Eric Migicovsky, the founder of Pebble and the person leading its recent comeback, is very much in the business of making gadgets for himself. And he seems extremely into the one on his finger: It’s called the Pebble Index 01 (but we’ll just call it Index), and it’s a $75 ring meant to be worn on your (surprise!) index finger. It has a microphone, a button for activating that microphone, and nothing else. It looks a little like you wrapped one of those adjustable cable ties around your finger and then cinched it supertight.
Migicovsky has been working on it for more than a year — I first caught him wearing a prototype at last year’s CES — and says it has become the simple capture tool he always wanted. You press and hold the ring’s button with the thumb next to the ring to record. Whatever you record is sent to the Pebble app for iOS or Android, where you can see a feed of the audio and transcriptions you’ve collected. It all happens over Bluetooth, though the ring has about five minutes of local storage and a local transcription model on the device, in case you’re disconnected from your phone. “You could take the internet connection out and the whole thing still works,” Migicovsky says.
Migicovsky refers to the Index as “external memory for your brain,” and says that ensuring nothing got lost, no matter what, was the key to getting the product right. That’s why it has a button, not a wake word, and why every bit of recorded audio shows up in the app. The Index doesn’t even have a charger — its battery should last a couple of years, Migicovsky says, as long as you’re using it a few seconds at a time a few times a day. (Apparently, you might also kill the battery if you record 15 straight hours. Don’t do that.) The point is to not have to think about it. “If it’s not 100 percent reliable,” Migicovsky says, “I will stop using it. And I will revert back to my failure mode of just sending myself emails.”
Image: Core Devices
The most common uses for a device like this are fairly obvious: taking notes, setting timers and alarms, creating reminders. Those are Migicovsky’s big three, and they’re likely yours and mine as well. In all three cases, the Index and its companion app can be a little smarter than just putting the audio in the feed. Migicovsky’s Index is hard-coded to send all his notes to Notion, for example, since that’s where he does his other work. If he sets a reminder, he’ll get a notification at the prescribed time, and on Android, the Pebble app can set alarms directly in the Clock app. (Apple doesn’t let third-party accessories do the same on iOS.) With the Index as an input system and a Pebble watch on his arm receiving those notifications, Migicovsky can get a lot done without ever pulling out his phone.
By the way, Migicovsky says you’ll be able to do a lot of this on your smartwatch. The new Pebble 2 Duo has a built-in mic, and the upcoming Pebble Time 2 has two; both support voice input and can do the same things as the Index. “But the ring remains,” he says. Having a dedicated input button, and having that interaction require two fingers instead of two hands makes a big difference.
The Pebble app will eventually get more note- and task-related features, but ultimately the idea is for the Index to be a bridge to other services. If the app understands you’re trying to create a calendar event, it should just create that event. If you want to add a song to a playlist, or book a car, or any number of other things, the Index and Pebble app might one day be able to just do those things.
Cast out far enough, and this all starts to sound a bit like the agentic AI dream that currently seems to animate every other company in tech. Smart rings like the Wizpr and the Stream Ring are building microphones into your finger for AI purposes, and devices from companies like Plaud hope to get you yammering into tiny wearables sooner rather than later. Migicovsky definitely sees some AI potential here: He’s thinking maybe if you double-click the Index’s button, it could send your recordings straight to ChatGPT, and he’s planning to integrate the Model Context Protocol to let the Pebble app interface directly with lots of other models and apps. But he’s also quick to say he’s not trying to build a Friend, and that even MCP is not the point. “This is external memory for my brain,” he says. “It does one thing and it does it really freaking well.” Then he pauses a second. “But it’s hackable.”
Like the rest of the Pebble ecosystem, all parts of the Index will be open source. That means people can build new kinds of hardware to enable input, add features to the app, or take the tech and do something else entirely. For Migicovsky, it seems to be the best of both worlds: He gets to build exactly the things he wants, and if you want something else? Here’s the source code, knock yourself out.
The Index 01 is available for preorder now for $75. After it starts shipping in March 2026, the price will go up to $99. It comes in three colors and a bunch of ring sizes. Migicovsky says he uses his as often as 20 times a day, and has for many months. He thinks lots of other people might enjoy talking to their hands, too, as long as it’s super easy and never fails.
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