Notifications
The support-only notification philosophy, the kinds of reminders that exist, and the signed-in gate.
Pippa's notifications are deliberately quiet and supportive. What is not in them is as important as what is.
Support only, never score-keeping
Every reminder Pippa sends is framed around support and companionship, never around a goal, a number, a calorie count, or a streak. A ping driven by how close someone is to a number ("Goal Complete!", "Almost There!", "you're behind", "5-day streak! 🔥") reads as score-keeping, which spikes anxiety for people in recovery. Goal-complete, calorie-progress, and streak-at-risk notifications were all removed on both platforms.
Note the split: this rule is about notifications. In-app, the pet still celebrates and a streak survives as a quiet chip. Those live inside the app where the client chose to be, not as a push that interrupts their day with a number.
What reminders exist
The allowed shape of a notification is gentle and time-based:
- Meal reminders at the client's meal times, set during onboarding and adjustable in the meal plan. These are companionship nudges, not deadlines.
- Mood check-in reminders that deep-link into the mood check-in sheet, titled 💛 Pippa's Checking In with lines like Pippa's thinking of you 💛 How are you feeling right now?
- The delayed post-meal check-in, which arrives a clinician-set number of minutes after a meal is logged (see The post-meal check-in).
- Post-log encouragement, one gentle line after a log or skip, described in Settings as never numbers, never a grade.
- The 9:30 AM nutrition note, only if you enabled it with nutrition visibility: a note from your care team 💛, always number-free.
- A nightly goodnight note, voiced warmly by Pippa.
Reminder times can adapt gently to a client's own logged patterns, but they never become pressure or reference how much was eaten.
Who decides: your per-patient controls
Each reminder family (mood check-in reminders, meal reminders, the daily check-in, and post-log encouragement) has a three-way control you can set per patient from the dashboard:
- Patient decides (the default): the toggle lives in their Settings and they choose. Mood and meal reminders default to on.
- Always on: the patient's toggle is locked on.
- Off: the toggle is locked off, and that reminder family goes quiet.
When you lock a control either way, the patient's Settings shows the toggle dimmed with the note set by your care team 💛, so the decision is visible rather than mysterious. Use the locks sparingly; a patient who chose their own reminders tends to keep them.
The signed-in gate
Pippa never schedules a notification while the client is signed out. Every scheduler checks the sign-in state first, and signing out cancels all pending reminders and deregisters push. So a client who has left or logged out will not keep receiving meal or check-in pings.
The practical upshot for you: reminders follow the client's plan and their app state. If a client is not getting expected nudges, the first things to check are whether notifications are enabled in Settings, whether they are signed in, and whether the relevant reminder toggle is on.