Tyknit: your tight-knit circle

Tyknit takes its name from the thing it protects: the tight-knit circle. Not a network. Not a follower count. The twelve or fifty people who would actually pick up at 2am: your family, the friends who have known you for years, the colleagues who pass you real work, the neighbours who save together. Those circles already exist. They just live in a group chat where nothing is remembered, promises quietly dissolve, and one person carries everyone. Tyknit gives yours somewhere to live. FOUR KINDS OF CIRCLE, ONE APP Family. School fees, the emergency pot, looking after parents. An Elder, an Organiser and a Treasurer instead of a committee. Dependants are held by the circle without paying anything, and whole households join as one. Birthdays and remembrances come round on their own, and every role has a named successor, because families outlive phones. Friends. No dues, ever. Lifts to the airport, hospital visits, birthdays nobody forgets, and a harambee when one of you is hit hard. Kept by an Organiser and a Keeper, with an honest record of who showed up. Professionals. A vouched room of practitioners — lawyers, nurses, agronomists, builders. No money norm at all. You trade referrals, introductions and hours; standing is earned by giving first. Savings circles. Chamas, stokvels, susus, tandas, merry-go-rounds, giving circles and alumni funds, each from a constitution written for its tradition. SHOWING UP IS THE WHOLE POINT Ask the circle for help and watch the responses land. Ask someone to check on you. Say thanks, gift your hours, make an introduction, pass on an opportunity. Create a gathering and know who actually came. Tyknit remembers the showing up — exactly what a group chat cannot. YOU GET IN BY A VOUCH, NOT A LINK Nobody wanders in. A member nominates you and stakes their own standing on it, a second endorses, the circle votes, and you begin on probation, giving before asking. It is why a Tyknit circle stays a circle. TALK, AND CALL Threads for each topic, announcement threads only officers post in, replies, reactions, mentions, polls, stickers, photos, documents, voice notes with transcripts, and translation between English and Swahili. Voice and video calls for the whole circle, a thread, or one person. Side chats — private one-to-one and small-group conversations — are end-to-end encrypted. Not even Tyknit's servers can read them, and you can check that yourself with safety numbers. WHEN THERE IS MONEY, ONE HONEST LEDGER Plenty of circles never touch this. For those that do: see the balance today, and who has paid this month. Declare a payment by M-Pesa, bank, cash or card — paste an M-Pesa message and the amount and reference fill themselves in — and the treasurer confirms it. Corrections are new entries, never quiet edits. Tyknit never holds your money. It settles to your circle's own account on the rails you already use: Tyknit keeps the record, the rail moves the cash. DECIDE TOGETHER, IN THE OPEN Contribution norms, officer roles, admission thresholds, removal and exit rules — set by your constitution, changed by secret ballot. Before every serious tap, three questions are already answered: what happens now, who sees it, can I undo it. CARRY YOUR STANDING Your Passport travels between circles: how long you have belonged, the tier you earned, promises kept, vouches honoured — never one circle's private detail into another. BUILT FOR REAL PHONES AND REAL NETWORKS The last statement stays readable when the network drops, and with SMS fallback on, what must arrive still does with no data at all. Quiet hours keep the circle from waking you. YOUR DATA IS YOURS Download everything Tyknit holds about you, any time. Delete your account in the app or at tyknit.net/delete-account. Belonging, talking, calling and helping each other are free. No adverts, and your data is not for sale. Tyknit does not manufacture trust between strangers. It gives the trust you already have somewhere dependable to live.