Tolan is a voice-first companion app in which you talk with an animated alien character that learns about you across conversations. The character is framed as a guide for everyday life rather than a human stand-in: it helps with planning, task management, and goal tracking, and it is designed to know when to step back.
Each turn rebuilds the model's context from scratch: a summary of recent messages, a persona card, memories retrieved by vector search, tone guidance, and live signals from the app are assembled before the response is generated. The memory layer stores emotional tone alongside facts, so the character adapts to topic shifts and recalls earlier exchanges. The app runs on GPT-5.1 through the Responses API, which reduced speech initiation time by more than 0.7 seconds compared with the previous setup.
The app ships on iOS. New accounts get limited trial access that can be extended by completing tasks; full access requires a subscription, and a family plan gives each member an individual companion under shared billing.
Features
- Voice-first conversation: speech in and speech out with an animated character, with latency treated as a core design constraint
- Per-turn context reconstruction: recent-message summary, persona card, retrieved memories, tone guidance, and app signals are assembled every turn
- Long-term memory: remembers preferences, past interactions, and emotional state across sessions
- Life-guide tasks: planning, task management, and goal tracking inside the conversation
- Safeguards for minors: hourly break reminders and age-appropriate prompting for users under 18, with a crisis protocol that points to the 988 Lifeline and Crisis Text Line
- Account controls: conversations are stored on the company's servers and can be deleted from in-app settings
- Family plan: shared billing with a separate companion for each member
