Gentle training wheels for keeping your friendships alive.
asocial is a self-hosted, multi-user web app for people who find it hard to remember — or find the energy — to stay in touch with friends. You enter your friends, group them into circles with a contact rhythm, and asocial suggests when to reach out and what to do (send a message, call, meet for coffee, catch a movie, visit or host) — with deliberate randomness so it never feels like you're acting off a script.
- Friends & circles — friends belong to one or more circles ("Close friends: every ~2 weeks", "Old classmates: every ~2 months"). A friend in several circles follows the most frequent one; a personal interval can override; circle-less friends fall back to your default.
- Randomized scheduling — every scheduled contact gets ±25% jitter (configurable) so the rhythm stays organic. Overdue backlogs are never spawned; a neglected friend gets one gentle nudge a few days out.
- Activity suggestions — weighted random pick across built-in and custom interaction types, never the same type twice in a row. Weights are tunable at three levels: per friend ("never suggest visits — she lives far away"), per circle ("board game group leans toward hosting"), and globally. Completing with a different activity than suggested is one click.
- Two views — a classic Monday-first month calendar, and an action-window board: one row per friend, a color-coded band showing the days in which to act, sorted by urgency.
- Guilt-free by design — no red overdue states, ever. Lingering suggestions turn a soft amber ("still open"), snoozing is unlimited, and skipping just restarts the rhythm.
- Journal — every contact is logged with what you talked about, shown as a timeline per friend.
- Birthdays — day + month (year optional). Birthdays appear in both views, and a congratulation nudge is scheduled automatically (Feb 29 birthdays are celebrated Feb 28 in non-leap years). Congratulating someone does not postpone the next real catch-up.
- Notifications — daily digest via Pushover and email at your chosen hour, only when something is actually open. Lingering tasks re-appear only every third day (anti-nag rule).
- Multi-user — invite-only registration (first user becomes admin) with strict per-user data isolation.
- Themes — six hand-picked light/dark themes plus Auto (follows your system).
- i18n — English, Danish, Swedish and Klingon (tlhIngan Hol), Monday week start, 24h time.
| Action-window board — one row per friend, colored bands show when to act | Calendar — classic month view, Monday-first |
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| Friends — last/next contact at a glance | Friend detail — the "next up" suggestion, quick logging, and journal |
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| Editing a friend — per-friend activity weights alongside the rest of their settings | Circles — group rhythms and per-circle activity weights |
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| Six themes + Auto | Dark theme (Tokyo Night) — the same board, restyled |
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npm install
npm run seed # applies migrations + demo data (skip for empty start)
npm run devOpen http://localhost:3000 — with seed data, log in as
karsten@example.com / demo-password-1 (or mette@example.com /
demo-password-2). On an empty database the register page creates the
first (admin) account.
cp .env.example .env # edit: APP_URL, CRON_SECRET, SMTP_* for email digests
docker compose up -d # builds locally
# or pull the prebuilt multi-arch image (amd64/arm64):
docker compose pull && docker compose up -dThe SQLite database lives on the asocial-data volume (/data/asocial.db).
Backup = copy that file (or sqlite3 /data/asocial.db ".backup backup.db"), or
use the in-app JSON backup/restore in Settings.
Migrations run automatically at container start.
Published to Docker Hub as kiloniner/asocial (:latest plus each version
tag, e.g. :1.0.0) by the .github/workflows/docker-publish.yml GitHub Action.
It builds linux/amd64 + linux/arm64 on every v*.*.* git tag (and on manual
dispatch). Publishing requires two repo secrets: DOCKERHUB_USERNAME and a
DOCKERHUB_TOKEN access token.
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
DATABASE_PATH |
SQLite file path (default ./dev.db, container: /data/asocial.db) |
APP_URL |
Public URL; enables Secure cookies and links in notifications |
CRON_SECRET |
Guards the manual job trigger POST /api/cron/run |
TZ |
Server timezone for the nightly scheduler run |
SMTP_HOST/PORT/SECURE/USER/PASS/FROM |
Email digest delivery (leave SMTP_HOST empty to disable) |
SMTP_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED |
Set to false to accept a self-signed cert (e.g. a local Proton Mail Bridge or Mailhog container) while keeping STARTTLS encryption. Default: verify certs. |
FAKE_TODAY |
Test-only: freeze the scheduler's notion of today (YYYY-MM-DD) |
Pushover credentials are per-user, entered in Settings — not env vars.
A daily job (04:30 server time, plus a catch-up on boot) ensures every active friend has a pending contact suggestion. When you complete one, the next is scheduled from the completion date: effective interval (friend override → most frequent circle → your default) ± jitter, with a weighted random activity suggestion. The action window (default 7 days) is when you should act — before it opens the band is muted, inside it it's vivid, after it it softens to amber but never screams.
The hourly notification job sends each user's digest at their chosen local hour through their enabled channels, deduplicated per day.
The standard verification loop:
npm run seed -- --reset
FAKE_TODAY=2026-07-07 npm run dev
# trigger jobs manually:
curl -X POST -H "x-cron-token: $CRON_SECRET" \
"http://localhost:3000/api/cron/run?job=scheduler&force=1"
curl -X POST -H "x-cron-token: $CRON_SECRET" \
"http://localhost:3000/api/cron/run?job=digest&force=1"Bump FAKE_TODAY, restart, re-run the jobs, and watch windows shift,
birthday tasks appear, and digests fire. GET /api/health reports the last
scheduler run. Unit tests: npm test.
Next.js (App Router) · TypeScript · SQLite via Drizzle ORM · Tailwind CSS · next-intl (en/da/sv/tlh) · Croner for in-process cron · argon2id auth with opaque session tokens. Single container, no external services required.