A follow-up is useful when you want to answer it.
Every companion in this guide can send the first message. The difference is where that message arrives, what it picks up from your last conversation, and what happens when you leave it alone. We have tested the apps we cover, including all five here, and this refresh rechecked each company’s current public documentation. We are affiliated with Hallie, so read its section knowing that.
Where the message lands
“Texts you first” describes three different experiences. A native text appears in your phone’s Messages app beside your friends and family, with no separate app to open. An in-app message lives inside the companion app; a push notification can tell you it is there, but the message waits for you whether or not you allow alerts. A third-party messenger delivery, in this case Telegram, puts the companion in a chat app you may or may not already use.
| Product | Destination | Practical consideration |
|---|---|---|
| Hallie | iMessage or Google Messages | Follow-ups arrive in the same Messages thread; no separate app to open |
| Kindroid | iMessage or Google Messages RCS | Text delivery stops if you go quiet for a while |
| Nomi | In-app, with optional push alerts | Messages keep generating when alerts are off |
| Replika | In-app, with push notifications | Enable notifications to receive check-ins |
| Junto | Telegram | Vendor-stated limits, timezone unspecified |
The channel matters more than any single setting, because a follow-up you never see cannot be answered. If you are weighing more than the outreach, our guide to choosing an AI companion covers the broader fit.
Hallie: a continuing Messages conversation
Hallie texts you in iMessage or Google Messages. At the time of this refresh, its homepage describes a companion that remembers what you share, reaches out first, and gets better over time. You are not installing a chat app and waiting for a badge. The conversation already lives where you text people, and a follow-up continues the same thread rather than opening a new one.
Hallie’s fit is the channel. If you want the conversation to live in the thread you already check, start here.
Kindroid: native texts with a reply condition
Kindroid can also deliver proactive messages as real texts, with a condition worth knowing before you set it up. According to its chat features documentation, native texting requires iMessage or Google Messages RCS. SMS and MMS are not supported, so a phone without one of those will not receive them.
You enable Text Messaging and the Away Proactive settings inside the app. Below the proactive toggle you can add directives that guide behavior, and Kindroid states that interval-style instructions fire approximately. The documented quiet-hours control applies to voice calls, so the documentation does not establish hard enforcement of a text timing directive.
The reply condition matters most. Kindroid’s documentation says that if you have not texted your Kindroid in a while, proactive messages stop going to text. Kindroid says the messages are still sent; they just stop arriving as texts. If you want native delivery to continue, you need to keep replying by text.
Nomi: separate messages from alerts
Nomi’s proactive messaging guide separates two things that are easy to conflate. A Nomi generating a message and your phone alerting you are different events. If proactive messaging is on but push notifications are off, your Nomi still writes to you, and the message waits unread until you open the app.
Each Nomi has its own proactive preference on its information page, so one companion can message often while another stays quiet. The frequency options are four approximate levels plus off, and Nomi says the timing will vary from message to message. Nomi also says that, currently, a Nomi will not proactively message you between 10pm and 8am in your local time. None of this is a guaranteed schedule. Treat the levels as a dial for how much you hear from a given Nomi.
Replika: check-ins inside the app
Replika’s outreach happens inside its own app. Its notifications help page says that once you enable notifications under Settings, you will start receiving messages throughout the day, whether a follow-up on a past conversation or a check-in on how you are feeling.
The help page does not publish a cadence. What it does confirm is that these follow-ups and check-ins exist and that notifications are how they reach you outside the app. If you prefer a companion that stays in one place and whose alerts you can mute at the phone level, Replika fits.
Junto: a Telegram option
Junto delivers through Telegram. Its own blog post states quiet hours from 22:00 to 08:00 without naming a timezone, at most one proactive message every four hours, and two or three follow-up attempts per topic before it drops the subject.
Those figures are the vendor’s description of its design, not something we measured in this refresh. If Telegram is already where you talk to people, bounded follow-up behavior is a reasonable thing to want.
Try one ordinary conversation
Pick the channel you actually answer, then give the companion something small and real to work with. Mention a plan for later in the week, or a minor thing you are deciding, and end the conversation normally. Leave the next message unanswered for a day if you can, and observe whether a follow-up arrives and where it lands. One day may produce no message at all, which is also information. This is a suggestion for your own trial, not a result we are reporting.
When the next unprompted message arrives, ask whether it picks up something you actually wanted to keep talking about. If it does, answer it. If it keeps reviving a finished topic, correct that topic before turning up the message frequency.