this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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I just open sourced my personal project for tracking relationships. It's like a CRM but for people you actually care about, not sales leads.

The problem: We all have hundreds of contacts scattered everywhere, but can we remember when we last talked to an old friend? Their birthday? How we met them?

The solution: Nametag helps you track people, map how they're connected, and visualize your network as an interactive graph.

Features:

  • Track people with flexible attributes (birthdays, contact info, notes)
  • Map relationships (family, friends, colleagues, custom types)
  • Network graph visualization showing how everyone connects
  • Custom groups for organizing contacts
  • Birthday and contact reminders
  • Dark mode, internationalization (EN/ES)
  • Mobile-responsive

Tech stack:

  • Next.js 16 with TypeScript
  • PostgreSQL + Prisma ORM
  • D3.js for graph visualization
  • Redis for rate limiting
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Docker Compose deployment

Why AGPL-3.0?

I chose AGPL instead of MIT/Apache because I want to ensure that if someone modifies and deploys Nametag (especially as a hosted service), they have to contribute their improvements back to the community. Personal relationship data is sensitive - users should always have the right to inspect and modify the code handling their data.

Dual model:

  • Hosted SaaS: https://nametag.one/ (free tier: 50 people, paid from $1/month) - sustains development
  • Self-hosted: Unlimited contacts, complete data ownership, free forever

The SaaS helps fund development, but self-hosting is a first-class citizen with no compromises. Auto-verified accounts, no email service required, works completely offline.

Contributing:

Looking for contributors! Areas where help would be awesome:

  • Additional language translations (currently EN/ES)
  • Graph visualization improvements (performance with 500+ nodes)
  • Mobile app (Native would be great, but also open to React Native or similar)
  • Export/import formats (vCard, CSV, etc.)
  • Documentation improvements

GitHub: https://github.com/mattogodoy/nametag

I'd be happy to hear any suggestions you might have. Have a nice day!

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[โ€“] bruhbeans@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Looks nice, thanks! I've had my eye on Monica for a while but always bounced off it rather than bothering to add MySQL to my stack, so I appreciate you're picking postgres. What other differentiations from Monica would you highlight?

Thank you!

Monica is where I started at. I was really hoping that it would cover my needs, but after some time of using it I found it too complex for what I really needed. Also, I was missing the network graph, which might be useful or not, but it's fun :)

Also, when I tried self-hosting it I found a lot of problems when trying to make it work, and at the end I gave up. It feels like the project is a bit outdated.

Honestly, what I wanted is Monica to cover my needs, so I didn't have to start an alternative, but here we are ๐Ÿ˜†