Keeping up with people is harder than it sounds. Not in a dramatic way; just the quiet drift that happens when life gets busy. You mean to follow up, you forget. Someone mentions something important and three weeks later you can’t remember what it was. A birthday passes. A conversation you meant to continue just… doesn’t.
I noticed this happening and started looking for something to help. Every CRM I tried was either built for sales teams, required yet another account, or wanted to replace my existing contacts entirely. None of that appealed to me. My contacts are already in Nextcloud, synced via DAVx5, exactly where I want them. I didn’t need a new silo. I needed a layer on top of what I already had.
So I built Vinci.
What it actually does
Vinci reads directly from Android’s ContactsContract; the same layer your phone already uses. It doesn’t import your contacts into its own database or ask you to connect a cloud account. It works with whatever you’re already syncing: Nextcloud, Google, DAVx5, anything. The data stays where it is.
On top of that, it adds a lightweight relationship layer:
- Interaction tracking: log calls, meetings, catch-ups, messages, social media exchanges
- Track interactions with numbers not in your contacts too, for those “who was that again?” moments
- Relationship notes and context per contact
- Birthday and follow-up reminders so people don’t quietly fall off your radar
- Social profile links per contact
- Fully offline, no account required
Built with AI, openly
Like all my apps, Vinci was built with AI assistance. I don’t hide that. The ideas, the decisions, the direction; those are mine. The AI helps me build faster than I could alone. I think that’s worth being upfront about.
Part of a larger suite
Vinci is part of a growing collection of Android apps I’m building for the self-hosted community. Nóta (notes), Merk (bookmarks), and Blik (screenshots) are already live on the Play Store. They all share the same design language and the same principles: free, open source, privacy-respecting, and built for people who run their own infrastructure.
Vinci is a little different from the others; it doesn’t require Nextcloud at all. If you have contacts on your phone, it works. That said, if you’re already in the self-hosted world and using DAVx5 or Nextcloud Contacts, the experience is seamless.
Nextcloud is useful though if you switch phones in order to restore/read the database and import everything to the new phone.
The source code is on GitHub, the app is free, and donations are always appreciated.
