For ADHD brains
You've been meaning to do that
for three weeks.
Kolibri.io is a voice reminder assistant for adults with ADHD. Say it out loud once, in three seconds — after that, keeping it alive is not your job.
Free while we're building it. No card. One email, that's all we ask.
it doesn't stop at the first reminder
What is Kolibri.io?
Kolibri.io is a voice reminder assistant built for adults with ADHD. You speak a task in about three seconds. Kolibri.io files it, reminds you out loud at the right time, and keeps returning with different wording until you confirm the task is done. It costs nothing to start.
Why ADHD reminders need to come back
adults worldwide live with ADHD symptoms. This isn't a niche.
Song et al., Journal of Global Health, 2021 — 6.76% of adults, adjusted for global population structure
of everyday memory complaints aren't about forgetting what. They're about forgetting to do.
Kliegel & Martin, cited in Complex prospective memory in adults with ADHD
words a minute — speaking against typing on a phone. That gap is where the thought goes.
Speech and mobile typing rate research
Why don't to-do apps work for people with ADHD?
To-do apps fail for ADHD because they wait to be opened. Between deciding to do something and the moment it needs doing, there's a gap. For most people a note closes it. For an ADHD brain, three things happen in that gap instead.
Why do I forget tasks I already wrote down?
A closed app is an invisible app. You can have forty tasks perfectly organised in there and forget every single one, because nothing pulled them back into view at the moment they mattered. If it isn't in front of you, it isn't real.
Why do I stop opening my task list?
The list turns into the thing you avoid. Open it after a bad week and you get a wall of red. The wall produces guilt, guilt produces avoidance, and the app gets deleted — right before you download the next promising one.
Why do I ignore reminder notifications?
Seventeen alarms teach you to swipe. Identical alerts stop registering fast. Each one is another micro-decision — act, dismiss, snooze — and the cheapest answer is always the thumb. Once it's dismissed, it's gone from your head entirely.
And to protect yourself from all three, you'd have to build and maintain a system — using the exact ability that ADHD takes away.
How does Kolibri.io work?
Kolibri.io is a voice reminder assistant. You hold the mic, say the thing however it comes out, and let go. It compresses your words to one line and files them. When the time comes it speaks up. If you don't act, it comes back — different hour, different words — until you say, in plain language, that it's done.
How do you add a task to Kolibri.io?
Adding a task takes three seconds and no typing.
- 01
Say it
Hold the mic for three seconds. Walking, driving, one hand on a toddler. Messy sentences are fine — it's built for how people actually talk, not for commands.
- 02
It thinks
It pulls out what you actually committed to, compresses it to one line, and works out when you need it back. It only asks a question if the thing is genuinely ambiguous.
- 03
It comes back
Out loud, at the right hour. Ignore it and it returns later, phrased differently. Say “picked up the car” or “done” and it closes. No buttons to hunt for.
What makes Kolibri.io different day to day
How fast is voice capture compared to typing?
Speaking is roughly four times faster than typing on a phone — about 150 words a minute against 40. Typing also demands motor planning, spelling and turning a thought into written syntax while you're still holding it. Speaking skips all of that. It also skips the cruellest loop in ADHD: setting up a reminder is itself an executive-function task, and executive function is the thing that's short.
- Three seconds, hands free
- Rambling is fine — it finds the commitment inside the ramble
- No new app to learn — it lives in the chat you already use
You reach for your phone, open the wrong app, and by the time the cursor blinks the thought has left. You know there was one. You don't know what it was.
What happens if I ignore a Kolibri.io reminder?
Kolibri.io reminds you again. That's the normal case, not the failure case — and it's the whole product. This part is designed, not accidental — a voice reminder assistant that turns into a nag gets muted in a week.
- One fresh overdue thing per hour. Never a wall, never a badge with 47 on it
- Silent at night. It doesn't interrupt a live conversation
- Older items fold into a single morning digest instead of stacking up
- It closes on plain words — “done”, “paid it”, “picked up the car”
- A daily habit revives itself tomorrow. An unpaid bill stays a debt, dated the day it was due
- Nothing in it is written to make you feel bad. There's no streak to break
The reminder fires while you're driving. You swipe it away without deciding anything. It never returns, and the task quietly stops existing.
Can Kolibri.io remember ideas, not just tasks?
Yes. Half of what an ADHD brain loses isn't a task — it's a thought that arrived at the wrong moment. Kolibri.io keeps those too, and you can pick one back up by talking to it — develop it further, change when it comes back, make it repeat weekly. It can look things up while you think out loud and offer to save the result as a new idea or as an extension of an old one.
- Ask for anything you've ever said, in plain language
- It knows what you work on, so you don't re-explain yourself every time
- It can keep an eye on your inbox and tell you what actually needs you
- A web console when you want to see everything at once, on a big screen
“I know I had an idea about the insurance claim. Was it in Notes? Saved messages? A napkin?”
What Kolibri.io can't do yet.
Kolibri.io isn't finished. Here's everything that's missing or unresolved today, in full.
- It's not released yet. We're building it one language at a time, which is why this is a waitlist and not a download.
- Your voice goes to a third-party speech model. We're not going to tell you your data never leaves our server, because today that isn't true. We're working on stripping identifying details before anything is sent, and a “My data” page where you can see everything, export it, or delete all of it in one action.
- It doesn't listen to you. No always-on microphone, no hardware. It hears the seconds you choose to speak to it and nothing else.
- Email is in. Calendar isn't. Two integrations done properly instead of twenty done badly.
- We don't know the price yet. We'll tell you before anyone is ever charged.
- No demo video until there's something real to record. When there is, it'll be an unedited screen recording, not a concept film.
How is Kolibri.io different from a to-do app?
Kolibri.io comes to you; a to-do app waits to be opened.
- Getting a thought in
- Say it, three seconds
- How it reaches you
- Speaks to you, and returns until it's done
- Talks back out loud
- Yes, on every tier
- Built around
- Not letting a commitment drop
- Starting cost
- Free tier. Paid price not set yet.
A to-do app
- Getting a thought in
- Type it, if you remember to open it
- How it reaches you
- You open the app
- Talks back out loud
- No
- Built around
- Storing a list
- Starting cost
- Free
A $25/mo AI assistant
- Getting a thought in
- Type it
- How it reaches you
- Notifications
- Talks back out loud
- Only on the top tier
- Built around
- Managing relationships
- Starting cost
- $25/mo
How much does Kolibri.io cost?
We don't know yet. We're still measuring what it costs us to run — speech recognition, the model, speech synthesis — and we'd rather tell you nothing than name a number we have to walk back. Two things we can commit to now. There will be a free tier that's usable rather than a trap. And everyone on the early access list hears the price before anyone is charged.
Questions
Do I need an ADHD diagnosis to use it?
No. We built it for how our own brains work, and it turns out that describes a lot of people. If “I'll do it later” reliably means “never”, you're the person we made this for.
How is this different from Siri or Reminders?
Two things. You can talk to Kolibri.io the way you'd talk to a person, so you don't have to phrase a command correctly while you're already distracted. And when the reminder fires and you ignore it, Kolibri.io doesn't mark it missed and move on. It comes back.
What happens if I just ignore it?
That's the normal case, not the failure case. It returns later, differently worded, at a reasonable hour, one thing at a time. It'll keep doing that until you close it or delete it.
Is it going to nag me?
It's designed not to. One overdue item an hour, silent at night, older items rolled into a single morning digest, and no language anywhere that makes you the problem.
Does it listen to my conversations?
No. There's no hardware and no always-on microphone. It only hears what you deliberately say into it.
Where does my voice actually go?
Right now, to a third-party speech-to-text model, which is how it understands you. We're not claiming otherwise until we've built de-identification and a page where you can export or delete everything.
What languages?
English and Russian for now. Each written properly rather than machine-translated. More later if people ask for them.
Tell it once. Let it be its problem.
Join the early access list. One email when it's ready. Nothing else.
No card, no newsletter, no drip sequence. Leave with one click.