About Friendly
Software that feels personal, private, and calm.
Friendly is an independent product company from Brasília, building thoughtful tools for notes, time, photos, and everyday creative work with privacy, ownership, and calm interfaces at the center.
Independent. Privacy-conscious. Built for people everywhere.
Founder-led by design
Built by someone who ships the whole system.
Friendly is led by Gabriel Oliveira do Espírito Santo, a Brasília-based software engineer who has spent years building production software across backend systems, frontend apps, cloud infrastructure, data workflows, internal tools, and AI-assisted automation.
Before Friendly, Gabriel worked with startups and international teams on real product systems, the kind that need to be designed, shipped, maintained, debugged, scaled, and trusted by people every day.
That background shapes how Friendly builds: small surface area, strong defaults, careful interfaces, local-first where possible, and technology that earns trust instead of demanding attention.
Founder
Gabriel Oliveira do Espírito Santo
Software engineer · Founder of Friendly
Brasília, Brazil
Why we exist
Most software asks for too much. Friendly tries to ask for less.
Modern software often treats people like metrics: more sessions, more notifications, more lock-in, more subscriptions, more data collection. Friendly is built from a different instinct.
We believe the best tools should help you think clearly, organize your work, and keep ownership of what matters. They should feel fast, quiet, personal, and respectful.
That means building products that do not depend on dark patterns, forced collaboration loops, endless plugin ecosystems, or unnecessary cloud complexity. When cloud features are useful, they should be understandable. When AI is useful, it should be optional and purposeful. When local-first is possible, it should be the default.
Privacy is not an upgrade.
Products should respect people by default, not only after they pay more or configure everything manually.
Local-first whenever possible.
Your notes, files, drafts, and creative work should not feel trapped inside someone else's cloud.
Calm over addictive.
Friendly products are designed to be useful without demanding constant attention.
Strong defaults over plugin chaos.
We prefer opinionated, well-crafted workflows over endless configuration and fragile extensions.
AI as a detail, not the product.
AI should help when it creates real value. It should not replace thoughtful product design.
Built for ownership.
The best software helps people keep control of their work, their data, and their creative process.
Built from real product work
The philosophy comes from shipping production software.
Friendly is not built from theory. It comes from years of hands-on engineering work across product, infrastructure, automation, data, and AI systems.
Gabriel has helped build and scale production platforms for startups and international teams, including B2B systems used by dozens of customers, internal tools for operational teams, cloud infrastructure, API integrations, and AI-assisted workflows with human-in-the-loop review.
This experience matters because Friendly products are not meant to be experiments that look good only in screenshots. They are meant to become tools people can rely on.
Product engineering
Full-stack product work across backend, frontend, data modeling, APIs, and user-facing workflows.
Production systems
Experience building systems that need to run reliably, scale gradually, and support real operational work.
AI with restraint
Practical AI workflows designed around usefulness, review, observability, and human control, not hype.
Public background
A builder with public roots in technology and AI.
Gabriel has been cited in Brazilian press as a software engineer and artificial intelligence specialist, and was part of the first-place team at NASA Space Apps Challenge Brasília 2019.
These moments are not the whole story, but they reflect the same thread behind Friendly: building technology that connects real problems, clear interfaces, and useful systems.
What we are building
A small family of focused products.
Friendly is building a set of products around personal knowledge, time, memory, creativity, and ownership.
Notely
A private local-first knowledge workspace for people who want the structure of a modern workspace without cloud lock-in or a plugin-heavy system.
Timely
A personal time and productivity tool designed around clarity, rhythm, and everyday planning.
Framely
An editorial photography and portfolio product shaped by Brasília, visual memory, and personal storytelling.
Friendly is built one thoughtful product at a time.
We are not trying to build software that takes over your life. We are building tools that help you write, plan, create, organize, and keep ownership of your work.