Nobody drifts apart
on purpose.

The one rule

Grab a Seat is built on a single rule, and it is written into the project's own engineering guidelines so that nobody can quietly walk it back:

Reward good behaviour only. Stay silent on the rest.

It is the principle behind positive reinforcement, applied to an app. Celebrate every reach-out. Say nothing at all about the ones that did not happen. That rule decides every piece of text in the product. "Sarah would love to hear from you," never "you are twelve days late." "You're all caught up," never "no overdue contacts." When you miss a week, the app does not mention it, because mentioning it would make you want to close the app rather than call your friend.

Plenty of apps could tell you how badly you are doing at keeping in touch. That number would be accurate and it would help nobody.

Why it is called Grab a Seat

Because that is the whole ambition. Not a productivity system for your social life, not a sales pipeline for your friends. Just the small moment where someone pulls up a chair and you catch up properly.

Built local-first, deliberately

Your data lives on your phone and the app reads from there, which is why it works with no signal and why it does not stop working when a server does. Syncing is a backup, not a leash. It also means the honest answer to "what happens if this app shuts down" is that you keep your data and can export all of it, today, as JSON, without asking anyone.

Who is behind it

Grab a Seat is made by one person, which is a limitation and a promise at the same time. The limitation: it moves at the speed of one person's evenings. The promise: when you email support, you are writing to the person who wrote the code, and there is no department to route you through.

Questions, complaints, and feature ideas all go to henry.escobar@gmail.com.

Where it is now

Grab a Seat is finishing up and coming to iPhone. If you would like to know when, say so and you will hear from a person, once.