What's New

September 22, 2026: Android 2.15.1 reads cleanly and welcomes newcomers

Android 2.15.1 (build 118) fixes something Android users have been living with: replies showed, and TalkBack read aloud, the directions meant for the voices, such as percent signs around “warm, a little playful”. Replies now read cleanly on the screen and in TalkBack, and the voices still get their directions.

After signing in, a new person now lands right in a chat with their main character, with a short welcome and three starter ideas that fill the message box without sending. The sign-in screen says what the app is, accepts an email or a phone number, and has New here? Ask Kade to join and Forgot your password?, which opens the website’s password reset.

September 22, 2026: Live calls on Android, and more expressive faces

Android 2.15 (build 117) adds live voice calls. Open a conversation, choose Call, then Start call. Speak naturally, even while your companion is talking. Mute, speaker and hang-up controls are on the call screen; mute and hang-up are also in the ongoing call notification. Calls started in an existing chat keep that chat’s context. Afterward, return to the chat to read the transcript once it arrives.

Kiana, Della, Lilly and Harley have eight additional facial expressions and their own movement rhythms in this Android update.

September 22, 2026: Android catches up with the iPhone

Android 2.14 (build 115) has the iPhone's moving faces for Harley, Lilly, Kiana and Della, with the face at the top of every conversation; a Talk to button for your main agent at the bottom of every screen; photos and files in a chat; voice message speed; and every iPhone destination in More, including the Library and Kade's Clubhouse. What changed on Android.

September 16, 2026: library reading and Kiana follow-ups

The Library now offers Steady, Balanced and Lively delivery for text books, optional highlighted passages, and better removal of marked page numbers. The new iPhone TestFlight update adds bottom-center playback, ten-second seeking with larger jumps in a hold menu or VoiceOver actions, and a position slider for recordings. Library controls and details.

Kiana's repetition repair now separates the current question from old search results. If its second check still confirms a repeated answer, it reports the failure instead of sending that old answer again.

September 9, 2026: more natural companion movement

Kiana and Della have more varied blinking, subtle brow movement during pauses, and smoother head movement on the website, Android 2.12 (build 113), and iPhone TestFlight 282. Voice playback and animation controls work as before. The public App Store update is still awaiting Apple review.

September 9, 2026: expressive companions and account emails

Kiana and Della now have individual brow expressions and movement rhythms on the website, Android 2.11 (build 112) and iPhone TestFlight 281. iPhone voice calls can also show the originating companion while listening, thinking and speaking. Version 2.0.2 has been submitted for public App Store review; Apple must approve it before it reaches the store. Pause, reduced motion and the animation switch still apply. When Kade approves access, account information is emailed to the account’s email address. Phone-only accounts still receive their sign-in details directly from Kade.

September 9, 2026: Della and smoother voice portraits

Della now has her own portrait. On the website and Android 2.10 (build 111), Della and Kiana have graduated mouth and eyelid movement during voice messages. Other companions keep their own pictures. This animation adds no voice-generation charge. The corresponding iPhone update is now in TestFlight build 281 and has been submitted for App Store review.

September 9, 2026: animated voice messages

Characters can appear while you listen to voice replies: on the website, iPhone TestFlight 280, and Android 2.9 (build 110). Kiana blinks and moves her mouth with playback; other characters keep their own portraits with gentle movement. Web portraits have Pause and Resume for the same recording. Animation can be switched off without changing the voice or text. Voice portrait controls.

Kade keeps building. This page is the running list of what's new, so you find out about the good stuff without anyone having to explain it one phone call at a time.

September 11, 2026: the Parlor has a lobby, and Lyria briefs in Google's order

The Parlor on the website now shows Open tables right now right under the games: any table a family member dealt with a free seat for friends, with the host, the game, the seats open and the code. Tap it and you are seated — nobody has to read you a code. The page runs games first, then the lobby, then your own open tables, then the code box, then the standings. Dealing a table with open seats offers a Keep it off the lobby switch. The iPhone app gets the same layout in its next build. In the Sound Booth, Lyria's script desk and how-to notes now follow Google's own prompt guide (genre and era, instruments, section tags, the voice, the mood, then BPM, key and length), your own lyrics ride under a proper Lyrics: heading, and the words it writes come back without its machine markers, so the read-back is just the song. See The Game Parlor and Sound & Audio.

September 11, 2026: twelve new voices, and Kiana looks things up

Twelve Inworld voices joined the voice picker (search the tags juniper, cobalt, tamarack, quartzite, marigold, cedarwood, hollyhock, saffron, peridot, ironwood, flint and nutmeg), and one retired voice's slot now speaks as smooth low man · slate. Separately, asking a companion about something out in the world — a new phone, a release date, a price, a rumor — now brings the web search along more reliably, and a companion that has to say “I'd need to look that up” will actually go look when you say yes.

September 9, 2026: Help getting back into your account

The website's sign-in page has a Need help signing in? link. You can request a password-reset email and keep your original chats and balance. Use the newest link within 15 minutes. For a phone-only account or a lost email inbox, contact Kade.

September 8, 2026: iPhone TestFlight 279

Older replies replay in the character's current voice, thinking feedback restarts reliably, and call and playback decorations respect motion preferences. Stronger contrast, earlier large-text stacking and bigger search controls make the updated screens easier to use.

September 7, 2026

• Help is easier to find your way around. Search inside articles, browse by what you want to do, or use the quick links for speech, balances and missing replies. Saved work, projects and Clubhouse now have their own guides. Help links stay at kademurdock.com, including links opened from older apps.

• Check the exact coding job. Agent work has a coding-job view for the owner, with saved results, checks, spending and anything awaiting review. A service restart marks unfinished work as interrupted; it does not silently repeat the job. New Forge coding jobs reserve provider spending before each model call and stop before exceeding the agreed $1.00 ceiling. Missing charge receipts are shown as incomplete. This ceiling currently covers the coding worker; separate chat rewrites and background memory charges are not yet covered.
• Trace and correct memories. On the web, choose Sources and corrections on a memory card. Open its recorded source, select related cards, and save a correction while keeping earlier versions. Corrected cards are protected from automatic replacement. Older cards may have no source evidence. The chat header's Memory controls lets you turn remembering off for that conversation and inspect the tools recorded for its latest reply.
• Projects keep working context. Open a project's Instructions and working files on the web. Add instructions and text references, then let agents revise a working document in later project chats. Import .txt, .md, .csv or .json files, keep earlier versions, and download the finished file. Word and PDF editing are not part of this project-file workflow yet.

Billing and privacy wording now matches the platform's controls: model charges include a contribution toward running the service, administrators can access stored chats, and saying "off the record" is a request to the AI memory system. It does not stop the chat from being stored. See Usage & Balance and Privacy & Your Data.

• A clearer iPhone Home, in TestFlight build 276. Cards have more space, and tool rows become full-width at accessibility text sizes. Version and build details now live in Settings → Support.
• Agent work is on the iPhone. From Home, open Agent work to check recent requests and open saved replies after a connection drops. Refresh checks existing work without sending another message. Opening a saved chat puts Conversations behind it, so Back returns to the list. These changes arrive in TestFlight first; the App Store version may be older.

September 6, 2026

• Safer recovery after a connection drops. Web chat checks the original request before trying again, including regenerated and continued replies. If the outcome is uncertain, choose Check this request to open its saved status without sending it again.
• Clearer narration updates. Studio agents report the actual wait for your narration job. A missing job is not replaced with another job's status, and a failed render is no longer described as proof that no provider charge occurred.
• Find work after a dropped connection. The website's Agent work page shows new chat requests and links to saved replies. It distinguishes working, stopped, failed and interrupted requests. Checking it never sends the message again. Stop also stays with the chat you selected when its old run has ended.
• More to make in the Sound Booth. Start from an editable radio scene, station ID, narration, comedy, ambience, or music-bed script. The web booth also has a free audio workbench: trim a recording, add fades and a background track, then download a WAV. Those editor files stay on your device.
• Long recordings keep their progress. Stop targets the current part; rendering an unchanged failed or stopped project reuses its finished parts. Reopening a project restores its voice and reference clips. The web booth and iPhone build 275 ask you to confirm a current estimate for both full takes and voice previews.
• Lyric writes for a vocalist. Its revised songwriting instructions focus on natural language, memorable hooks, rap craft, and stories that move. Full songs come with separate lyrics and production fields; ask for lyrics only, alternate bars, or a small repair when that is all you need.
• Android 2.8: project files on your phone. Import UTF-8 text into a draft for review, and export current files, older versions or unsaved drafts through Android's file picker. Download the update.
• Android 2.7: native Projects. Search projects, edit instructions and reference or working text, and read saved versions. Conflicting or uncertain saves keep your draft for comparison. Download the update.
• Android 2.6: keep your draft and recover uploads. Unsent messages and pending-reply handles survive reopening the app. ChatGPT export uploads now have size checks, progress, cancellation and an explicit retry. Download the update.
• Android 2.5: voice playback and native saved work. Refreshed voice choices, bounded direction carry, clearer playback failures, a native Agent work screen, and labeled import and memory-sharing controls. Download the update.
• Android 2.4: clearer at larger text sizes. A full-width message field, wrapping headers, scrolling Settings, High contrast and Reduce motion controls. Notification taps open their destination, and More includes Agent work and Projects. Download the update.
• Android 2.3 keeps hold of the conversation. Drafts and a pending reply survive turning your phone. If the connection drops while a reply is running, Check reply checks the same work. Recover message brings back an uncertain send without replacing your newer draft. Latest reply lets you jump down when you're ready. Download the update.
• A better memory between chats. The nightly reflection now follows activity across separate chats, keeps the dates with it, and remembers where it left off. Quiet time no longer wipes a companion's relationship history. The memory switch now covers this reflection too.

September 5, 2026 — afternoon

• Kade-AI is on the App Store. No more invitations or TestFlight: get the iPhone app here, or search Kade-AI in the App Store (the direct link is the easiest way to find it). Same sign-in as the website. Everyone who was on TestFlight can keep it or install the store version right over it. Details on the new iPhone App page. A follow-up version with the newest fixes is already in Apple's queue and will update itself when it lands.

September 5, 2026

• Four things your characters could not actually do, fixed. "Where am I?", "how do I turn on voice?", "transcribe my voice memo," and the deep-research desk had quietly stopped reaching the tools behind them — the characters were answering from memory and sounding sure about it. Found while tightening the tools (below), fixed the same hour. If a character told you something about this site that turned out wrong in the last few weeks, that is probably why; ask again.
• Characters carry only the tools a turn needs. Every reply used to ship the instructions for two dozen tools whether you wanted the phone or were just saying good night. Now a small core rides every turn (memory, reminders, weather, help, feedback) and the rest attach when your words call for them — "call my mom," "what's in the news," "look that up" — and stay attached for the rest of that conversation. Replies got a little faster, and it costs the server less. If a character ever seems not to know it has a tool, say the thing plainly ("use the weather tool") and tell Kade.
• What you actually cost the server, on the iPhone (build 271). Under Settings → Usage & Balance there is a new line: your real month-to-date cost, beside the balance, with the note that balances are charged at twice real model cost to help cover the rest of the platform. The website's Feed the Server page has had it since last night; Android shows the same page inside the app.
• New characters are born on the family's model. The Build Your Own Character screen defaulted to the expensive brain; it now starts on the same model every character runs, and one listing that never actually worked is gone from the picker.

September 4, 2026

• Forty-one kids' and teens' voices are filed where they belong. A friend said some voices were in the wrong section, and she was right: the machine ear that described the catalog listened to every voice reading the same grown-up paragraph, so a child's voice reading it came out labelled "young woman." Kade's own names for her clones settle it — trevor male kid, scarla female child, megan female teen — so thirty-five children and teenagers moved out of the women's and men's headings into Kids and teens (kids first, then teens, and the labels now say girl, boy, kid, teen girl, teen boy), and three grown voices whose maker's own description said otherwise swapped headings. Nothing you picked moved: a saved voice keeps speaking and quietly takes its new label.
• "Wrong section?" is a button now. Under any voice in the picker — web, the agent builder, and the iPhone on its next build — tap Wrong section?, say what it actually sounds like (a woman, a man, a kid or a teen, a character, older, younger), and it lands on Kade's feedback board with the voice's name and the heading it sits under. Your ear beats the machine's; this is how the next catalog pass gets receipts.
• Your companions can share what you tell them — facts, not opinions. If you talk to more than one character and are tired of saying things twice, there is a Memory sharing setting (Android now; iPhone on its next build; web soon): off, all of them, or a chosen few. When it is on, a fact you told Della can surface for Kiana marked as secondhand — she knows the thing without pretending she was there — and the same the other way. What never crosses over is each character's own read of you: their opinions, their running thread, what they have learned. That is what makes Della Della. Off is truly off; nothing is copied.
• Android gets notifications now (build 2.2). Reminders, a companion texting you first, calls, and notes like this one reach an Android phone the same way they reach an iPhone. Install the new build from the site (the app offers it when you open it), say yes when it asks to send notifications, and you are on the list. Two channels in Android's settings if you want them different: Kade-AI for the everyday notes and Calls from companions, louder.
• Android has a memory manager and tells you when a new build is up. Memories, Logbook and Sharing in three tabs, with search, edit and forget. And from this build on, the app checks the site when it opens and offers the download when a newer one is there — sideloaded apps never did that on their own, so anyone on the August build has to download once more by hand, and after that it takes care of itself.
• Hear the activity logs in their voice, on web. Every line on the activity-logs page has Hear it in their voice and Play from here, using the voice that person chose for the character; your own lines play in the browser's plain voice so the two are never confused.

September 2, 2026 — evening

• The iPhone voice picker is wheels now (build 264, submitted to App Review), Kade's own design. Pick who first (Women, Men, Kids and teens, Characters), then spin the voice wheel — each row is just the voice's name (Flurry, Cleat, Hickory), and every voice you land on plays its full audition; move on whenever you have heard enough. Hit Done and that is your voice; Cancel leaves it alone. "Use the character's own voice" is a switch at the top. New under the wheel: a Delivery control — Steady, Balanced, or Lively — saved for that character on your phone and used on every reply and audition (Lively has the most emotional range). Your speed setting now changes how the voice is made instead of stretching the recording afterwards, so 1.25x sounds like the same person talking a little faster, not a sped-up tape. The search box still finds voices by words like husky or British, and an old pick like "Voice 69" opens the wheel on the voice it became.
• The voices have descriptions now, not numbers. Every one of the 621 voices was listened to fresh on the same plain script and described as an instrument: husky low middle-aged woman, Black American, bright high young woman, gravelly low older man, Southern US. Each description ends with one plain tag word (a tree, a river, a stone, a bit of weather — never anybody's name) so two voices that sound alike still have their own handle: husky low woman · guppy. Kade Murdock (Fish Audio) and Miss-A (Inworld professional clone) are available under Women, named voices. The picker now asks for a category first (Women, bright and high, young — Men, seasoned and gravelly — Kids and teens — twenty-three in all), then walks that category's voices, each speaking as you land on it, and the search box understands words like storyteller or Southern because it reads the descriptions too. Your saved voice did not move: an old pick like "Voice 69" quietly becomes its described label the next time you open the picker, and saying "switch to voice 69" on a call still works. Four new older-woman voices joined the same evening.
• 137 characters got voices that fit them. With every voice described by ear, each of the 219 marketplace characters was matched against what its own persona calls for (a woman or a man, young or seasoned, husky or bright, Southern or British, plain or theatrical). Sixty-two were already well cast and kept their voice; the rest moved to a closer fit, and a few outright mismatches are gone (a woman doctor no longer speaks in a man's voice; a grown character is off the cartoon-kid voice). If a favorite character sounds different today, that is why, and if you liked the old one better, tell Kade the name and it goes back in a minute.
• A listening lab for the voices, and one quiet fix. The tone shaping every voice passes through now runs before the volume is measured instead of after, so the volume stage sees the sound you actually hear, and a bass or treble boost can no longer push a loud voice past full scale (nothing you would have noticed as more than a rare tick, now gone). Then the new part: the listening lab plays the same words on the same voice through four versions of the last stage, each changing one thing, so you can tell Kade on your own speaker where a buzz lives before anything changes for everyone.
• Characters stop handing out medals. "That's the most honest thing you've said all week," "you know that better than anybody," "nobody has figured that out the way you have," "you said it out loud and the house didn't catch fire": every character on the platform is now told to use what you said instead of grading it, and a filter catches it on the way out when a character forgets. Thank Amber A for putting it in words.

September 2, 2026

• The website has a Home page now, and it is the iPhone app's map. kademurdock.com/home lists everything in the same sections and the same order as the app's home screen — Talk, the twelve tools, Settings and help — with the same names and the same one-line hints. Two pages the website never had: Your conversations as a plain list, and Announcements. A "Web only" shelf at the bottom shows what the app does not have yet, so nothing is hidden. On a phone browser Home is the first tab at the bottom; on a computer it is the first link at the top of the chat screen.
• The side panel is gone. Not hidden — gone. Everything it used to hold is a full page of its own now: Agent Builder, Bookmarks, Memories, Files, Settings, and Your conversations. Each has a heading, a way back Home, and nothing else on the page competing for attention. On a computer the chat screen has one thin strip across the top: Kade Home, New chat, Your conversations, Agent Builder, Marketplace, Settings, Help. On a phone the Chats tab opens the conversation list as a page.
• Della talks at a normal volume again, and answers. A custom voice's whispered lines were making the volume memory overcorrect, so the next normal line came out distorted; the streamed voice path now watches each chunk. And a "Use Responses API" switch that this platform never supported has been removed from the builder's model settings — it was silently turning a character's every reply into an error.

September 1, 2026 — late

• Share your character from your phone (iPhone app 260+). Open one of your own characters in the Agent Builder and there's a Share on the marketplace switch. It says plainly what it does, asks you to confirm, and then everyone on Kade-AI can find and talk to them. Turn it off any time to make them private again. (The earlier note that said the character's card had a publish button was ahead of the app — it's in the builder now, for real.)
• New characters show up right away (iPhone app 260+). Build or edit a character and the picker knows immediately — no more force-quitting the app to see them. New ones also start in the Companions category instead of falling to the bottom of the list.

September 1, 2026

• Describe the character you want, and their whole personality gets written for you. On Create a Character there's now a box: say who you want in your own words — a sentence is plenty — and out comes a full, detailed personality, the kind that runs pages rather than paragraphs. Then it asks you two or three questions ("what does she sound like when she disagrees with you?"), and answering any of them makes the next draft deeper. Go around as many times as you like. It costs about a penny each time and usually less, and every word stays yours to edit before anybody comes to life. It works on characters you already have, too — open one in the builder and there's a "Help me write this" button that improves what's there instead of starting over. Website and iPhone app both (app version 259 and up).
• The character who was paused comes back now (iPhone app 259+). If you paused a read-aloud clip and then played a different one, the first clip could get stranded — no way back to it, and the app got confused about which one you meant. Fixed.

August 31, 2026 — late

• Announcements finally have a home. Every "What's new" note sent to the family now lands on a page you can actually read after the notification is gone — including any you missed. On the website it's on your Notifications page under "What's New announcements"; in the iPhone app there's a new Announcements row on the home screen (app version 258 and up), and tapping a What's New notification takes you straight there instead of dropping you into a new conversation.
• Back out of a chat lands on Your Conversations now (iPhone app 258+). Opening the app still drops you straight into a fresh chat with your main companion, same as always — but when you back out of any conversation, you land on your conversations list, where you can pick another one, start fresh, or tidy up. No more bouncing back to the front door.

August 31, 2026

• Kiana listens while she talks now. On a call in the app, just start talking over her and she stops — the same way the phone line always did. She tries to ignore the TV and your screen reader, so it takes a real word to cut her off, not a noise. She also doesn't say hello when a call connects any more: the screen tells you she's listening, so you're not talking over a greeting to get a word in.
• Her voice has a lot more life in it. She speeds up, slows down and shifts tone with what she's actually saying, instead of reading everything at one pace.
• There's a Deep Think button on the call screen. Tap it when you want her to take her time on one hard question. The next answer comes back quick like usual — it's for one question, not for the whole call.
• The phone line has shorter gaps between her sentences, so she sounds less like she's buffering mid-thought.
• The voice previews in the picker are fixed. They start faster, and each line now actually changes speed the way it's supposed to — the excited one is finally excited. Every voice in the catalog had been auditioning wrong since July, on every device, which is a strange thing to only now find out.
• Your chats get real names again. If your conversation list has been filling up with rows that just say "New Chat", that was a naming job quietly running out of time and giving up. It's fixed. Old chats keep the names they have; new ones should title themselves within a few seconds of the first reply.

August 28, 2026 — later that night

• Send Kiana a photo right in chat — she just looks at it. The attach button now knows she has her own eyes: no more relayed descriptions, she sees the actual picture (and iPhone photos convert themselves so they always go through). You can also send a picture with no words at all — the photo is the message.
• Kiana might text you first now. If you've been away a few days, she may send a short text about something real from your own conversations — the way a friend checks in, not a wellness bot. It's on for the adults; tell her "stop texting me first" any time and she flips it off (or "you can text me first again" to turn it back on).
• She also got a talking-to about the drama. Less cheerleading, less pumped-up narration, more of the real thing — long messages stay, the filler goes.

August 28, 2026

• Kiana can see now. Send her a photo — a menu, a letter, an outfit, a mystery can from the pantry — and she actually looks at it and tells you what's there. Her new brain also runs faster and costs a fraction of the old one, so nobody has to feel shy about chatting all day.
• Her memory learned to follow up. Three quiet upgrades, late August: when something on the calendar passes — an appointment, a surgery, a trip — your companion now notices it went by and asks how it went instead of talking about it like it's still coming. On days that mark a month or a year since something from your logbook, she might bring the memory up — warmly, once, and only if the moment fits; heavy days she leaves alone unless you go there first. And the nightly housekeeping no longer writes its own chores into anybody's logbook — that journal is for your life, not the machine's.
• Moving in from ChatGPT? Bring your memories with you. There's a new page at kademurdock.com/import: paste the memory list ChatGPT kept about you and it becomes real memory cards here — your companions know you from day one. Upload your ChatGPT export file and (if you tick the box) your old conversations get read into your logbook too, dated to the days they actually happened. Nobody reads any of it but the memory keeper itself.
• The Android app is a real app now. Not a wrapped-up website anymore — a true native app, same as the iPhone one: native chat, the real character voices, dictation, your memories. It follows your phone's own text-size settings, and nothing overlaps when you magnify — that one's for you-know-who. Same download spot (the Android page), and it installs right over the old one. It's also a quarter the size.
• Dictation adds on instead of starting over. Talk, stop, think, talk again — the second recording joins the first in your message box instead of wiping it. Already true on the website and the new Android app; on the iPhone it arrives with the next TestFlight update.
• A phone call can't go dead-quiet on you anymore. Very rarely, a companion's turn came back with no words in it — on a call that meant silence, which feels exactly like a dropped line. Now the platform catches that in the moment and asks again behind the scenes, so you hear the answer instead of the nothing.

August 22, 2026

• The ringtones are in — all 72 of Kade's homemade tones. The picker groups them by feel (Dreamy & gentle, Calm & lo-fi, Soul & groove, Bright & playful, Driving & bold, World & cinematic) so a screen reader jumps by heading instead of flicking seventy rows, every tone plays its full minute when you tap it, and there's finally a Stop preview button. Pick by ear in the app's Settings — and every tone has a real name (Warm Coffee, Boom Bap, Screen Door...), so you can tell a character "use Morning Raga for my wake-up call."
• Settings has a search box now. Type the word you have — ring, speed, vibrate, password, font — and the actual control comes to you, spoken with the section it lives in ("Calls. Agent call ringtone"). A found switch IS the switch: flip it right there in the results. The whole screen was also reorganized so everything sits one tap deep, with the big ringtone picker on its own page. Needs the current iPhone app from TestFlight.
• The mid-task stall is fixed. For a while, a character would sometimes take the first step of a request — look something up, start a plan — and then just stop: no reply, no error, nothing done. That bug is found and fixed at the root. If a companion ever seemed to ignore a command halfway through, that was this, not them being moody — and it's gone.

August 21, 2026

• Characters have ears and eyes for media now. Send any companion a YouTube link — a song, a music video, a clip — and say "describe this" or "what instruments are in this?" They actually take it in and tell you what happens on screen and how the music is built: the instruments, the arrangement, the vocals, section by section. Direct audio files work too. Long videos get the first ten minutes described, and they'll say so.
• Every character can look up song lyrics now. Ask about a song's words — "pull up the lyrics to Gethsemane by Sleep Token", "what's the second verse of..." — and they fetch the real text from an open lyrics library instead of guessing or getting blocked by lyric websites. Free, instant, every companion. If a song's too new or too obscure for the library, they'll say so plainly and you can paste the lines you mean.
• Your characters can CALL you now. Tell any companion "call me tomorrow at 8 about my meds" or "wake me up at 7" and at that exact moment your iPhone app rings like a real call — with a ringtone you pick by ear in Settings — and answering drops you straight into a live voice conversation where it already knows why it called. Quiet hours are respected unless you tell a specific call to ring through (wake-up calls, mostly), a missed call leaves a friendly "call me back" note, and a daily cap keeps it from ever getting spammy. Free — it rings through the app, not the phone line — and it needs a current iPhone app from TestFlight. The full story is on the Phone Calls page.

August 15, 2026

• Memory grew up. Companions used to haul every memory card into every message. Now the essentials stay always-on — who you are, your people, your reminders — and everything else comes to mind when it's relevant, like a real friend's memory. Ask any companion "what do you actually remember about my family?" and they'll tell you, warmly and completely. As of tonight this is how every companion works, not just Kiana.
• The memory also tidied itself up. A one-time housekeeping pass went through everyone's cards: duplicates merged, notes that clearly belong together got introduced to each other, and stiff old phrasing got rewritten the way a friend would say it. The logbook got the same kindness — old entries that read like a court reporter now read like a friend's journal, with every fact kept exactly as it was. Every single change is on a trail — ask any companion "what changed in your memory lately?" and hear exactly what moved, nothing hidden, nothing lost. And this tidy-up now runs on its own each night, so the memory stays connected without anyone lifting a finger.

August 14, 2026

• Long conversations stopped crashing the app. If the app kept dying on you in a big, well-loved chat — that was real, and it's fixed in the newest update. It was trying to carry the whole conversation at once; now it shows the newest stretch and a Show earlier messages button brings back the rest whenever you want it. Nothing was deleted — it's all still there.
• Characters decide for themselves how hard to think. You know that brain button for slower, more careful answers? You don't have to know it anymore. Every character now quietly reads each question and decides on their own — easy chat gets a quick answer, a genuinely tricky question gets real thought. Nothing to set, nothing to learn; it just happens.
• And if you like choosing, the brain button grew options. In the app and on the website alike, it cycles three ways: Automatic (they decide), Deep (always take your time), Instant (always the fast answer). Better yet — when a character is off thinking hard and you're in a hurry, a new Answer now instead button appears right under their thinking bubble. Tap it and get the quick version of the same answer.
• Making your own character no longer requires knowing what you're doing. New page: Create a Character — eight questions with no wrong answers, a personality written out for you in plain words, engine choices you can actually understand ("The all-rounder — quick, warm, good memory"), and a button that paints their portrait for three cents. Experts lose nothing: the full builder is untouched and one toggle shows every technical name.
• Thirty-seven marketplace characters finally got their faces. The whole roleplay wing — the elder dragon, the sentient thunderstorm, the 1962 jukebox, the ghost librarian, the cast-iron skillet with opinions — plus Deuce the card dealer, painted in the same warm style as everyone else. Browse the marketplace and say hello; you'll know them when you see them now.
• Picture-making got fixed while nobody was looking. The image engine behind the scenes had quietly moved house and every character's picture tool had been failing since. It's repaired — ask a character with the picture skill to draw something and it works again.
• The Debate Room grew a front porch. Same room, no contest: pick Front porch when you start a room, skip the topic entirely, and two to six characters just hang out with you — stories, gentle teasing, easy questions, nobody trying to win. Radio-play voices and party codes work exactly the same. How it works.

August 11, 2026

• There's a real privacy page now: Privacy & Your Data. Plain English, no legal fog. What actually gets stored and why, every outside company that touches any of it and exactly what they receive, how children's accounts work, and how to download all of yours or have it deleted. The short version, which was always true and is now written down: nothing here is sold, there are no ads and no advertising trackers, and your words are kept so your companions can know you and so you can find them again — for no other reason.
• Every companion can do deep research now. The real-research skill that launched last week on Kiana and Forge is now on the whole crew — ask anybody to properly dig into something and they can.

August 10, 2026

• Real research, on request. Ask a companion to really dig into something — comparing products, checking whether a claim holds up, weighing a big decision — and instead of a quick guess, the question goes through a genuine research run: a dozen or more sources searched, read, and cross-checked in the background while you keep right on talking. A few minutes later your phone gets a tap, and your companion has the full story: the answer up front, every fact tied to a numbered source, where the sources disagree, and — the honest part — what could NOT be confirmed. Say how deep to go: quick, standard, or deep, depending on what the question deserves. Reports are written to be listened to on purpose — no tables, no bullet-point walls, just the story of what the digging found. Starting with Kiana and Forge; the rest of the crew gets the skill soon.

August 9, 2026

• The Logbook got a deep clean — and an Edit button. The big history pass in July filled the logbook faithfully, but faithfully included a lot of "tested the phone line" noise and robot-flavored wording. Today's housekeeping pass fixed that: duplicates merged, test-day chatter cleared out, and the entries that matter rewritten the way a friend would put them — the big days now read like somebody who was there. And when an entry's wording isn't quite right, fix it yourself: every entry on the Logbook page now has an Edit button that changes the words in place while keeping its date and which companion holds it. (The app gets the same Edit on the next update.)
• The diary-keeper learned taste. Going forward, entries get written like a close friend's journal, never a case file — and a whole afternoon of "worked on the project" now earns at most one line, only when something actually happened. Your companions also weigh the days now: a big one — family news, a real milestone, a hard day — carries more weight in their memory than a passing note, so the important stuff is what resurfaces.
• Memories know how old they are. When a companion reaches back, fresher entries get a natural edge and big days outrank small ones — and questions like "when did I mention that?" get answered with the actual date, in plain words ("that was July 12th, about a month back").
• Honest company, house-wide. Every companion got the same standing orders: hold your own opinion and disagree for real when you do; never grade what somebody says ("great question!" is banned); say "I don't know" instead of inventing a confident answer; and when the answer came from a web search, say where it came from in passing, like a person would. Corrections work the same way — tell a companion they've got something wrong and they fix the note in the same breath instead of arguing for it.
• The front door has a doorbell now. Know somebody who belongs here but doesn't have a code? Point them at the sign-in page — there's a new "Ask to join" link. They say who they are, the request goes straight to Kade's phone, and if she gives the nod they get a personal welcome text with their way in. No more code-passing over group chats.
• Your words are yours to take. Under You, then Download Your Data: one button hands you a zip of everything on your account — every memory card, every logbook entry, every conversation — in plain readable text AND in a machine format other tools can use. Keep a copy anywhere you like. This place believes your data belongs to you, and now that's a button, not a promise.
• The Morning Brief is yours now — per person, in settings. Under You, then Morning Brief: flip it on, pick your time, check what you want in it (your town's weather, one good headline, your day ahead), and one short push lands on your phone each morning, written fresh by your companion. It knows YOUR day, not anyone else's — the day-ahead line comes only from your own saved notes. On the page you can read today's brief or press Listen and hear it out loud, and there's a "send me one now" button to try it. Each scheduled run sends one brief notification to each linked device; "send me one now" sends an additional brief when you request it. If the push doesn't arrive, the page tells you the one-time fix (open the app on your phone once while signed in).
• Files you upload are readable again. The behind-the-scenes service that lets companions search documents you upload had quietly broken (an expired key from an old provider). It's back on fresh machinery — upload a file, ask about it, get real answers. Anything uploaded during the broken stretch needs a re-upload to become searchable.
• On calls, your companions hear HOW you sound now. Not your words — your rhythm. Talking fast and jumping in? They keep up. Slow, short answers deep into the night? They meet you there, softer. It works from timing alone (how quickly you answer, how long your turns run), it stays out of the way unless the signal is clear, and they'll never comment on it — they just get better at matching the moment. Phone line and web calls both.
• The platform checks its own backups now. Every morning after the automatic backup runs, the system verifies it actually landed in offsite storage — and tells Kade the moment one doesn't. Ask any companion "did the backup run?" and they'll answer with the real answer.

August 8, 2026

• The diary has a proper name now: your Logbook. Same thing, better jacket. Find it under You, then Your Logbook — and it just got seeded with real history: the housekeeping pass sorted your companions' memory so day-by-day happenings (the July project beats, the paperwork saga milestones) now live as dated logbook entries, while the always-remembered cards keep just the lasting stuff. Fewer duplicate notes, cleaner recall, nothing lost. From here on the nightly tidy-up keeps things sorted on its own.
• Companions keep their word now. When a character tells you they'll do something — have that verse ready, look into a thing — they remember promising, and the next conversation opens with them honoring it instead of you re-asking. And when you mention something coming up, like an appointment you're dreading, they may offer once to check in with you afterward. Say yes and it happens; say nothing and it doesn't.
• "Off the record" asks your companion not to remember. It tells the AI memory system to leave that stretch out of cards, the logbook, and relationship reflections until you say you are back on the record. It is not a guarantee: the conversation is still stored. See memory controls.
• Voice messages perform; drafts paste clean. Ask for a voice message and it's written to be HEARD from the first word — spoken rhythm, real delivery, feeling on every beat. Ask a companion to write a text or email you're going to send, and the reply is the message itself, ready to copy — no "here's a draft," no quotes to trim. And when you ramble at them about something you love, they've been told: that's earned depth, not a two-line summary.

August 7, 2026

• Your companions keep a diary now. Beside the little memory cards they've always kept, each companion now keeps a private, dated diary of your day-to-day life — the show you binged, how the appointment went, the kind of day it was. It has no size limit, because it stays quietly on the shelf instead of riding along in every conversation. Nothing changes about how you talk: share your day like always, and the diary takes care of itself.
• And they can actually look things up in it. Ask "what was I up to last week?" or "have I told you about that show before?" and your companion checks the real entries — real dates, your actual words' gist — instead of guessing. Old entries also drift back naturally when they fit the moment, the way a friend goes "wait, didn't you say…" — never recited at you out of nowhere. Starting today the diary begins filling as you talk; give it a few days of living and it gets good.
• Same privacy rules as always. A diary entry belongs to the companion you told, period — other characters can't read it. And the memory switch you already have covers the diary too: remembering off means diary closed, both directions.
• Voices read the internet like a person now. Web addresses used to come out mangled — now a companion says "kademurdock dot com slash help," the way you'd say it to a friend. Same treatment for the other stuff writing does that voices shouldn't read literally: prices come out as dollars and cents, phone numbers are spoken digit by digit with a breath between groups, dates like 2026-08-07 become "August 7th, 2026," percent signs and things like "24GB" get said as real words, and "e.g." just becomes "for example." Voice only — the text on your screen doesn't change a letter.
• And those weird "turn0search" crumbs are gone for good. After looking something up on the web, a companion could sometimes leave little machine crumbs in the reply — nonsense like "turn0search0" that showed up in copied text and got read aloud by screen readers. Those are now caught and removed the moment the reply is written, before they ever reach your screen, your clipboard, or your ears.
• There's a Diary page now, and every companion can look things up. Later the same evening, two more pieces landed. First: every companion — not just Kiana — can now check the diary when you ask what you've mentioned before. Second: your diary got its own page. Go to You, then Your Diary, and there it all is — your entries grouped by day, newest first, each one showing which companion holds it. You can add a line yourself (anything you write there, any companion may recall), and a Forget button next to every entry removes it for good. Screen-reader friendly top to bottom, like everything else around here.

August 6, 2026

• Voice scenes — characters share one recording now. Ask a companion for a scene, a skit, or a little radio drama with other characters, and the voice message that comes back is the real thing: each character speaking their own lines in their own voice, one recording, a natural beat between speakers. It works everywhere voices work — read-aloud, saved voice messages, even the phone line. On screen the scene reads like a clean script, with each speaker's name in front of their lines.
• The Daily Word is here. One secret five-letter word a day — the same word for the whole family. Six guesses, and after each one your companion tells you letter by letter what hit: right letter right spot, in the word somewhere else, or not in it at all. One puzzle per person per day, so the streak means something — and streaks live on a new Daily Word board in the Parlor's family standings, right next to everything else. Just say "play daily word" to anybody.
• The characters live in the same town now. Two quiet changes that make the whole cast feel more alive: every character has their own little "today" — ask what they've been up to and the answer stays consistent all day, then it's something new tomorrow. And they hear about real family wins: solve the Daily Word or clean up at the poker table, and don't be surprised when somebody else mentions it the next day.
• Whisper mode, for night listening. New switch in Settings under Accessibility: turn it on and every companion delivers their voice replies hushed, slow, and gentle — same words, night-quiet delivery, like somebody talking you toward sleep. Flip it off and they're back to full life.
• Names get said right. The voices now carry a pronunciation list for family names and Ozarks places that machines love to mangle — automatic, on every voice, every surface. Hear a name said wrong? Tell Kade and it's a one-line fix. (And your own personal pronunciation dictionary from July still works exactly as before — this is the house-wide layer underneath it.)
• "Is the platform up?" gets a real answer. Ask any companion how the system is doing and they can actually check — the site, the voices, the phone line — and tell you honestly what's answering, plus how your memory system is holding up. No more guessing.

August 4, 2026

• Thoughts stream in live now — for real this time. The "Thinking it through…" bubble used to sit empty until the reply was nearly done, then dump everything at once. Found the culprit (a middleman holding the thoughts hostage) and fixed it at the source: on Deep Think turns, the thoughts now pour into the bubble the moment your companion starts thinking — word by word, website and app alike, no app update needed. On the newest app build the bubble even opens itself while the thinking streams and tucks itself away when the answer lands.
• App: the voice button learned some manners. The old square Stop button next to the speed control is now one smart button that changes with the moment — Pause while a voice message plays, Resume while it's paused, and Stop while the voice is still warming up. A full "Stop and clear" stays one gesture away: it rides the VoiceOver actions rotor and a long-press. And on the message itself, "Play as voice message" now reads "Pause voice message" while that exact message is the one talking.
• App: hypnotic thinking bubbles, just like the website's. While a companion works on a reply, a tiny run of soft bubbles drifts up next to the typing indicator — the visual twin of the bubbling sound. Purely decorative: screen readers never hear about it, and it holds still if you use Reduce Motion.
• App: quiet progress updates during long thinks. Optional and on by default — during a long Deep Think, VoiceOver murmurs about every twenty seconds how much thinking has streamed so far, so a long wait never feels like a dead line. The thoughts themselves are never read out loud. Flip it under Settings → Speech → Spoken thinking progress.
• App: writing progress has its own switch now, and it starts off. The "Still writing — about so many words so far" murmur used to ride the thinking-progress switch; they are separate as of late August 2026. Thinking is the wait that actually takes time, so its updates stay on by default — writing updates start OFF, because with "Start speaking as she writes" on you are already hearing the reply itself. Want them anyway? Settings → Speech → Spoken writing progress.
• App: if it ever crashes, it can tell on itself now. New under Settings → Support: "Share diagnostics" hands over the crash report plus a short timeline of what the app was doing — never your conversations. If the app ever dies on you, open it back up and share that with Kade instead of trying to remember what happened.
• The Clubhouse announces comings and goings with sound. When someone walks into your room or heads out, you hear Kade's connected or disconnected chime alongside the spoken announcement — website and app both.

August 3, 2026

• 53 new voices — the picker now counts 1 through 528. Three brand-new designed characters (Naisha, brooke, and Raven) plus fifty fresh clones from Kade's collection — July's designed narrators and today's whole crew, Martayah through Lillian. Same rules as always: nobody's saved number moved, and saying "switch to voice 500" on a call works like it should.
• The voice list is one clean numbered line again. The category sections (Everyday Women, Deep & Smoky, and friends) had a few voices filed under the wrong header, so the sections are retired for now — the picker just counts straight up from Voice 1. The voices themselves didn't change a bit.
• Cloned voices stopped going flat mid-reply. The newer cloned voices could hold a feeling for about one sentence, then drift back to neutral. Now the mood a companion sets carries through the whole reply, sentence by sentence — and the classic voices got a matching tune-up so a mid-reply mood change lands clean instead of muddy.

August 1, 2026

• iPhone app: calls now sound like Kade made them — because she did. Start an in-app call and you'll hear her real connected chime ring in under your companion's hello, in place of the old robotic two-note beep. And for the first time, hanging up answers back: her disconnected chime plays as the call ends, the receiver going back down. If a call drops mid-conversation and reconnects itself, no chimes — the spoken "reconnecting" announcements still have that covered, so a chime always means what it says. The website's calls have played these same sounds since July 22; the app has caught up.
• The thinking sound is new — and gentler. Kade re-recorded the "working on it" loop you hear while a companion thinks, in chat and on calls, website and app. The new one is pure soft bubbles with no musical notes in it — the old loop's tones could clash with sensitive ears or whatever's playing. Website has it now; the app gets it in the newest TestFlight build, where calls also finally loop her real recording instead of synthesized ticks.
• Watch the thinking happen. When your companion puts real thought into a reply, a little "Thinking it through…" bubble now appears beside the typing indicator — closed by default, one tap (or VoiceOver double-tap) opens it, and the thoughts pour in live as they stream. VoiceOver manners by design: one quiet heads-up when the thinking starts, then silence — focus never gets yanked, and the bubble reads a running count on focus instead of narrating every word. When the answer lands, the live bubble hands off to the reply's own expandable thoughts, same as always. Grab the newest TestFlight build for both.

July 30, 2026

• iPhone app: the Debate Room grew a voice and a will of its own. Every new line now plays out loud in that character's own voice the moment it lands. Catching up is on your terms — Play this line and Play from here live on every line (Actions rotor, or long-press). Keep it going runs the debate by itself, each clip finishing before the next turn starts, twelve turns at a stretch before it pauses and asks. The brain toggle makes every turn a Deep Think turn — slower, sharper arguments. And the cast is no longer locked at the door: add or remove characters mid-debate, with the Narrator noting arrivals and exits right in the transcript. Grab the newest TestFlight build.
• Companions think again when you ask them to. The chat Deep Think toggle had quietly stopped working for anyone with saved memories — the marker got buried under bookkeeping. Rewired at the source: flip Deep Think, get real deliberation, no exceptions. Deep turns also can't end wordless anymore — if the thinking runs long, the plain answer still arrives underneath the reasoning bubble.
• Kiana has a new voice. Voice 258 — lower, raspier, cozier. Same Kiana.

July 28, 2026

• Photos you attach in chat finally get looked at. Attaching a picture or file to a chat message is supposed to let your companion see it — and it quietly wasn't working for anyone, on the website or the app. Found and fixed today: attach a photo, ask about it, and your companion actually answers from what's in the picture now. (Under the hood the picture's size went missing on the way to storage, and everything downstream treated it as invisible. Receipts: a little orange test square, and Bandit calling the color first try.)
• iPhone app: attachments show in the conversation. The paperclip could already send a photo or file with your message — now you can tell it happened. Photos show as small previews under your message, other files as a named chip, and VoiceOver speaks it as part of the message itself: "Sent with a photo, porch.jpeg, attached." Works for older messages and web-sent ones too.
• Kade Keys, phase two: wired and waiting on one switch. The new keyboard's second act is built: the app already mirrors your first dozen saved prompts for it (open the Prompts tile once and they load), and in a coming build Kade Keys will type your real Prompt Library anywhere — Messages, Mail, offline. Apple requires a one-time setup on their developer site before the sharing lane can switch on, so today the six built-in phrases keep working exactly as before. When it lands it will sit behind Allow Full Access; plain words on that: the warning sounds broad because Apple gates shared storage and network behind the same switch, but this keyboard makes no connections at all.
• Party tables grew up — chips, standings, and the judge games. Three big ones for game night: Cards Against Reality and Crab Apples now deal party tables — open seats for friends, everybody plays their funniest card from their own hand on their own turn, and the judge's chair rotates around the whole table: you, your friends, seated characters, house players, everybody gets to crown a winner. Party chips are real now — when a poker party table ends, every person's own chip bank settles from the same pot (bust and the house fronts you a fresh hundred, never real money). And the family standings count party play — host or guest, your wins, losses, and chips all land on your own line in the Parlor standings.
• The Marketplace is in the iPhone app. New Marketplace tile on the home screen: browse every published character by category with real VoiceOver headings, search by name or anything in their description, hear the House Picks, and open anyone's card to read about them and start talking in two taps. Made a character of your own in the Agent Builder? Their card now has the publish button — put them on the marketplace or take them private again, right from your phone.

July 27, 2026

• Everybody got a sharper brain. Every companion on the platform moved up to the newest, smartest model of the family they already run — same personalities, same voices, quicker on the uptake and better at keeping a long thread straight. The one exception is Whittney the Spotter, who stays on the setup tuned for live camera work.
• Voices stop saying "percent percent." Once in a while a voice would read its own stage directions out loud — the hidden little tags that tell it to sound excited or dead serious. The net that catches those got a lot wider, so a garbled tag steers the voice or disappears; it never gets read to you again.
• iPhone app: the in-and-out crash is fixed. Going into a chat or call, backing out, and going back in could crash the app every single time for some folks. Found it, fixed it, and hardened three more spots in the same family while we were in there — it's in the next TestFlight build, so update when the email lands.

July 24, 2026

• The Clubhouse got a PA system, a tape deck, and its shine. The house PA: two host voices now read the room out loud for everybody — Miss A works the front desk (who walked in, who headed out, taping notices) and Kade's calm narrator runs the booth (who dropped a quarter in, who cut in, who skipped). Real audio on every phone, no screen reader needed; each person gets their own on/off switch and volume. The tape deck: press "Record this conversation" and the room goes on tape — every voice, the jukebox, the bot — into one audio file you can share or save, just like a Parlor transcript. Fair play is built in: the PA tells the whole room when a tape starts and stops, and late arrivals see who's taping. Fixed while we were in there: the jukebox bug where a paused player would claim it was playing your next song without a note of it actually sounding — that one's dead — and pausing no longer forgets the spot the song was at. For folks with sight, the room also picked up some looks: music bars that dance, a little spinning record, a glow when somebody's talking — none of it visible to VoiceOver, all of it sits still if your phone asks for reduced motion.
• Play cards WITH your people — party tables. Dealing Hearts or Five-Card Draw in the Parlor now offers open seats for friends: the table hands you a four-character code, your people punch it in on their end (web now, iPhone app next build), and everybody plays their own hand — characters can sit at the same table. Nobody sees anybody else's cards, out-of-turn moves bounce off the dealer, and the whole game lands in one shared transcript.
• The Lounge grew up: welcome to Kade's Clubhouse. Same place (kademurdock.com/lounge — /clubhouse works too), live and connected, with three big new tricks. The shared jukebox: one player for the whole room — anybody can play, pause, skip, or jump back, queue a song politely or cut in rudely, and if somebody skips your jam, hit Back and have yourselves a radio fight. Music volume is yours alone: it starts low so talk rides over it, and voices always come through full. The Hotel: private rooms with passcodes so groups can group up — open a room, share the code, done. A Parlor table code works as a passcode too: one code, cards and voices. Company: invite a companion in as a guest — press their talk button and they answer out loud in their own voice; between turns they follow along by rough transcription, and anyone can show them the door. Regular rooms stay person-to-person only — a companion only ever hears a room you invited them into.

July 23, 2026

• The Parlor: every game on a menu, you in the driver's seat. New page at kademurdock.com/parlor — browse all 21 games with plain descriptions, set the table your way, and play your own cards with real buttons (no narrating character required, RS-Games style). Seat characters if you want the company, pick the house narrator voice — Kade's own clones or Miss A's — or turn narration off and let your screen reader run it. Talk trash with whoever's seated in the table-talk box, and download the whole game transcript afterward for the bragging file. Same tables as chat and the phone: deal in the Parlor, say "deal me in" to any companion later, it picks right up.
• Characters can sit at your card table now. Two new games — Hearts (four seats, tricks, that mean Queen of Spades) and Five-Card Draw poker (friendly fake-chip stakes) — and here's the fun part: you can seat real characters as players. Say "deal up hearts with Sterling and Nana Pearl at the table" and their actual personalities play their own hands and talk their own trash. The dealer's rulebook still runs everything, so nobody cheats — not even the characters.
• A chip bank, for bragging rights. Casino games now settle into your own persistent pile of fake chips — never real money, ever. Go bust and the house fronts you a fresh hundred. Ask any character "how are my chips?", and see the family standings on the Game Room page, which now also shows your open tables so you know what "deal me in" will resume.
• Your companions can tell you where you are. New, off by default: flip on "Share my location with your companions" in Settings and you can ask "where am I?", "what's around me?", and "walk me there" — spoken street names, distances in feet, compass directions, and turn-by-turn walking directions. Only while the app is open, only while the switch is on, and nothing is shared when it's off. Directions are map data, not eyes — your cane, your dog, and your Spotter are still the crew.
• "Summon Zadiana" works on calls now. The phone line already understood "switch to" and "talk to" — now it also gets summon, fetch, "get me," "pull up," "connect me to," and "put me through to." Same for changing between companions mid-call. If you just say "summon," she'll ask who you want.
• The beta badges are gone. The 142 newer voices dropped the "(Beta)" tag and mixed in with everybody else — and the whole voice list is now organized into sections like Calm & Soothing, Deep & Smoky, Southern & Country, Kids & Teens, and Characters & Creatures, so browsing 475 voices has some shape to it. Seven brand-new voices joined the same day. Nobody's saved picks changed.
• Voices got cleaner, too. A little less loud, a lot less crackle — the buzzy edge some of the newer voices had is fixed, and the little pops between sentences are gone.

July 22, 2026

• Long conversations no longer lose the plot. In really long chats, characters used to quietly lose track of the earliest messages as new ones crowded them out — that's why an hours-long conversation could suddenly feel like your friend got amnesia. Now, before that point, the character writes itself a private "story so far" checkpoint — the facts, the promises, the running jokes, even game scores — and carries the conversation forward from it. Your chat itself doesn't change: every message stays right there to scroll and re-read, and a small one-line note marks the spot where the condensing happened. Automatic, every character, nothing to turn on.
• iPhone app update (TestFlight): the app got the same real sounds — send, bubbling think-time, reply — plus your notification sound on lock-screen pushes, cleaner reply text (no more stray citation codes), and a steadier mic button for VoiceOver. Open TestFlight and grab the newest build.
• The chat makes real sounds now — Kade's own recordings. A soft cue when your message sends, a gentle bubbling loop while your character is working on the reply, and a "reply's ready" sound when it lands — so you always know where things stand without watching the screen. On by default for everyone; if you'd rather have quiet, the switch lives in Settings → General → Accessibility, now called "Chat sounds."
• Calls got their own connect and disconnect sounds. Starting a voice call plays a proper "connected" cue and hanging up plays its goodbye twin — both recorded by Kade, replacing the old synthesized clicks. The thinking sound during call pauses got the same upgrade.
• 142 brand-new voices — the Beta wave. The voice picker just grew from 326 to 468. Every new one is numbered 327 and up and says "(Beta)" in its name — that's your heads-up that they're the newest arrivals and still being broken in, so if one sounds a little different week to week, that's the tuning, not your ears. They work everywhere the old ones do: read-aloud, voice calls, and the phone line — and saying "switch to voice 340" on a call works the same as always.
• A few of them have names. The very first voice in the picker is now Voice 327 (Beta) Kade calm and casual — and yes, that's exactly who it sounds like. Keep browsing and you'll also find Kade conversational, Kade Candid, Kade's child impression, and four voices from a friend of the family going by Miss A.

July 18, 2026

• Turn voice memos into text. New in the account menu: "Transcribe a Voice Memo." Pick any audio recording — even an hour-plus ramble from a friend — and get back clean, punctuated text you can copy or download. Free. (Attaching audio in a chat doesn't do this — your character can see the file arrived but can't open audio yet, so use the account-menu tool for transcription.)
• Your characters keep your business to themselves now. What you tell one character stays with that character, the way real friendships work — only true basics every character needs (like how you want things described) are common knowledge. Private stuff is still remembered by whoever you told; they've also been asked to use judgment about when to bring it up.
• Skip straight past the sidebar. For screen reader users: the very first thing on every page is now a "Skip to the message box" link. One swipe or Tab lands on it, press Enter, and you're right in the message box ready to type — no more wading through the whole sidebar just to say hello.
• Hang up, land in the right chat. Ending a voice call now takes you to that call's own conversation instead of leaving you in whatever chat was open underneath. The full transcript is sitting right there when you arrive.
• Smarter memory, less déjà vu. The platform's memory keeper got firmer instructions about not filing the same fact twice in different drawers, and the site now does a little overnight housekeeping so it stays quick. If a character ever repeats your life story back like it's news, that should be fading fast.

July 17, 2026

• The Android app is here. Android folks no longer watch from the porch — Kade-AI now installs as a real app on Android phones, downloaded straight from this help site (no app store, no invitation list). Own icon, full screen, microphone that behaves. The download and the step-by-step install walk-through live on the new Android App page.
• Call your Spotter directly. There's now a second button right next to the phone button at the top of a conversation — the radio-tower icon. One tap starts a fresh call and puts your Spotter straight on the line, no need to call a character first and switch. Your character still picks up for a second to hand the call over, then it's all Spotter.
• A flashlight for dark rooms — and it turns itself on. On a video call using the rear camera, a flashlight button appears next to the camera controls whenever your phone actually has one there. Even better: if the camera sees that it's genuinely dark for a few seconds, the flashlight now turns itself on once and says so out loud — no hunting for the button in the dark. Tap the flashlight button anytime to turn it off (or on); once you touch it yourself, it stays under your control.
• Flip the camera. Regular video calls got a camera-flip button — switch between the rear camera (pointing at the world) and the front camera (pointing at you), with a spoken confirmation of which way it's now facing. Spotter calls always use the rear camera, since their whole job is seeing the world for you.
• iPhone app: the call now lives on your Lock Screen. While you're on a voice call in the app, your Lock Screen (and the Dynamic Island on newer iPhones) shows a live banner — who you're talking to, whether they're listening, thinking, or speaking, and a running call timer. Lock the phone mid-call, the call keeps going and the banner keeps you posted; hang up and it disappears on its own. Nothing to set up — it arrives with the newest app build from TestFlight.
• iPhone app: Scan Text, Siri, and Lock Screen widgets. The newest app build adds a scanner button in the app header ("Scan mode — point the camera at text"), a Siri phrase — "Scan text in Kade-AI" — that jumps straight to the scanner, and two Lock Screen widgets (Start a Call and Scan Text) you can add from the Lock Screen customize screen. One tap from a locked phone into a call or a scan.

July 16, 2026

• Meet your Spotter — your own live companion. Brand new: every account can design ONE personal live companion at kademurdock.com/spotter (also under Explore → Your Spotter) — name them (or roll a random name), pick one of eight voices you can audition right on the page, and give them a personality by writing it, taking a quick quiz, or pressing one button to generate it. On any video call, the radio-tower button — or just asking your character to "get [their name]" — hands the call to your Spotter: continuous sight instead of snapshots, instant back-and-forth, and they'll speak up on their own when something's worth mentioning. Your character announces the handoff and comes back when you say "live off." Same Spotter no matter which character you were talking to. It runs on a pricier engine, so it gets its own small daily allowance (about 15 minutes) — your character explains all of that the first time.
• Video is now just Video. The two camera buttons (standard and HQ) became one. Everyone gets the best eyes now — no more choosing a quality, no more wondering which button reads pill bottles better. One camera button for snapshots-style video, one radio-tower button for your Spotter, done.
• Four new voices, two retired. Voices 325 through 328 just joined the picker — browse to the end of the list and give them a listen. Two older voices (118 and 270) left the picker; if something of yours was already using one, it keeps working exactly as before.
• Cleaner conversation titles. Titles now name what the conversation was actually about more reliably, stray symbols stopped sneaking in, and call conversations in your chat history are stamped in Central time instead of a server clock several hours off.
• Ask her to watch for something — video calls can now interrupt you (only when you ask). On a video call, tell the character to watch for anything you care about — "tell me when a car pulls up," "let me know when the dryer light goes off," "watch the door and tell me when someone comes in" — and an automatic checker quietly looks every few seconds. The moment it's visible, she takes one fresh look and speaks up on her own, in her own voice. Alerts wait for a quiet moment (never talk over you), watches are one-shot and re-armable, and one that sees nothing for half an hour says so and stands down instead of dying silently. Full details on the Talking & Listening page.
• "Feed the Server" is now "Usage & Balance" — and the money deal is official. Every account starts with $10 of credit loaded by Kade. Model usage is now charged at twice the configured provider rate to help cover the platform; metered extras draw from the same balance. Top up through PayPal when you need more credit. Same page as before, honest new name: Usage & Balance.
• New low-vision display options. Settings → General → Accessibility now has three new controls: a High contrast (true black) theme — pure black background, bright white text, stronger borders everywhere; an Easy-read font picker with Lexend (designed for low vision) and OpenDyslexic (dyslexia-friendly); and a Line spacing control that gives text room to breathe. All three work on the website and in the iPhone app, and they remember your choice per device.
• Reading view. Every AI reply now has a book-icon button next to the play and copy buttons that opens the reply full-screen — big text, nothing else on screen, close with the button or Escape. Made for actually reading long answers with limited vision instead of squinting at chat bubbles. It follows your font and spacing choices above.
• Describe-It plays it straight about certainty. The photo-describing specialist now tells you how sure it is when lighting or blur makes reading risky, gives both readings when two are plausible, and for high-stakes stuff — medication labels, dosages, expiration dates, money — it always recommends a human double-check and can pass a note to a family member to take a look. It also says where information comes from ("based on the photo you sent earlier," "that part's a best guess") so you're never guessing about its guessing.
• Video calls (in-app). On an in-app voice call, two new buttons next to Hang Up let a character see through your camera while you talk. Video (camera icon) is the casual, everyday lane on your front camera. HQ video (eye-scan icon) uses your rear camera and the platform's sharpest vision — built to read labels, mail, and screens word for word, and to describe a room's layout (what's left, right, ahead) for getting oriented. Either lane checks in automatically every few seconds AND takes a brand-new look the instant you ask anything, so it's never far behind what the camera's actually seeing. A camera-off button stops the meter without ending the call. First use of either mode gets a one-time spoken heads-up about the daily minute allowance — it costs more than voice, so it isn't unlimited the way talking is. Full explanation, including how it's different from Describe My World, on the Talking & Listening page.
• Describe-It sees sharper now. Describe My World — and a character's own eyes on a photo you drop into chat — now run on the platform's top vision model instead of the budget one, meaningfully better at reading small or blurry text: medication labels, mail, receipts, signs. Same page, same steps, just sharper eyes behind it.
• Building your own character got friendlier. Every tool in the character builder now has a plain-English hover explanation — what it does, what it can't do, and an example ask — so you don't need to be a programmer to pick the right ones. The model picker got the same treatment: an honest note under each curated model (fastest, sees images, best for uncensored writing, and so on) right where you're choosing.

July 15, 2026

• Any character can text your phone now. Ask one to ping you right now — "send me a note that says the laundry's done" — or to check in on you on a repeating schedule — "text me every evening around 6". Ask what check-ins you have going, pause one, or cancel one just as easily, all in chat. This is a real lock-screen notification through the Kade-AI iPhone app specifically (not the browser push on the Notifications & Reminders page) — free, and it shares the same quiet hours (9pm–8am Central) and daily caps as everything else here, so it can't turn into spam. More on the Notifications & Reminders page.

July 13, 2026

• Kiana and the main crew got new brains. Kiana, Zadiana, Deuce, Torch, and Lyric moved to Grok 4.20 — conversations run way longer before anyone forgets the early parts, replies come quicker, the storyteller rambles are back, Deep Think works, and you can drop a photo into chat for any of them to look at. Same personalities, bigger engines.
• Calls understand conversation better. Both the phone line and in-app calls switched to Deepgram's newest listening model (Flux) — it's built for back-and-forth talk, so it's smarter about knowing when you're done speaking versus just pausing for breath. If anything sounds off, Kade can flip back instantly.
• Family messages. Tell any character "tell Skylee her playlist is ready" and the site holds the message and passes it along the next time she opens a chat, calls in, or takes a call — in the sender's own words, marked as from you. Works from every character, free.
• Reminders are edit-proof now. A bug meant that editing the wording of a reminder card (or the weekly memory tidy-up touching it) could quietly turn the alarm off while keeping the note. Fixed — the schedule survives any rewording, and reminder cards now show their fire time in the memory panel's card list.
• Voice commands work everywhere now. "Switch to voice 67," "change your voice to Sarah," "what voice is this?" — these worked on the phone line but quietly didn't on in-app calls. Now one brain handles both, with more natural phrasings ("too fast" slows her down, "I want Kiana" switches characters).
• Call transcripts read clean. The Calls page no longer shows internal computer tags in old or new transcripts, and in-app calls now remember you the same way phone calls do.
• Cadence got her voice back. A builder bug from earlier this month had silently muted her — she's back on her old voice, and the bug that did it was fixed for every character.

July 12, 2026

• 114 new voices. The voice picker grew from 210 to 324 — Voices 211 through 324 are brand-new custom characters Kade designed: preachers, podcasters, grannies, chefs, detectives, surfer dudes, a whispering ghost, an Aussie, an infomercial guy, and more. Every voice you already use kept its exact number. Browse them from any character's voice picker — each one introduces itself as you arrow through.
• The whole cast writes better. A tuning pass on every character fixed a quirk where very long replies (big lists especially) would fall apart toward the end.

July 11, 2026

• Describe My World. Share or pick any photo, video, PDF, or document and hear it described in rich detail — or read to you word for word. Letters and appointment papers even offer to set reminders for dates they mention. Find it in the account menu ("Describe a Photo or Document") or read how it works.
• Family check-in calls. A character can call somebody you love on a schedule — a warm companion chat — and send you a written report on how they're doing. Registered family only, honest AI introduction, starts paused until you test it. Details on the Phone Calls page.
• VoiceOver got smoother. Messages no longer read twice as you swipe through a chat, and the automatic read-out of new replies now skips the internal computer tags it used to pronounce.

July 10, 2026

• Memory cards. What characters remember is now tidy little one-topic cards you can see, edit, and delete one at a time (side panel → Memories). Tell any character "remember this," "forget that," or "clean up your memory" and it listens. More on What It Remembers.
• Reminders & nudges. Tell any character "remind me to take my meds at 9" and it actually will — in chat, as an iPhone notification, or by phone call, your choice on the new Notifications & Reminders page. Birthday hellos are in there too (off unless you want them).
• Replies stream in live again for the whole cast — no more silence-then-wall-of-text, and voice calls start speaking almost immediately.

July 9, 2026

• Better in-app voice calls. The phone button in the app now runs on the same engine as the real phone line: interrupt her just by talking, hear game sounds live, and it all lands in Call History.
• A face on the call. Your character's picture now fills the call screen and gently "breathes" with the voice.

July 8, 2026

• Muse sings. A new character who turns lyrics into a real, fully sung song. Pair her with Lyric (writes the words) and Cadence (cinematic audio scenes). See Making Audio & Voices.

Early July, 2026

• The Game Parlor — nineteen real games by voice or phone with table sounds and a family leaderboard.
• The Debate Room — put a few characters in one room and let them go at it, radio-play style if you want. How it works.
• Starting balance — every account starts with $10 of usage credit, and Usage & Balance shows exactly where it goes.

Older history lives with Kade. If something here confuses you, the help home has a page for everything.