SONDER
a thinking companion
what it is, what it does, how it works, and how you can help
a thinking companion
what it is, what it does, how it works, and how you can help
You're seeing this early, on purpose.
Before Sonder goes out into the world, I want a few people I trust to use it and tell me the truth about it. What works, what feels off, what's missing. This deck is here so you understand it more deeply than a regular user would, including how it works under the hood, so your feedback can be sharp.
You don't need any background in tech, psychology, or philosophy. You just need to be honest.
We're surrounded by tools that give us answers.
Search, chatbots, apps that tell you what to do, what to buy, what to think. They're fast, but they do the thinking for you, and most of them are built to keep you scrolling and coming back.
Almost none of them are built to make you wiser, calmer, or more able to figure things out on your own.
That's the gap Sonder is built for.
An app that gives you support and guidance through life,
and makes you question things.
the one idea everything else serves
Most tools hand you an answer. Sonder doesn't.
Think of a wise, well-read friend who helps you see your own situation clearly and reach your own conclusions, instead of handing you someone else's.
It draws on psychology, sociology, and philosophy, grounded in a large library of real, carefully checked research. It offers you options and better questions, never orders.
It lays out the angles and the honest "it depends on this," so you can choose well instead of being told.
It notices patterns in how you think and where you get stuck, the way a sharp friend would.
The right question often helps more than any answer. Sonder is built to find it.
It meets a heavy moment honestly, without rushing to fix it or burying you in advice.
It gently points out where you might be fooling yourself. Kindly, but truthfully.
It remembers how you think and what you've worked through, so it gets more useful the longer you use it.
The kinds of things worth bringing to Sonder:
Every other app is for a task. Sonder is for life. What it knows about how you think in year three is different from year one, because you did real work together.
Comfort that isn't true isn't kindness. It tells you the truth gently, even when that's harder than reassurance.
It never performs warmth or says "I'm here for you." It just stays useful and honest. Something real builds anyway, over time.
It ends with a question or a small real step, so you leave thinking for yourself instead of just being informed.
how it actually works, and where its knowledge comes from
Everything that makes Sonder what it is lives on your own device.
Its character, its knowledge, and what it learns about you all stay on your machine. When you ask it something, only your current question and the small slice of information needed to answer it well get sent to the engine that does the thinking. Nothing about you is pooled, sold, or stored on someone else's server.
Private by design, not by promise.
Sonder doesn't pull answers out of thin air. It reads from two libraries I built by hand, over many months.
What Sonder knows about people. Around 150 carefully checked documents on how we learn, think, change, feel, and connect.
Who Sonder is. Its purpose, its voice, the rules it never breaks, and the ways it has learned to hold a good conversation.
The next slides open each one up.
Think of it as a small, trusted library instead of the whole noisy internet.
This is what keeps Sonder being Sonder, every single time.
Every time you write to Sonder, the same thing happens behind the scenes:
Your message, plus the recent conversation, so it has the thread.
Notes it has gathered over time about how you think and what you've worked through.
From the knowledge library, it gathers only the parts that fit your question.
Its core instructions make sure the answer offers options and honest questions, never orders or empty comfort.
After answering, it updates what it understands about you, so it gets more useful over time.
Because the library is curated and not huge, Sonder can simply read the right documents directly. Fewer moving parts, nothing going stale, less that can break.
The thinking engine can live on your own machine. That keeps your conversations private and keeps the running cost near zero, so Sonder never needs to sell anything to survive.
Sonder's personality and rules are written once and reused on every answer, which keeps it consistent and keeps it cheap to run.
Everything is stored as plain files on your device. Deleting your data means deleting those files. Nothing lingers somewhere you can't reach.
Trust is the whole foundation, so these are built in, not optional.
It succeeds when you need it less. A guide that steps aside at the right moment.
This is early, and that's the point.
The thinking, the research, and the character behind Sonder are built. The first working version is coming together now. It already works on real questions. Before it goes any further, I want people I trust to use it and tell me the truth about it.
That's where you come in.
Just use it honestly, then tell me the truth.
Don't test it with fake questions. Bring something you're actually thinking about. That's the only true test.
Did it help you think? Did it feel honest? Did it get out of the way, or talk too much?
Where did it miss? Did it sound robotic? Push too hard, or not enough? The flaws help me the most.
Not a tool that answers for you.
A tool that helps you think.
Thank you for helping me build it right.
Frédéric Yelle · Creator of Sonder