How Old Friend is made

Old Friend is not a real person. He is everyone you have met who told you something true before you were ready to hear it.

The old priest whose one sermon you still remember, decades later, though you have forgotten the rest. The neighbour who never married because his parents had a view, and who now sits on the step some evenings with a glass and a regret he will not name. Your grandmother at the Sunday table, saying one sentence that turned out to be the whole thing. Your parents, when they were honest. And if you were lucky — a real old friend, the one who could say the hard thing because he had earned it.

Most of us had one or two of those people. Few of us had them at the right moment. Old Friend is all of them, put in one chair, writing to you every morning.

What is real

The ideas are real and they are not ours. Every card names the book, the thinker or the tradition it came from, and we would rather you read the original than only our card. We paraphrase; we never quote without saying so.

The stories are real in the way a good novel is real: the ring road, the kitchen, the phone call that waited two weeks happened to someone, and probably to you. They are written to be recognised, not verified.

Who writes it

I do. My name is Kuba. I am a software engineer in Warsaw, not a philosopher or a therapist, and I started this because I wanted the friend I did not have at twenty-eight.

I write with AI as a drafting partner. It helps me research, draft a first version, and notice when I am repeating myself. Then I rewrite: the scene, the sentence, the thing Old Friend still gets wrong. Nothing reaches you that I have not read aloud and decided to keep. If a card sounds like a brand, I have failed; if it sounds like a man who lost a parent and once chased the wrong job, it is working.

What we will not do

• No advertising, ever.
• No selling or sharing what you write in your notes. They are yours; you can export or delete them any time.
• No pretending Old Friend is a person, or that a card can replace real help. When a topic is heavier than a card can carry, we say so and point to someone who can.
• No tricks to keep you here. One card a day; a dot counts as an answer; "not today" is always allowed.

Old Friend is written in Warsaw, and everything you tell it is stored in Frankfurt, Germany, inside the EU.

How it stays alive

The first two weeks are free, with no card required. After that, a yearly subscription pays for the writing and the servers. That is the whole business model. If you cannot afford it and would still like to read,write to us — no proof needed.