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I Made my Wife a Bot for Valentine’s Day

This morning I rolled out Tink, a simple interactive chatbot I wrote for my wife as a gift for Valentine’s Day. Every few days, Tink will text my sweetie a randomly-selected yes-or-no question from a list of questions I wrote, e.g. Would you like to take hip-hop classes? At different random times, it will also text me […]

This morning I rolled out Tink, a simple interactive chatbot I wrote for my wife as a gift for Valentine’s Day.

Every few days, Tink will text my sweetie a randomly-selected yes-or-no question from a list of questions I wrote, e.g. Would you like to take hip-hop classes? At different random times, it will also text me random questions from the same list. When we both reply “Y” to the same question, it will notify us of that happy coincidence and suggest that we, say, finally enroll in those hip-hop classes.

Basically it’s Tinder, but for couples. But not in the way you’re thinking (you dirty dawg).

Instead it’s a fun way for two romantic partners (or just friends?) to discover shared interests they didn’t know they had. I suspect Tink will also become a motivator to actually do the things it suggests. (We’ve been meaning to sign up for hip-hop classes for months, but haven’t yet.)

The questions I wrote for Tink’s inaugural run mostly revolve around ideas for fun dates, outdoor activities, new restaurants we want to try, etc. However, there’s no reason why Tink questions couldn’t cover religion, politics, sex—or even topics actually fit for the dinner table.

With G-rated questions, Tink could serve families or even small friend groups, but right now it’s only a bicycle built for two.

Wanna take a peek under the hood? I made Tink opensource under the MIT license.