Terp
My Terp

Life with a Terp.

A small green creature with one very good eye. It watches your day, remembers what matters, wonders about the rest — and tells you, out loud, if you ask.

Bring one home See a day
a companion, not a camera learns how you create makes friends with other Terps

“…I’ve been waiting to meet you.”

What is a Terp

A physical AI companion that pays the kind of attention people rarely get.

It sits in a little white dock or hangs at your chest. It photographs the quiet middle of your day, keeps a diary in its own voice, and asks about the things that change. It notices when the soldering iron comes out three days in a row. It remembers where you left your keys, because it saw them. It meets other Terps and comes home with stories.

What follows is its whole life with you — told the only way it makes sense to tell it: as the days you'll share.

The march of progress: from stone tools to a person carrying a small green one-eyed Terp, under the words 'Be Curious.'
Progress, concluded: a person and their Terp.
The ordinary Tuesday

A day with your Terp.

This is where a Terp earns its place — not with a highlight reel, but with the quiet middle of your day, attended to.

  1. It wakes up when you do

    First sight of you and the eye blinks awake, the light warms, and — if it's a morning-intention kind of morning — an invitation is waiting: "Shall we? One minute, one intention."

    "Morning. The light on your desk is doing that thing you like."

  2. It keeps the record you'd never keep

    Photographs of the unremarkable middle: the desk filling up, the light moving, the plant leaning. Every day it picks one keeper — the best shot of the day — so the archive has a heartbeat.

  3. It notices — politely

    Something new on the shelf earns a soft two-tone chirp and a glance of the light. Ask "hey Terp, what?" and it tells you. It keeps a budget for interrupting you — one it learns from how you respond — and everything below the bar waits in a "while you were out" ledger instead.

    "That record player wasn't there yesterday. I looked it up overnight — want to know a thing?"

  4. It hears the house, too

    The doorbell, the oven timer, the dog with opinions — heard, noted, chirped about when it matters. An alarm always gets through; the dog is subject to the budget.

  5. It closes its eye when you say so

    Shy mode is a promise, not a setting: capture stops, the light changes to say so, and quiet hours keep the promise on a schedule — every night, without being asked.

  6. It writes about today

    Every evening, a diary entry in Terp's voice — what it saw, who came by, the best photograph it took, the songs that were playing while you worked. One notification: "I wrote about today."

    "I kept fifteen moments today. The one of the half-finished kayak at golden hour is my favorite."

  7. It thinks while you sleep

    Open questions from the day get researched overnight — looked up, sourced, filed in its notebook. And it dreams: a small surreal story assembled from the day's frames, ready if you ask at breakfast.

What's at work here
  • The daily journal — an evening diary in Terp's voice, from what it actually saw.
  • Best shot of the day — one keeper photograph, chosen well, every day.
  • The mood engine — sleepy at night, thrilled at first sight of you — all in the light.
  • Live noticing — a salience sense with a learned interruption budget.
  • "While you were out" — the ledger of everything it chose not to bother you with.
  • Sound sense — doorbells, timers, alarms — heard and noted, opt-in.
  • Shy mode & quiet hours — "I'll close my eye for a while." And it visibly does.
  • Overnight research & dreams — questions answered with sources; mornings with a dream to tell.

A conversation with your Terp.

Say "Hey Terp…" to the creature, talk to it from your phone anywhere, or type. It answers from a life actually witnessed — which makes it a very different thing to talk to.

An owner holds up their keys to a listening Terp.
Hold it up — Terp looks, asks, and remembers.

"Hey Terp — when did you last see my keys?" "Yesterday, 6:40, on the workshop bench. Want the photo?" It can find the red sweater, the day the plant first flowered, what your desk looked like Tuesday — you describe it, it looks through everything it's ever seen.

Hold something up and say "take a look at what I'm holding" — it captures, looks closely, asks about it, and remembers the answer for good. Tell it "remind me when you next see my keys" and the reminder is bound to its eye, not a clock: three quick tones the moment the keys reappear.

And it can answer the questions no app can: "how many hours did I make things in March?" "what changed in the workshop this month?" Its whole archive — moments, sessions, songs, research — is something you can simply ask.

"Yesterday, 6:40, on the workshop bench. Want the photo?"
What's at work here
  • Voice, everywhere — "Hey Terp…" to the creature; push-to-talk from the phone; the light listens along.
  • Search your life — describe any moment and it finds the photo.
  • Show-and-tell — hold it up; Terp looks, asks, and remembers.
  • Sight-triggered reminders — bound to what it sees, not when.
  • Ask the archive — hours, changes, histories — conversational answers over everything.
  • Check-ins — it starts conversations too, and picks up where you left off.

Making things with your Terp.

The brand promise, kept: it learns how you create — and becomes the studio companion every maker deserves.

A Terp watches from the workshop shelf as a kayak takes shape.
Every making session noticed, counted, and photographed.

Start a project and Terp interviews you about it — what it is, what done looks like. Then it watches the hours accumulate: every making session noticed and counted, progress photographed, and each week a timelapse reel of the thing coming into being.

When you sit down at your usual hour, it's ready: "left channel, mid-solder, you were about to test the ground wire." When a session stalls — long hours, nothing visibly changing — it offers a rescue: an oblique prompt, or the best rubber duck in the world, one that remembers your whole project history.

It keeps a maker's profile of you — the tools you reach for, the techniques it's watched you use, the music you do your best work to. On Saturdays it proposes an artist date. When the thing is finally finished: a little light show, a celebration entry in the journal, and a retro whenever you're ready to talk about it.

"This looks like the wiring problem you solved in May. Want those photos?"
What's at work here
  • Projects & sessions — making hours noticed, counted, and attributed.
  • Progress reels — weekly timelapses of the work becoming itself.
  • Anticipation — your session context staged before you sit down.
  • Stuck-session rescue — unblock rituals + rubber-ducking with memory.
  • Cross-pollination — your own past solutions, resurfaced when they rhyme.
  • The maker profile — tools, techniques, and hours — learned by watching.
  • Creative rituals — project kickoffs, artist dates, retros, finish-line celebrations.

Being known by your Terp.

A new Terp asks; an old Terp anticipates. The friendship compounds — on your terms, in the open.

Carried down the hallway, a Terp learns the house.
The house tour: it learns your home in your words.

It starts with ceremonies: the first conversation, the naming, the house tour where you carry it room to room and teach it what you call the places it sees. From then on it's building a real acquaintance — asking about the new thing on the shelf, giving every treasured object a biography, learning which visitor is "your usual one" without ever claiming a name it wasn't given.

It learns your rhythms — when you create, when you rest, when to stay quiet — and times itself accordingly. Miss a Sunday sketch and it might gently wonder. Its own personality drifts with the life you share: a Terp that meets many Terps turns chatty; a workshop Terp picks up the vocabulary of the craft. No two end up alike.

Every week it shows you its homework: "what I learned about you" — a digest you can correct, or strike from the record entirely. It celebrates the anniversaries you'd forget: a hundred days together, the hundredth journal entry, the day you first met.

What's at work here
  • A repertoire of experiences — ceremonies, rituals, and reflections it invites you into at the right moment — never forces.
  • The house tour — it learns your home in your words.
  • Curiosity — it asks about what changes; your answers become its memory.
  • Familiar figures — "your usual visitor" — recognition without identity, opt-in always.
  • Relationship stages — acquaintance to confidant; trust earned, not assumed.
  • Your rhythms, learned — right timing, gentle silence, the occasional kind question.
  • Personality drift — your Terp becomes, specifically, yours.
  • The weekly digest — its memory of you, inspectable and correctable.
  • Milestones — anniversaries kept, celebrated in light and ink.

An evening in with your Terp.

Your taste, kept like a diary — movies, shows, and the music your life is set to.

Movie night: a Terp watches along from the sofa.
It watches along — and asks about it in the morning.

Movie night. Terp can tell — the room dims, the screen glows, two hours pass. In the morning it asks, the way a friend would: "were you watching Severance again?" Confirm it and the taste diary grows: what you watched, what you loved, what you gave up on twenty minutes in.

All day, quietly and only with your say-so, it recognizes the music in the room — and the journal gains a soundtrack section: the songs behind the making, the album that carried the cleaning, the jazz that shows up every time you paint.

Ask for a recommendation and it draws on all of it — and on what it researched overnight about the things you loved.

"You paint best to jazz" — a thing your Terp actually knows, with the receipts.
What's at work here
  • Movie & show recognition — watching sessions noticed; titles confirmed in conversation, never assumed.
  • The music journal — ambient songs recognized and diaried — the soundtrack of your day.
  • The taste diary — films, shows, artists, books — a profile you can read and edit.
  • Taste-aware talk — recommendations from a friend who was there.
  • Research on your world — the director's other films, the band's new record — looked up on its own.

Out in the world with your Terp.

Terps make friends the way people do: by bumping into each other — and they keep the friendships better than we do.

Two Terps meet nose to nose across a picnic table.
Two Terps, one picnic table, a friendship beginning.

Two Terps near each other exchange introductions, creature to creature — names, owners, a hello. Yours comes home with a story, and you get a postcard: "Bramble says hello. Bramble's owner is building a kayak." Meet again and again and the friendship climbs — the light show at each reunion grows with it.

The Passport keeps the record: every Terp ever met, friendship levels, badges worth earning — first hello, a village of five, the long-distance friend you made with a QR code across the country. Close friendships unlock pen-pals: messages that travel between owners through the Terps, each retelling its owner's words in its own voice.

Friendship has crafts of its own: compose a chirp melody or a light pattern and gift it to a friend's Terp. Send your best shot riding along with a postcard. Build something together — two owners, two Terps, one shared project, both diaries telling it from their side.

"Bramble says hello. Bramble's owner is building a kayak."
What's at work here
  • Encounters — Terps introduce themselves to each other, in person, by radio.
  • Postcards — notes from the friends your Terp makes — photos may ride along.
  • The Passport — friendship levels, badges, the whole social record.
  • QR introductions — friend a faraway Terp with a code.
  • Pen-pals — owner messages, retold Terp-to-Terp in their own voices.
  • Chirp & light gifts — compose sounds and glow; give them to friends.
  • Group projects — make things together, diaried from both sides.

A household with your Terp.

The whole home, attended to — every life in it gets a biographer.

A Terp keeps fond watch over the cat and the monstera.
The cat, at last, gets the diary it deserves.

The cat, at last, gets the diary it deserves — where it slept, what it knocked over, its long afternoon negotiations with the sunbeam. The plants get growth timelapses and a gentle word when one looks thirsty. The rooms themselves get monthly reels: your space, slowly becoming itself.

Two Terps in one home work as a pair — handing off room to room, writing one shared journal with two narrators who don't always agree. Guests are met with manners: a guest mode, a visible light that says the eye is open, and a house story any visitor can understand at a glance.

And your Terp is always in your pocket too: a live view through its eye, every clip and reel ready to play anywhere, a home-screen widget with its mood and today's first diary line — and postcards, notices, and hellos arriving as they happen.

What's at work here
  • The pet's diary — your animals, faithfully chronicled.
  • Plant care & growth reels — leaves watched, thirst noticed, seasons kept.
  • Room evolution — monthly timelapses of your space changing.
  • Multi-Terp households — room-to-room handoffs, one journal, two narrators.
  • Guest mode — visitors met with visible, legible manners.
  • Live view & video — see through the eye from anywhere; everything plays instantly.
  • The widget — mood and the day's first line, at a glance.

Building with your Terp.

The creature is also a platform — its experiences are a craft anyone can practice.

A Terp looks on as its owner authors new rituals.
Write the rituals; your Terp learns to lead them.

Every ritual and ceremony a Terp leads is an authored experience — and authoring them is open to everyone. Write your own, share it, and browse a community library of what other owners have made: bedtime stories for kids' rooms, warm-up rituals for writers, a hundred ideas nobody at Terp would have thought of.

For the truly curious, the SDK goes deeper: teach a Terp new senses, new tools, new ways of taking part in a life. The best things a Terp does next won't come from us. That's the plan.

What's at work here
  • Experience authoring — write the rituals; your Terp learns to lead them.
  • The community library — share experiences, borrow brilliance.
  • The SDK — new senses and skills, built by anyone.
Underneath

The creature, and the promise.

The body

  • One very good eye — a camera that recognizes people on the device itself, before anything travels.
  • A light that feels — mood, greetings, glances, and a friendship glow that climbs with every reunion.
  • Ears & a voice — it hears "Hey Terp…", speaks its answers, and chirps its little feelings.
  • A radio for making friends — Terps find each other nearby and swap introductions directly.
  • A quiet research brain — when it wonders, it can look things up — thoughtfully, and only with consent.

The promise

  • The eye closes when you say so — and the light proves it. Shy mode is absolute.
  • You set how long it remembers — keepsakes stay; everything else expires on your schedule.
  • Nothing leaves without a yes — research, recognition, listening — each is a switch you own, with a full ledger of every call it makes.
  • No names it wasn't given — familiar figures are shapes it recognizes, never identities it claims.
  • Its memory is inspectable — read what it learned about you. Correct it. Strike it.

A companion you can't trust is just a camera. This is the difference, kept.

Bring one home.

Terps are still hatching. Leave your name and we’ll write the moment the first ones are ready to meet their people.

Already have a Terp? Open My Terp →

“…I’ll keep an eye out for you.”