Every term we use, in plain English.

The five-factor model — Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism — used by Are We Friends? for friend matching.

A public-domain 120-item Big Five personality test scoring 30 facets across 5 domains. The instrument Are We Friends? uses.

A narrower personality dimension underneath one of the five Big Five domains. Friends? matches on facets, not just domains.

Synonym for Big Five. The personality framework most psychologists use, which Are We Friends? uses for matching.

A 16-type personality system. Friends? doesn't use it — we use the Big Five — but explains how the two map onto each other.

A messaging architecture where only the two parties can decrypt a message. The server never sees plaintext. Friends? DMs use this.

An authenticated symmetric encryption algorithm used to encrypt every Are We Friends? DM payload.

An elliptic-curve key agreement protocol. Are We Friends? uses it to wrap the per-thread DM keys.

A memory-hard password-hashing function. Are We Friends? uses it to derive your master encryption key from your passphrase.

Are We Friends?'s internal name for our end-to-end encryption stack — XChaCha20-Poly1305 + X25519 + Argon2id.

An in-person hangout between two members that happens after a match. The single metric Are We Friends? optimizes for.

The Friend? AI feature that drafts a complete first-meetup plan — venue, time, conversation starters — the moment you match.

The in-app AI companion that runs Plan-the-Hang and answers questions about your matches, friends, and personality profile.

The 0–100 number on every match card representing how compatible two members are by Big Five + shared interests + proximity.

On Are We Friends?, a fan is someone who has expressed interest (sent a friend request, followed) but isn't yet an accepted friend.

A one-tap action to ask another member to be your friend on Are We Friends?. Pending until accepted, declined, or expired.

The swipe-style stack of personality-matched candidates on /matches, ranked by Match Score and refreshed every 12 hours.

The well-documented rise in adult social isolation. Cited by the U.S. Surgeon General in 2023 as a public health emergency.

The 2023 U.S. Surgeon General report that classified loneliness as a public health emergency comparable to smoking.

Of or relating to the measurement of psychological traits. The IPIP-NEO-120 is a psychometric instrument.