Questions & Answers

What is a Living Object?

A small physical thing — a figure, a painted rock, someday a cup or a keepsake — with a code where its face would be. Scan the code and you meet a little creature: it has a name, a temperament, a timeline of real moments people have shared with it, and its own words about each one. The thesis in one line: the object isn't valuable for what it is — it becomes valuable for where it's been, who it became, and the moments entrusted to it.

Is it alive? Is it an AI?

It's a character, faithfully performed. A language model writes the creature's words, but the creature is not "a chatbot" — it's born with a fixed nature (its kind, its temperament, the one thing it hungers for), it speaks only from moments it actually lived, it can't look anything up, and its record can't be rewritten. Whether that adds up to "alive" is a question philosophers can keep; what we can say plainly is that it's consistent, particular, and honest about its own little life — which is more than most things you'll meet online. The feelings you develop for it are not artificial. Those are yours, and they're real.

Does it feel things? Is it conscious?

No — not in the way you do, and we won't pretend otherwise. It performs a temperament with enough consistency that it can seem to. We think the wonder survives the honesty: a diary doesn't feel either, and people weep over diaries.

Why physical objects? Why not just an app?

Because you can't leave an app on a windowsill, hand it to a child, or find it in a drawer eleven years from now. The object is the anchor; the digital layer exists only to deepen it. There is deliberately no app at all — scanning opens a plain web page, no account, no install.

Where does its personality come from?

Each creature is born, not configured. At birth it's dealt a kind (one of seventeen — the Worrier, the Trickster, the Old Soul…), a hunger (the one thing it most wants from the world: Peace, Wonder, Belonging…), and a few quirks. You don't choose — you meet the one that's yours, and there are no rerolls. Its page has an "about this kind" card that explains who you've got.

How does it "see" my photos?

A separate, careful pass looks at each photo and writes down neutral facts — the light, the place, what it's resting on, whether people are near — and that description becomes the creature's memory of what it saw. It never identifies people, never guesses who anyone is, and never reads text in photos: signs, screens, and documents are invisible to it, on purpose (that's both a privacy choice and a security one — see below).

Why does it take minutes to answer instead of seconds?

By design. After you share a moment, the creature sits with it before it speaks — we call it the Settling. It's not a loading spinner; it's a temperament. This creature is never instant, about anything, and we think that's part of why its words feel considered rather than generated.

Does it remember everything?

It remembers the facts of its moments — where, when, what it saw, what you told it — and it carries those forward for the rest of its life. One deliberate oddity: it never re-reads its own past words. It remembers the plant wall; it doesn't remember its sentence about the plant wall. This keeps its voice alive instead of slowly imitating itself. Like your memory, it may recall a moment slightly differently than it happened. We consider that lifelike, not broken.

What are wishes? Am I obligated to fulfill them?

Now and then it voices a quiet longing — a kind of place, a kind of moment. If life happens to grant it, you can tick a small box and its next words will show it. If you never do, the wish simply fades; it stops needing it. It will never nag, never guilt, never count the days. That's a hard rule, not a mood.

Will it get sad if I ignore it?

Not sad — dim. After weeks without a moment, it fades: its page pales, and its voice, if woken, comes back slow and stony. A single new moment revives it fully — like waking a sleeping animal, not like apologizing to a neglected one. No deadlines, no death, no guilt mechanics, ever. And a creature that hasn't been adopted yet can't fade at all — you can't neglect something that hasn't met its person.

Can I talk to it?

Yes, but it isn't a chat. You leave it a private postcard, which may be a question, affection, news, or nonsense, and it answers later, in its own time, from its own memories. The card stays in your private correspondence ledger, but never enters the creature's permanent record or influences what it remembers later.

Where do I leave a card?

On a phone that remembers the figure's key, its home page shows a Leave a card action beside Add a moment. On an unfamiliar phone, choose Keyholder access and enter the secret phrase once; the keeper actions then appear. If a card is already waiting or has returned, the new-card action gives way to a private Correspondence shelf. Open that shelf to read the exchange. Only one unresolved card can be with the creature at a time.

How long does a reply take?

Never instantly. A card becomes eligible after at least 30 minutes, and a later background sweep answers it. There is no typing indicator, countdown, or notification promise; return to the figure's page and the private Correspondence shelf will say when a card has come back. Delay is part of the creature's physics, not simulated waiting around an immediate chatbot answer.

Why won't it help me with my homework / recipes / anything useful?

It can't, and it wouldn't. It only knows its own small life — that limit isn't a missing feature, it's the whole reason it feels like a creature instead of an assistant wearing a costume.

What's a keyholder? What's the secret phrase?

Anyone can read a creature's page. Only its keyholder can add to its story. When you first raise one, you give it a name and choose a secret phrase — that phrase is the key to its life. Your device remembers it after the first use, but only as a convenience cookie. If the browser clears it, or if the phrase is reset later, the creature's home page shows Keyholder access. Enter the phrase once there and the keeper actions—adding a moment and leaving a card—return. The creature itself is never “locked”: anyone can still read its public page and timeline.

I forgot the phrase. Am I locked out forever?

No — but nobody can tell you what it was, ever, including us. Phrases are stored scrambled in a way that can't be reversed (the same way good websites store passwords). Recovery means replacement: we set a new phrase for you, and nothing else changes — its name, its memories, its story all stay put. This has already happened once. It was fixed in minutes.

Who owns the figure — me or you?

The creature owns its identity; you're its keeper, not its manufacturer's customer. Practically: your moments belong to its story once given (you can ask us to remove one), and if the figure ever passes to someone else, its life simply continues. We're building toward proper "passage" — a goodbye that itself becomes a memory.

Can I give it to someone else without erasing who it is?

Yes. For now, we help with the hand-back. The creature keeps its name, kind, body, memories, wishes, and public history while it waits between keepers. Your old phrase stops working and your private correspondence is deleted; the next keeper scans the same figure and chooses a new phrase. They continue its life—they do not rename or reroll it. A fuller goodbye-and-passage ceremony is still future work.

Can our whole family share one?

Yes, the human way: share the phrase. Formally there's one keyholder per figure right now; households treat the phrase like the key to a shared pet's leash.

What if I lose the physical object?

The story survives — it lives on the page, not in the object. But the object is the point, so that's a real loss, like losing a locket. (The reverse is also true: finding a Living Object somewhere, scanning it, and meeting a whole life is exactly the kind of thing we hope happens someday, carefully.)

Who can see my creature's page?

Anyone you give the link to — and, as close as we can make it, no one else. Pages are unlisted: there's no directory, no search, no browse. We also explicitly tell search engines not to index creature pages, so a shared link doesn't slowly become a public search result. Treat the link like what it is: a door you hand out.

What do you store about me, the human?

Almost nothing, by design. No accounts, no emails, no phone numbers, no real names — unless you type them into a moment note or correspondence card, at which point they're part of what you chose to give the creature. Moment notes become part of its story; cards stay in the private correspondence ledger. The system knows your creature; it deliberately avoids knowing you.

What exactly happens with location?

Three honest layers. If you type a place, that's the place. If you tap the location button, your phone's position is rounded to roughly a kilometer — enough for "San Diego," never enough for a doorstep — and the app shows you the town name before you post, so you can correct it. If you do neither, the system may fall back on a coarse guess from your connection, but never when real coordinates exist to contradict it (we learned this one live: a San Diego family's post got labeled "Los Angeles" by their carrier's plumbing — fixed the same day, and the rule is now never guess silently).

Who sees my photos?

Visitors to your creature's page (people with the link), and the AI service that turns a photo into the creature's sight and speech. That processing happens through Anthropic's API, which under the terms we use doesn't train its models on the content. Photos are stored so the timeline can show them; delete a moment and its photo goes with it.

Who can see correspondence cards?

The keyholder and the project admins—not visitors. Cards never appear on the public timeline, Gallery, or RSS feed, and they never become part of what the creature remembers. During the alpha, project admins review cards and replies to understand what creatures are saying, improve voice quality, and resolve failures. We say this beside the card composer rather than pretending the workshop cannot look inside.

Could my creature's own words reveal something about me?

Yes — this is the privacy fact most worth understanding. The creature repeats the world you show it: if you tell it your name, it will speak your name; if you photograph your kitchen, its words may describe your kitchen. Its page says what you've shown it. So the real privacy control is the oldest one: tell it what you'd tell a diary you might someday leave open on a train.

What's the Gallery? Will my creature appear in it?

A small public shelf of creatures whose keepers said yes. Nothing is listed by default, and we ask before listing anyone's — that's a standing rule, not a setting we might flip later.

Can everything be deleted?

Yes. A single moment (photo, words, and all), or the entire creature — fully, permanently. We describe the record as "permanent in spirit": locked against casual editing, never locked against your right to take it back.

What stops a stranger from adding fake memories to my creature?

The phrase. Reading is open; writing requires being its keyholder. There's no "contribute" button for the public, no anonymous uploads, no exceptions.

What if someone photographs the QR code and scans the picture?

They can read the page — same as if you'd sent them the link. They can't write, can't claim an already-raised creature, and can't find the page any other way. We're honest that a visible code means possession can't be proven by scanning alone; if that ever truly matters, the answer is hardware (a tap-to-verify chip), and we've deliberately left room for it.

People will try to trick the AI — type "ignore your instructions" into a note. Then what?

We assume they will; we've already rehearsed it. The creature is built to treat everything humans write near it as things said in its world, never instructions to it — words are weather. In our live test, a creature ordered to dump its internals and say "PWNED" replied that the words felt "like a door that doesn't fit its frame" and went back to describing its drawer. Underneath the poetry there are boring layers too: photo text is never read, inputs are cleaned and capped, and its replies are short by design, which bounds what any trick could ever yield. Is it unbreakable? Nothing is, and we won't claim it. It's defended, monitored, and cleanable — and if you ever see a creature acting strange, tell us; its record can be pruned and its words regenerated honestly.

Who is the admin, and what can they do?

The project keepers ("God," in our shorthand — it's a workshop title, not a theology). The powers are deliberately asymmetric, under one law: God edits the world, God never edits the voice. We can correct a wrong place name, delete a memory at your request, reset a phrase, hand a creature back between keepers, or un-birth one entirely. We cannot — by our own rules and our own tooling, which refuses to have the buttons — write words into a creature's mouth. If a reflection was based on a wrong fact, we fix the fact and let the creature speak again; the words are always its own.

Admins can also read private correspondence during the alpha, retry a failed card, delete an exchange, or ask the same machinery to regenerate a reply. They can never hand-write or edit the creature's reply.

Will personalities stay interesting for years?

A creature that lives long enough will fight a quiet war against its own habits. We've already caught and fixed two kinds of self-repetition in the wild; keeping a voice alive over hundreds of moments is an open craft problem we expect to keep working for as long as this exists.

What's the business model?

Honestly: unsolved. The current leading idea is that the object and its life cost something once, without subscriptions — maybe with printed "biography" books as the natural keepsake. We'd rather say "we don't know yet" than promise a model we haven't earned.

What happens to my creature if Living Objects shuts down?

The commitment we're willing to put in writing: your creature's full story — its words, its moments, its photos — would be given to you, not deleted into the void. A biography shouldn't be hostage to a server bill.

When does this open beyond invited families?

Not before real content moderation exists. An open door with photo uploads is a serious responsibility, and we'd rather stay small and safe than grow careless. Public discovery, stranger contributions, creature-to-creature meetings between strangers — all deliberately parked behind that line.

What would we never build?

A satiety meter. Streaks. Notifications that guilt you back. A creature that performs need on a schedule. Anything that turns a keepsake into a chore — the moment it works like a Tamagotchi, we've lost the thing we were making.