01
“Something is eating my tomato leaves and I don't know what.”
By the time she figures it out on Reddit, the hornworms have stripped two plants. The fruit she has been waiting for since April is gone.
friendorfoeLaunching mid-June 2026
Is it friend or foe?
Photograph any garden bug. Get a verdict and a plan in three seconds. Plus the companion plants that deter it and the beneficial insect already doing the work.
90%+ accuracy. 14,000 insect species. 35,000 plants. Under 3 seconds.
Try it. Tap a bug.
On tomato leavesFriendOrFoe
Tomato Hornworm
Manduca quinquemaculata
FOE
Foe
Will defoliate a tomato plant in a single night. Overwinters as a pupa in your soil.
Hand-pick now. Plant basil and dill between tomatoes next season to deter the hawk moth.
USDACornellUMN Extension
This is exactly what the app shows.
What goes wrong without a verdict
Three things every gardener says, every June.
Each one ends the same way. A lost crop, a dead beneficial, or a season of advice that was almost right. The bug ID app you already have stops at the name. The name is not the answer.
02
“I sprayed neem on my squash. The next day I found a dead praying mantis.”
Her best free aphid-eater was the casualty. The actual pest, a squash bug nymph, is still there in the morning.
03
“My friend's dad said marigolds help. I planted them. The aphids came anyway.”
The advice was almost right. The companion that actually deters aphids on lettuce is nasturtium, planted at the bed edge, three weeks before transplant.
How it works
Three seconds from shutter to plan.
Most apps treat identification as the product. We treat it as the first second of a three-second answer. The other two seconds are what to do about it.
Target latency, shutter to verdict: under 5 seconds.
- 01
Frame.
Open the app. The camera is already live. No splash screen, no carousel, no popups. Point it at the bug.
Single-tap shutter, the largest button on the screen.
- 02
Capture.
Tap once. We identify the insect and the plant it is sitting on, in parallel, in under two seconds.
14,000+ insect taxa. 35,000+ plants. 90%+ top-3 accuracy.
- 03
Verdict.
Friend, foe, or it depends. Color-coded, with one-line mechanism and one-line action. Saved to your garden automatically.
Companions, beneficials, and rotation notes one scroll down.
Why not just a bug ID app
Identification is the start. We finish the job.
Every existing bug app stops at the species name. The species name is one search-result away. The plan to do something about it is not. That gap is the product.
| Capability | FriendOrFoe | Bug ID apps | Nature ID apps | Generic AI bug apps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Species identification | ||||
| Friend or foe verdict | ||||
| Organic management plan | ||||
| Companion plants that deter the pest | ||||
| Beneficial insect already doing the work | ||||
| Lookalike warnings (e.g. ladybug vs Asian lady beetle) | ||||
| Seasonal memory across years | ||||
| Shareable verdict card | ||||
| Built specifically for food gardeners |
Capability comparison based on each app's public feature set and App Store description as of May 2026. We will update this as competitors expand.
What you get the longer you use it
The garden journal you never had time to keep.
Most apps lose value over time. This one gains it. Every photograph adds to a private record of your soil, your beds, and the bugs that visit them. By year two, the app knows your garden better than you do.
Ecosystem score
One number for the whole bed.
Friend count minus foe count, weighted by friend density. Surfaces at the top of each bed in your garden, so you can tell at a glance whether the beneficials are winning. No badges, no points, no leaderboard.
Privately motivating. Never compared against other gardeners.
Seasonal memory
Your garden remembers, year over year.
Every identification you save plants a notification for next season. The first warm week of spring, the app opens with a quiet line: last year you saw your first hornworm on June 22 in Bed A. Watch for it this week.
The first identification this season was logged 327 days ago.
Collection
Every species you have ever found.
Sorted by recency, alphabetical, or friend-foe split. Each species shows the first time you saw it, the last time, and the host plants it has appeared on. Quiet completion is its own reward.
47 species this season. 12 friends. 8 foes. 27 it depends.
Why this verdict is trustworthy
One verdict. One knowledge graph. One gardener.
Generic AI apps hallucinate species. We pair field-tested identification with a hand-built, cited knowledge graph. No model is writing the gardening advice.
Identification
Field-tested.
Trained on millions of verified observations. 90%+ accuracy in independent testing. The identifier looks at the bug and the plant it is sitting on in parallel, so we know the full scene before the verdict renders.
- insect taxa covered
- 14,000+
- top-3 accuracy
- 90%+
- p50 identification latency
- <2s
Intelligence layer
CropGraph.
Our own knowledge graph. Companion relationships and pest entries built and cited by hand, from USDA, Cornell, UC Davis IPM, and the agricultural extension services that actually grow food. Not scraped, not generated, not guessed.
- cited companion relationships
- 605
- pest management entries
- 158
- crops in the graph
- 5,006
Every claim on a verdict card links to its source.
AC
Built by
Andrew Christison.
Homesteader and software builder on the Olympic Peninsula. I raise food, livestock, and the data behind this app from my own garden. The bug photographs in the demo are real pests on real plants, not stock libraries.
- growing food at scale
- 12 yr
- building the CropGraph data layer
- 5 yr
- garden the app was tested in
- 1
andrew@friendorfoe.garden
Pricing
$29.99 a year. Less than a bag of potting soil.
Free forever for the casual gardener. $29.99 a year if you want unlimited use and a journal that remembers across seasons.
Free
$0forever
Five identifications a month, full intelligence on every one.
- 5 identifications per calendar month
- Friend or foe verdict with mechanism and action
- Companion plants and beneficial insects
- Public verdict cards you can share
Premium
$29.99per year
Unlimited identifications and the seasonal memory layer.
- Unlimited identifications
- Seasonal alerts (last year you saw your first hornworm on June 22)
- Garden journal and per-bed history
- Companion effectiveness tracking
- 7-day unlimited trial, no card required up front
Ships after launch
Family
$49.99per year
Premium for up to five household members.
- Everything in Premium
- Up to 5 family members
- Shared garden across accounts
- One subscription, household billing
Available in Phase 2
What you are not risking
Five identifications a month, free, forever. No paywall on the verdict card itself, ever. Cancel a paid plan with one tap from Settings; your saved garden stays read-only on free, you do not lose history.
Questions
Twelve things worth knowing before you sign up.
How is this different from other bug ID apps?+
They stop at the species name. FriendOrFoe gives you a friend or foe verdict, an organic management plan, the companion plants that deter the pest, and the beneficial insect that already kills it. Identification is the start, not the product.
How accurate is the bug identification?+
Our identifier is trained on millions of verified observations. 14,000+ insect taxa with 90%+ top-three accuracy in independent testing. We show a confidence score on every identification and let you correct results.
Does this work for plants, or just bugs?+
Both. When you photograph a bug, we also identify the plant it's on so the management advice fits the actual scene. Standalone plant ID ships in a later phase.
What happens after my 7-day trial?+
You drop to the permanent free tier: 5 identifications a month with the full intelligence layer. No paywall on the verdict card itself, ever.
Can I share a verdict without signing up?+
Yes. Every saved identification can be made public with a single per-card toggle, generating a shareable URL like friendorfoe.garden/v/abc123. Default is off; you decide one verdict at a time.
What if the app gets the bug wrong?+
Tap the 'Was this right?' prompt and submit a correction. Your photo and label feed into our quality loop. Premium users get priority on identification re-runs.
Will I get spammed with notifications?+
No. We ask for push permission only after your third successful identification. Notifications are capped at one per day, respect 9pm to 7am quiet hours, and every push has a one-tap 'stop notifications like this' link.
Do you sell my photos or location data?+
No. Your photos are stored privately by default. We never sell, share, or syndicate them. Anonymized aggregate features (like neighborhood pest counts) are strictly opt-in and respect k-anonymity.
Does this work outside the US?+
Identification works globally; the identifier covers worldwide taxa. The intelligence layer is strongest for North American climates and crops in v1; we expand by region based on user concentration.
When is it launching?+
mid-June 2026. We are aiming for the week of June 15 to 22, ahead of peak pest season.
Who built this?+
Andrew Christison, a homesteader and developer on the Olympic Peninsula. I grow food, raise livestock, and built the data layer behind this app from my own garden. The bug photos in the app are from real pests on real plants, not stock libraries.
Can I use it without a subscription?+
Yes. Five identifications a month, free, forever. Full intelligence layer on every one. Premium is for unlimited use, seasonal alerts, and the garden journal.
Have a question that's not here? Email me directly.
Be first to identify
The next bug you find should not be a guess.
Drop your email. The morning the app goes live, you get a one-line note with the App Store link. Nothing else, until then.
Launching mid-June 2026iOS first, Android within weeksOne launch email, then quiet
friendorfoe
friendorfoe.garden· Built on a homestead, for gardens like yours.