context aware reminders that know you already filmed

context aware reminders are reminders that know what you have already done. underway's daily reminder is now one of them: if today's episode is already in, it says so and offers room for another, instead of asking you to film one.

the short version

underway sends one reminder a day, at a time you pick.

until now it said the same thing every day: a few minutes on camera about today. it said it whether you had filmed at nine in the morning or not at all.

now the reminder is written at the moment it is sent, from what you have actually filmed that day, on the website or on the phone.

filmed already? it says today's episode is in, and that there's room for another if something has happened since. filmed twice? it counts them. nothing yet? it says nothing filmed yet today. on a day you paused, it says nothing at all.

what a context aware reminder is

most reminders are alarms. they go off at a time, with words that were written when you set them up, and they have no idea what happened in between.

a context aware reminder looks at the situation first. the research on it is mostly about medication and smart homes: remind someone to take a pill only if the pill box has not been opened, remind someone to check the stove only when they are leaving the house.

the idea is the same here, and much simpler. the one fact that matters for a daily video diary is whether today's episode exists yet. the reminder now checks that fact before it says anything.

why the old reminder was wrong

underway was built around the idea that you film whenever suits you. morning, lunchtime, after a meeting, late at night, several in one day.

the reminder did not keep up with that. on the phone it was a local alarm, scheduled days ahead with its words already fixed. it could not know that you had filmed on the website at ten, so at the time you picked it asked you to film anyway.

i noticed it on my own phone. i film most episodes in the morning, my reminder is set for half past nine at night, and most nights it asked me for an episode i had made twelve hours earlier.

a reminder that is wrong about you teaches you to swipe it away without reading it. then on the day you really have not filmed, it gets swiped away too.

how it works now

when the phone app signs in, it tells underway which time zone it is in. from then on the reminder is sent from underway's server rather than scheduled on the phone.

every few minutes the server looks for founders whose reminder time has come, in their own time zone. for each one it reads what they have filmed today, on either surface, and writes the reminder from that.

each founder gets one reminder a day. the day is claimed before it is sent, so a slow run never sends it twice.

a phone that cannot reach the server keeps its own alarm, so the reminder never simply stops. its words no longer claim that nothing has been filmed, because it cannot know.

what it never says

the rules on the reminder have not changed, and they matter more now that it knows things.

it never names a time of day. it never mentions the streak, or a day you missed. dismissing it costs nothing: no second ask, no guilt copy.

on a day outside your commitment, a weekend if you chose weekdays, it says no episode is due and offers a fifteen second moment if something happens. on a paused day, holiday mode, it stays quiet.

and it never raises the bar. an episode already in is enough. the offer of another is there for a day when more happened, not as a target.

the time you pick still matters

the reminder still arrives at the same time every day, because a cue that moves is not a habit. what changed is that the time no longer has to guess when you will film.

set it for the latest point you would want to be asked. if you have filmed by then, it is a nod. if you have not, it is the backstop. change it under rhythm, when the prompt arrives, on the website or the phone.

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