Cues
A thought about the grocery store is useless at bedtime and essential when you walk through the store's door. A question for your doctor needs to be there on Thursday, at the appointment, not on Tuesday when you thought of it. A melody needs to find you at your instrument, not in the shower where it arrived. Captrieve has a cue for each of these – and many more.
Location
GPS geofencing, Wi-Fi network detection, NFC tags, and Bluetooth each solve a different version of the location problem. Use whichever fits the place – or combine them for the same location.
Geofence
Draw a circle on a map. When your phone enters or exits that circle, the retrieve fires. Works anywhere with GPS signal – outdoors, in a city, at an airport approach. Set the radius from a single building to an entire neighborhood.
Combine with a time condition – "when I leave the office, but only after 5 PM" – or add a delay: "20 minutes after I leave work, when I'm close enough to the store to stop."
Wi-Fi network
Joining a Wi-Fi network is a precise, passive location signal that GPS cannot match indoors. Your home network means you're home. The network at work means you're at work. The dentist's network means you're in the waiting room.
No hardware needed. No battery drain. Just the networks you already connect to, doing double duty as location signals.
NFC tag – tap to check in
Small, inexpensive stickers you place anywhere. Tap your phone against one and whatever you've set for that location is instantly presented to you. The tap is deliberate – a physical micro-ritual that asks: I am here now, what did I need?
NFC tags solve the indoor precision problem GPS and Wi-Fi can't. Your desk, your piano, your medicine cabinet, your front door – each becomes a precise, reliable context.
Bluetooth proximity
When I pick up my car bluetooth for audio signal, I'm in my car.
When I put my phone down next to my computer, it can tell and then tell me what I needed to do when back at my computer.
When I turn on the bluetooth headphones I use to block distractions at work, I am at work.
NFC tags in depth
NFC tags come in many forms, many within the range from just 15 to 30 cents each. Any of them should work with your phone, and that signal will be passed to Captrieve. Stick them anywhere. Give each one a name for where you put them: kitchen, nightstand, car, work desk, front door, guitar.
A GPS geofence on an airport fires when you're in the parking lot, on approach, or dropping someone off. An NFC tap on departure is unambiguous. You're leaving the plane right then. Stick a tag on the armrest when you board. Set a retrieve for anything you need to remember when you leave the plane. Tap the tag when you gather your things to depart. It's so inexpensive, if you forget to take it with you, it's okay.
The tap is a deliberate micro-ritual. I am here now. What do I need to remember?
A thought on habits
Use the nightstand tag every night to remember your bedtime routine. After a while you notice you don't tap it anymore. The routine runs on its own. The place became the cue – not the app.
That is not a failure. That is the product working at its best. You spent a few dollars on an app and some NFC stickers and permanently improved your memory in a way that has eluded you for years. Congratulations!
Keep the tags where they are. Tap them anyway. Something else worth remembering will come along.
More cue types
Date and time
Tomorrow morning. This Friday at noon. The night before your flight. Simple and reliable – Siri and your calendar can do this too, but Captrieve can combine it with location and context in ways they can't.
Charger
If I put my phone on the charger and it's past 10 PM, I am going to bed. If I take my phone off its charger and it's early morning, I am getting up. The charger is already a moment you mark. Captrieve can meet you there.
Bluetooth device
When I turn on the Bluetooth headphones I use to block distractions at work, I am at my desk. Devices you already own, doing double duty as context signals.
Do Not Disturb / Focus
When your phone shifts into Do Not Disturb or a Focus mode, Captrieve can hold its own reminders until you return to normal mode, or fire a specific capture at that transition – the preparation reminder that should appear exactly when focused work begins.
App open
Not every thought has a clean time or place. Sometimes you just know you'll want it soon. This cue fires the next time you open Captrieve – until you ask, the thought waits.
Combining cues
Arrive at the grocery store or the pharmacy – whichever comes first. Leave work, but only after 5 PM. Connect to the car speaker, but only if it's after 9:30 PM. One cue is a trigger. Two cues with a condition is a system.