Marlow

How it works

An appointment is easy. A driver is the hard part.

Marlow is built around one loop, and everything else is in service of it: an appointment that needs somebody to drive, a person who says they will, and a parent who finds out in time to put their shoes on.

Step one

Start a circle and add the people who help.

A circle is your parent and the people around them — siblings, a neighbor, a grandchild at college who can still see what is happening. You invite them with a link; they are in within a minute.

Everybody in the circle can edit. Anyone can add an appointment and anyone can claim a ride. Only membership and your parent's settings are restricted to organizers, because a circle where four people can see the schedule but one person can change it is just the group chat again with extra steps.

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Four people helping. Two of them live out of state.

Step two

Add the appointment, and say it needs a ride.

Time, place, and whether somebody has to drive. If they need bringing home again, that is the same appointment with a second leg — never two entries you have to keep in step.

Recurring appointments — physical therapy every Tuesday and Thursday — are a rule, and changing one week changes that week only.

Step three

Somebody claims it. That's the whole commitment.

The circle sees an appointment marked needs a driver. One person taps "I'll take this" and it turns green with their name on it.

There is no second step where they confirm the thing they just claimed. If you trust somebody enough to be in the circle, a claim is a commitment — and a status nobody clears is worse than no status at all. If they can't make it after all, they say so, and the appointment goes back to needing a driver where everyone can see it.

Step four

Your parent gets one line about it.

Not a calendar. Not a notification to manage. The time to be ready, who is coming, and where they are going — in the largest type on the screen, in their language.

Marlow works backward from the appointment to get there: how long the drive takes, plus a buffer, becomes "be ready at 9:40" rather than "your appointment is at 10:15." That translation is the whole senior side in one sentence.

More about what they see →

And when it doesn't go to plan

The interesting part of a coordination app is the failures.

Nobody claims the ride. It stays visibly orange, and the circle is nudged as the date gets close rather than the day before. Your parent is never shown "nobody has volunteered" — they are told Marlow is arranging their ride, which is true and is not their problem to solve.

The driver is running late. The ride goes to the lock screen as a live card while it is happening, on the way there and on the way home. Somebody sitting in a clinic lobby wondering whether anyone is coming is the moment that card is most worth having.

A notification doesn't arrive. Push delivery is not guaranteed by anybody, and Marlow will not pretend otherwise — this is written into the terms. It is a coordination tool, not a safety system, and nothing about somebody's health should rest on a phone buzzing.

It runs on iPhone, and it's free while it's small.

Marlow is in a pilot with a handful of families. If that sounds like yours, the door is open — and you'll be talking to the person who builds it.

Join the pilot