And the real culprit isn't the direct messages. It's the group chats. The family group, the school group, the building group, the five-a-side group that hasn't played in a year — three hundred messages about nothing, hiding the one message about something.

You don't read a group chat. You archaeologically excavate it.

What actually slips

It's never the important-looking things that get lost. It's the ordinary ones, buried at message 194.

The trip that got moved to Friday. The permission slip due Tuesday. The payment reminder somebody posted between two photos of a dog. The "did everyone see this?" that everyone, demonstrably, did not see.

By the time you find it, you're either apologising or paying a late fee.

Meet WhatsApp catch-up

Connect your WhatsApp to Toqi and it reads the backlog so you don't have to.

Catch-up summaries across your chats. Instead of three days of scrolling, a plain read-out: here's what happened while you were gone, and here are the two things that actually need you.

Group chats, cracked open. This is the part that matters. Two hundred messages in the school group become one line:

Outing moved to Friday, permission slip due Tuesday, class-fund contribution €12.

Signal, not noise. The building group's ninety messages about the lift become "lift out until Thursday, use the side entrance." You get the decision without the debate that produced it.

Replies, drafted. The "yes, I'll be there," the quick RSVP, the "thanks, got it" — written and waiting. You look, you send.

Urgent things flagged. Anything that genuinely can't wait comes to the top instead of sitting at the bottom of a thread you'll open on Sunday.

None of this asks you to leave a chat, mute anyone, or explain to your family why you've stopped replying. The groups stay exactly as they are. You just stop being the one who has to read all of them.

Who this is really for

Working parents. The school group is where the actual logistics live, and it's also where they're hardest to find. Stop discovering the deadline the morning it's due.

Team leads. The decision got made in the work group at 6pm on Friday, in among the memes. You need the decision, not the thread.

Community and building organisers. You're in eleven of these. Each one is mostly noise and occasionally the thing you're responsible for.

Anyone coming back from time off. A week away used to cost an evening of catching up before you'd even started on email. Now it costs a paragraph, and you find out on the flight home rather than at midnight on Sunday.

Your account, your terms

It's your WhatsApp. Toqi reads it to be useful to you, and nothing goes out without your okay — a drafted reply sits there until you send it. You decide which chats it pays attention to, and you can change your mind.

And as everywhere else: Toqi will do just about anything except spend your money.

The point isn't that you stop using WhatsApp. It's that you stop scrolling it looking for one line you already know is in there somewhere.

Try WhatsApp catch-up in Toqi

First thing in the morning, before I was properly awake. Last thing at night, in bed, achieving nothing. And in between, a low hum of guilt about the eleven messages I'd read, decided to deal with later, and then not dealt with.

"I'll reply to that tonight" was a lie I told myself roughly four times a day.

The thing is, none of those emails were difficult. Almost all of them were two lines long. It was the tracking of them that ate me — knowing there were eleven, not being sure which eleven, and re-deriving the list every time I opened the app.

So I tried something different. I connected my Gmail and Calendar to Toqi — one tap, not a setup project — and handed over the parts I dreaded.

It hands me my day, instead of me digging for it

I wake up to a short brief. What's on the calendar, what moved since yesterday, and the two or three emails that genuinely need me today.

Not all sixty. Two or three.

That sounds like a small thing and it isn't. The difference between "you have 60 unread" and "these two need you before lunch" is the difference between a task and a mood. One of them I can actually start.

It drafts the ones I've been avoiding

The "sorry for the slow reply" email I'd been not-writing for nine days. The polite no to something I couldn't take on. The "here's the info you asked for," which needed me to go and find the info.

Toqi writes them. I skim, change a word or two because it's my name at the bottom, and send.

The avoided emails turned out not to be hard either. They were just started, which is the entire problem with an avoided email. Something else beginning it removes the whole weight.

It catches the things I'd have missed

The Thursday I'd double-booked without noticing. The reply I promised someone on Monday and hadn't sent by Wednesday. The meeting with no agenda that was going to waste half an hour of four people's time.

It flags them before they turn into an apology, and it'll do something about them — schedule it, move it, set the nudge, chase the person who's gone quiet.

The shift

My inbox went from a place I live to a place I visit.

I still open it. I'm still the one deciding things. But I'm not the filing system any more, and I'm not carrying the list around at eleven at night, because something else is holding it.

The honest part

Toqi does the doing — books, emails, cancels, chases things down — and I stay in the loop. Nothing goes out until I've okayed it; a draft sits there as a draft until I say so. It's my account, on my terms.

The one thing it won't do is spend my money. It'll get a booking to the checkout page and hand it back. I've come to like that boundary.

I didn't get a cleaner inbox out of this. Mine is still a mess, honestly.

I got my mornings back.

Connect your inbox to Toqi

Too much of life is admin

The inbox that never empties. The calendar that double-books itself. The group chat you're three days behind on. The renewal you meant to cancel, the form you meant to sign, the appointment you've now moved twice.

None of it is hard. That's the strange part. Any one of these takes four minutes.

What wears you down is the holding of it — the running list in the back of your head that re-sorts itself at eleven at night. The work isn't the work. The work is remembering the work, and carrying it around until it's done.

So we built an assistant that does the doing

Not another list. Not a reminder that pings you about the thing you already know you haven't done.

Connect your email, your calendar or your WhatsApp, and Toqi gets on with it:

• It hands you your day. A short brief in the morning — what's on, what moved, the two or three things that actually need you.
• It drafts what you've been avoiding. The late reply, the polite no, the "here's the info you asked for." You skim it, change a word, send.
• It catches what you'd miss. The double-booked Thursday. The reply you promised on Monday. The renewal that's about to go through.
• It goes and does things. Books the table, cancels the subscription, chases the email that's gone quiet, finds out the thing you keep meaning to look up.

Everything except spending your money. Toqi will take a booking all the way to the checkout page and hand it back to you — it won't put your card in. That's a line we drew deliberately, and we're not planning to move it.

Nothing leaves without your okay

It's your inbox, your calendar, your WhatsApp — your accounts, on your terms.

Toqi reads enough to be useful and asks before it acts on anything that leaves your hands. A draft sits as a draft until you say send. A cancellation gets confirmed with you first. If you'd rather it just handled something quietly from now on, you tell it that, and it will.

We'd rather be asked one time too many than one time too few.

A word from Toqi

hi, i'm toqi. i'm happiest when i've quietly handled the boring stuff and your day feels a bit lighter. tell me what's on your plate — i'll take a few things off it.

What this blog will be

Three kinds of thing, mostly.

Real ways people use Toqi — the specific, unglamorous ones, because those are the useful ones. Notes on what we're building and why we chose one way over another. And honest lessons, including the times we got it wrong and had to rebuild something three times before it worked.

No launch-speak. If something isn't good yet, we'll say so.

Glad you're here.

Meet Toqi