How many people can share a household?

Five, including you. Invitations hold a seat while they are pending, so the count is always honest. Everyone belongs to one household at a time, and there is no household at all until somebody creates one — an account on its own is not quietly turned into a family of one.

How does someone join?

Two ways. A QR code, which lasts fifteen minutes because it is meant to be scanned off your screen while the other person is standing there. Or an email invitation, which lasts a week. Either invitation can be revoked before it is used, and each one works exactly once.

Can I set a reminder for someone else?

Yes. Assign a task to another member and their phone is the one that rings — you keep the task’s definition, they get the loop. It works in every direction between adults and members, not only downwards, so the person who remembers is not always the same person.

Can everyone see everyone’s tasks?

No. Members do not see each other’s personal tasks — only the ones actually assigned between them. The exception is deliberate: a guardian can see a dependent’s tasks and close one on their behalf, and that closure is recorded as having been done by the guardian rather than quietly attributed to the dependent.

What happens if someone leaves?

Their tasks are archived, never deleted — archived means “stop asking”, and nothing is destroyed on the way out. A task somebody else had assigned to them stops chasing them, and the history of the loop stays intact.

Households

Some things are only ever remembered by one person in the house.

The short version. A household is up to five people. You invite them with a QR code they scan off your screen, or by email. Then a task can be assigned: you keep the task, their phone is the one that rings. A guardian can see a dependent’s tasks and close one for them; everybody else’s private tasks stay private.

The household chore that only exists in one person’s head is not a memory problem, it is a distribution problem. Reminding someone yourself is worse than doing the thing: you have to remember it, and then be the one who brings it up again. This moves the second half of that job somewhere else.

Five people, and it doesn’t exist until you make one

A household holds five, including you. Invitations you have sent hold a seat while they are pending, so the count you see is the truth rather than an optimistic estimate.

Nothing is created behind your back. There is no “personal household of one” and no default group waiting to be discovered in a settings screen — if you never create a household, you never have one, and everything works exactly as it did. Each person belongs to one household at a time.

Getting someone in

A QR code, good for fifteen minutes. It is short because it is meant to be scanned off your screen while the other person is standing next to you. They scan it with their phone’s own camera and it opens the app.
An email invitation, good for a week. For the family member who is not in the room.

Either kind works exactly once and can be revoked before it is used. Both of you need the app installed — an invitation is a way into a household, not a web page.

Assigning a task: whose phone rings

Assign a task to another member and the loop moves to them. You keep the definition — what it is, when it’s due, how often it repeats and how loud it may get — and their phone is the one that receives every reminder, with the same Done and Wait it would have given you. Both sides can see which way a task is pointing: yours are labelled with who they’re for, theirs with who they came from.

Assignment works in every direction between adults and members, not only downwards. The person who remembers things should not have to be the same person every time.

Guardians and dependents

One role is deliberately asymmetric. A dependent is a member who needs a hand rather than a dashboard, and the household’s owner and adults are their guardians. A guardian can see a dependent’s tasks and their week, assign them something, and close a task on their behalf when they have watched it happen.

That last one is recorded honestly: a task a guardian closed is stored as having been closed by the guardian, not quietly attributed to the dependent. A shared record that blurs who did what is worse than no shared record.

What nobody can see

Members do not see each other’s personal tasks. A household is a way to hand each other loops, not a window into someone’s day — the only tasks that cross between two adults are the ones actually assigned between them. The guardian view above is the single exception, and it exists in one direction only.

Leaving

Leaving a household archives tasks rather than deleting them. Archived means “stop asking”: the reminders end, the history stays. Anything somebody had assigned to the person leaving stops chasing them, and nothing anyone did is erased on the way out.

Or share one task, without a household

For the one-off case there is a lighter thing: turn a single task into a link or a QR code that lasts twenty-four hours. Whoever opens it sees one task and whether it is still open — not your other tasks, not your email address — and gets one button, Remind them, which pulls your next reminder forward to now. There is a cooldown, so it is a poke rather than a weapon, and you can revoke every outstanding link for a task at any time. They need the app installed for it to open.

Caregiver alerts — in development

A notification to you when someone else’s task has been open too long is being designed and is not in the app yet. What exists today is what is described above: assignment, the guardian view of a dependent, and the shared-task link. No dates promised.

until. is a general-purpose reminder tool, not a medical device. A task can say anything you like — the tablets, the plants, the car, the bins — and the app treats them all identically. It never advises what to take, how much, or why.