CRM · checked 2026-10-19Can I vibecode Folk?
KINDA· weekend project
Contacts, groups, notes, reminders and a deal board for one person are a sitting's work on SQLite. What folk sells on top is automatic: it pulls email, calendar and WhatsApp history into each contact, fills in profile data and sends outreach sequences. Logging mail over IMAP is doable in a weekend; enrichment depends on paid data providers and WhatsApp and LinkedIn have no clean personal API, so an honest DIY covers the contact book and the email timeline.
$30/moprice per seat
$360you'd save a year
weekendbuild time
—people replaced it
What you need on hand.
DifficultyIntermediate · Some system setup or keys.
TimeOne sitting; the IMAP connection takes the longest
- Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
- Node.js 22better-sqlite3 compiles a native module, so build tools must be installed.
- An IMAP app passwordGmail needs 2-step verification before it offers app passwords.
- Your folk exportA ZIP with one CSV for contacts and one for notes, exported group by group.
Before you buildfolk shows no free plan on its pricing page, only a 2-week trial. If you keep a few hundred contacts, a spreadsheet or self-hosted Monica may be enough before you pay $30 a month.
- 1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
- 2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
- 3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.
The prompt
Build me a personal contact CRM to replace folk. Requirements: - Node.js 22 + TypeScript: a Fastify server and a React UI built with Vite. `npm start` serves http://localhost:4750. - Storage: better-sqlite3 in ./data/crm.db: people, companies, notes, reminders, groups (a person can sit in many groups), custom fields per group (text, number, date, select, link) and a deals table with stage, value and expected close date. Full-text search (FTS5) over names, notes and fields. - Views: a table per group with sortable columns, saved filters and inline editing, plus a kanban board for any group with a select field, where dragging a card changes the value. - Contact page: every field, notes as markdown, a timeline of notes and logged emails, and a home page that lists the reminders due today. - Email log: read-only IMAP over TLS with `imapflow`, using an app password from .env. For every address that belongs to a person, store sender, date, subject and the first 200 characters of the body in the timeline, never the full message; it runs at start-up and every 15 minutes. - Import and export: CSV import with column mapping and duplicate detection on email; CSV export of every table with notes included, plus one JSON dump of everything. - LinkedIn: store the profile URL as a field. No scraping and no automation of LinkedIn. - Single user. No accounts, no telemetry, local-first. Outbound calls: your IMAP server only. - Out of scope: email sequences, enrichment services, WhatsApp, calendar sync, team sharing. - README: making a Gmail app password (it needs 2-step verification on), importing a folk export, where the data lives and how to back it up.
Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.
Then keep going
Next prompts, same folder.
The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Folk.
Add a folk importer to the CRM in this folder. Requirements: - A command `crm import-folk <zip>` that unzips a folk "Export view as CSV" download, which holds one CSV of contacts and one of notes. - Map the contacts columns to people, companies and the group named after the file; create custom fields for columns that don't match a built-in field, guessing their type from the values. - Attach each note to its contact by the key the notes CSV uses; print what could not be matched. - Dry-run by default, printing counts of new, changed and skipped rows; `--write` applies them and running it twice must not create duplicates. - Update the README with the folk export steps.
Add a weekly digest to the CRM in this folder. Requirements: - Every Monday at 08:00 local time, build a list of people in a "Keep warm" group with no note or email on the timeline for more than 30 days (a number I can change in .env). - Send it by SMTP from .env as a plain-text email, grouped by company, with the last contact date and a link to each person's page. - A command `crm digest --print` shows the same list in the terminal without sending. - Update the README with the cron or launchd entry.
Add calendar events to the CRM in this folder. Requirements: - Read a private ICS feed URL from .env (CALENDAR_ICS_URL), refresh it every 30 minutes and parse it with `node-ical`. - For every event whose attendee email matches a person, add a "Meeting" entry to their timeline with title, date and duration; recurring events expand for the next 90 days only. - Show a "Next meeting" line on the contact page and a Today list on the home page. - Update the README with how to get the ICS link from Google Calendar.
What you lose
- Automatic email, calendar and WhatsApp sync for every teammate
- The LinkedIn extension and contact enrichment with emails and phone numbers
- Email and LinkedIn sequences with personalised AI icebreakers
- Shared workspaces with roles, permissions and dashboards
- The mobile and desktop apps and the MCP server for AI agents
Why people still pay
Relationship-driven teams in sales, agencies, partnerships and investing want the CRM to fill itself from their inbox and LinkedIn instead of asking for data entry. folk keeps that in a light, spreadsheet-like interface that people pick up in a day, and it's the one place a team shares what it knows about a contact.
Folk or your own copy?
Seats
Over
Your usage
12h ×$/h
Folk, 1 yr$360
Your own copy, 1 yr$38running + build session
You keep$323pays for itself in the first month
Estimate · Runs on your machine; a $5 VPS only matters if you want it reachable from your phone. The build is token usage on your agent plan.
Take your data, then cancel.
1 · Take your data out of Folk
- 1Open the group you want, click the three dots in the top right and choose Export view as CSV; you get a ZIP with one CSV of contacts and one of notes.
- 2The export follows the current view, so display every column you want and clear filters first.
- 3Exports are per group: repeat for each group, as exporting the whole workspace at once isn't possible.
- 4Interactions, reminders, custom contact fields, strongest connection, group smart fields and the people-in-company view are not included.
2 · Cancel Folk
- 1Open Settings > Plans and click Cancel subscription in the top right; you'll be asked for feedback.
- 2You keep the paid features until the end of the billing period.
- 3To drop to a cheaper plan instead, use Downgrade on the plan card in the same screen.
- 4On a custom Enterprise plan, message support: they cancel it manually.
- The pricing page says to cancel by downgrading to the free plan, while the help center says Cancel subscription; follow the help-center steps and check the billing page afterwards.
- Seat changes are prorated on the next bill, so remove teammates before the renewal date.
- After a failed payment you have 7 days to update the card before the account is blocked.
- The billing article links a data deletion policy but doesn't give a timeline; ask support what happens to a cancelled workspace.
The escape hatch
Don't feel like building it? These are already free.
TwentyOpen sourceSelf-hostable CRM with custom objects, views, pipelines and workflows; AGPL-3.0 with a few commercial enterprise files, run with Docker Compose.★ 59k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗MonicaOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 personal CRM for the people in your life: contacts, notes, reminders, relationships and activities, with Docker support. Built for friends and family more than sales.★ 26k · active Sep 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗EspoCRMOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 CRM with contacts, accounts, leads, opportunities, email integration and a workflow engine, installed with Docker or a PHP host.★ 3.5k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗
WebVisit ↗MonicaOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 personal CRM for the people in your life: contacts, notes, reminders, relationships and activities, with Docker support. Built for friends and family more than sales.★ 26k · active Sep 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗EspoCRMOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 CRM with contacts, accounts, leads, opportunities, email integration and a workflow engine, installed with Docker or a PHP host.★ 3.5k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗
The numbers
Folk pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual, per month | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $30 | $24 | Unlimited members; pipelines, email campaigns, contact enrichment, AI assistants, the LinkedIn extension, email, calendar and WhatsApp sync. Monthly allowances: 500 find-email lookups, 2,000 magic fields, 2,000 messages per member; 1 synced account and 1 custom domain per member; interaction sharing limited to the last 30. |
| Premium | $60 | $48 | Adds custom objects and deals, email sequences, workspace roles, dashboards and API access; 1,000 find-email lookups, 5,000 magic fields, 5,000 messages per member, 5 synced accounts, 3 custom domains, full interaction history. |
| Enterprise | $100 | $80 | Custom limits, security controls for sensitive interactions, group-level permissions, 1:1 onboarding with an account manager, custom integrations and priority support. |
- Billing
- Per member, charged monthly or yearly by credit card only; adding or removing members creates a prorated charge or credit on the next bill. After a failed payment you have 7 days to fix it before the workspace is blocked. If the trial ends without an upgrade the account is blocked, but the data isn't deleted straight away.
- Hidden costs
- Dashboards, the API, custom objects and deals, workspace roles and email sequences sit in Premium, double the Standard price. Enrichment, magic-field and message allowances are monthly caps per plan, and Standard shows only the last 30 interactions to teammates.
- Source
- www.folk.app
Also on the list
Related apps
The pricing page lists no free plan. A 2-week trial with Premium features starts at sign-up without a card.
Kinda. The core is a weekend build with the prompt on this page, but real gaps remain: Automatic email, calendar and WhatsApp sync for every teammate, The LinkedIn extension and contact enrichment with emails and phone numbers.
About $30 a month on the Standard plan per seat, $360 a year (checked 2026-10-19).
Automatic email, calendar and WhatsApp sync for every teammate; The LinkedIn extension and contact enrichment with emails and phone numbers; Email and LinkedIn sequences with personalised AI icebreakers; Shared workspaces with roles, permissions and dashboards; The mobile and desktop apps and the MCP server for AI agents. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.
Yes: Twenty (open source), Monica (open source), EspoCRM (open source).