Introducing Sifter: A New Way to Meet the People Right Around You

At 702 AI Services, we spend most of our days building AI and automation systems for other businesses. But every so often, we get obsessed with an idea of our own and decide to build it. Today we are announcing one of those ideas: Sifter.

Sifter is a proximity chat app for iOS that lets you discover and talk to people who are physically near you — without sharing your phone number, Instagram, or any other personal contact info. Think of it as the missing layer between 'complete stranger' and 'adding each other on socials.'

Why We Are Building This

Somewhere along the way, meeting new people in real life got harder. You walk into a coffee shop, a conference, a gym, a local event — and you are surrounded by people who might share your interests, your profession, or your sense of humor. But there is no easy, low-pressure way to actually start a conversation with any of them.

Dating apps solve one very specific version of this problem, but they are hyper-focused on romantic matching. Social networks connect you with people you already know. Nothing really helps you connect with the people who are right next to you, right now, for any reason you might want.

Sifter is our attempt to fix that. Open the app, see who is nearby, start a conversation. No phone numbers exchanged. No Instagram handles traded. Just a clean, private way to connect with people in your physical space.

What Sifter Does

• Discover people near you — at events, venues, campuses, coffee shops, or anywhere else
• Start private conversations without sharing any personal contact info
• Control your visibility — be discoverable only when and where you want
• Filter by interests so you find people you actually want to meet
• Keep your identity private until you choose to share more

Built for Real Life, Not Feeds

Most social apps are designed to keep you scrolling. Sifter is designed to help you look up from your phone and actually talk to someone. It is not a content app. It is not a feed. It is a tool that exists to create one simple outcome: you meet someone you would not have met otherwise.

Who It Is For

Sifter is being built for anyone who wants to meet more of the people around them — in a way that is casual, private, and pressure-free:

• Conference attendees who want to network without the awkward 'can I grab your LinkedIn' ask
• Students on campus who want to meet classmates in their major
• Travelers who want to connect with locals or other travelers in a new city
• Event-goers who want to find others at the same concert, meetup, or festival
• Remote workers at coworking spaces and cafés who want to build real-world community
• Anyone tired of dating-app fatigue who wants a different way to meet people

The Privacy Angle

We are building Sifter with privacy as a first principle, not an afterthought. Location data is used only for proximity matching and is never stored long-term. Identity is controlled by the user — you decide what you share and when. You never have to hand over a phone number, social handle, or email to talk to someone through Sifter.

This is non-negotiable for us. A proximity app only works if people actually trust it. So we are designing the entire product around the assumption that people should be able to meet without being tracked, profiled, or monetized by their data.

What Is Next

We are in active development and closing in on our first testable build. Public beta testing will open soon — we will announce it here and on our social channels the moment it is ready. If you want to be among the first to try Sifter, bookmark sifter.cc and check back over the next few weeks.

We are excited to share more as we get closer to launch. Sifter is a side project built with the same care we put into our client work — we hope it becomes a tool you actually use.