Two-way sync with the address book on your phone over CardDAV, and a calendar subscription for follow-ups and birthdays.</li><li>Import from vCard, CSV and Monica, export to JSON and vCard, and encrypted nightly backups to WebDAV or S3.</li><li>Optional AI features that can run on a local model, and an API plus an MCP server for your own tools.</li></ul> <p>All of it runs as a single Docker container with SQLite. There is no account to create anywhere except on your own server, and nothing leaves it unless you have set that up yourself.</p> <h2>What it is not</h2> <p>Rekindly is not a sales CRM. There are no pipelines, deals or lead scores, and there will not be any. It also does not try to keep you in the app: no streaks, no badges, and the only reminders are the ones you asked for.</p> <h2>How early is early?</h2> <p>It is a 0.1, which means two things. I use it every day, and I would not publish it if I did not trust it with my own data. At the same time, things will still change, and sometimes you will notice. That is exactly why export and automatic backups were there from the very first version.</p> <h2>What comes next</h2> <p>The next release adds a daily summary by email, sign-in codes by email as a second factor, and the logo you can see at the top of this page. After that, the big topic is sharing: several people on one installation, each with their own private spaces and the option to share selected spaces with others. Think of a couple, a family or a small team. I am still working out the details and will write about it here once it is ready.</p> <h2>Try it, and tell me what is missing</h2> <p>If you want to give Rekindly a try, the <a href="https://github.com/dddanny79/rekindly/blob/main/docs/deployment.md">installation guide</a> takes you from a single <code>docker run</code> to a proper setup behind HTTPS. If something does not work, or if something is missing that would make Rekindly useful for you, please <a href="https://github.com/dddanny79/rekindly/issues">open an issue on GitHub</a>. I read every one of them.</p>