The thing that pushed me to build Hollis is a pain I know too well: keeping a calendar and a to-do list, and still not being able to actually live by them. For a month or two I would manage it, and then something would come up, here and there, and I would fall through again.
I would plan to be at university by 10am and start studying. But going to the gym, making breakfast, or any random thing that comes up, it gets late, and sometimes I reach at 11:30. Every minute after 10am made me more anxious, that I was losing time and not following through. But we are human, not robots. Random things come up, or maybe after a morning gym session I just want a slow walk in the park, without feeling guilty that I have broken my own calendar. That is exactly what Hollis is for. It lets you be human with flaws and all. It is not about productivity, it is about intent. It gives you room to be flexible. So if something runs an hour long or comes up in the middle of the day, it is not a crisis: the day gets rearranged into a shape that still works. It will not be 100% of everything I hoped to do, but it gets more done than I ever managed on my own.
The other thing I noticed about myself: I am a really outgoing person, and I also want to follow through on my goals. Say I am out with friends on a Friday night and everyone decides to head to a bar, but I have the gym lined up for 7 the next morning. The old me would go, skip the gym, and wake up already carrying one unfinished task and the guilt that comes with it. Hollis changes that. Over time it learns the times you went out before, from your brain dumps and the rest. So if you tell it before you head out, it gives you a gentle nudge drawn from your own past, "Hey Jay, go enjoy it, but try to be home by 1 so your gym survives." And if you slip anyway, the next morning you tell Hollis to reschedule, or just tap reschedule, and your day falls back into place.
But what is even Hollis? It is a voice-based nudge system that has cross domain knowledge around different sections of your life: Calendar, Todo, Journal, Habits and Finances, and all of it built inside one app. But to me it's more than that, it's something that is driving me and pushing me right now to explore how agents work, how to prompt AI the right way and how to leverage knowledge graphs in the best way.
With all love, and one small nudge at a time,
Jay