How Pacts works
Pacts is built on one idea: tiny pacts + people who care = discipline without willpower. You make a small promise, and someone who cares helps you keep it. Here’s every moving part, in short.
1. Form a circle
A circle is your accountability group — just you, a partner, a family, up to eight people.
- Private by default — you join with an invite code, a deep link, or a QR code.
- A circle admin approves every join request, so nobody stumbles in.
2. Agree on pacts
A pact is a shared commitment — small and daily beats ambitious and occasional.
- Pick a template or write your own: “Gym 3×/week”, “No phones at dinner”, “Read 20 minutes.”
- Set which days it’s due — every day, weekdays, specific days, or “3× a week” — and a reminder time, so it nudges you when you’d actually do it.
- Give a challenge a start and end date — a 30-day reset, a couch-to-5K.
3. Check each other in
Each day, swipe the deck: ✅ kept or ❌ missed.
- Mostly you mark yourself — that’s the normal path, not the exception.
- Anyone in your circle can vouch for you, or veto a claim you didn’t earn — a peer verdict a self-report can’t match.
- Not ready to call it yet? Swipe down for Later today, or up for Tomorrow — no verdict, streak untouched.
4. Disputes settle themselves
No mark is instantly final — every check-in opens a 12-hour dispute window.
- The person marked can flip a wrong peer-mark.
- Anyone else can veto a self-claim.
- After the window it locks in. This “lazy consensus” keeps the record honest without turning the circle adversarial.
5. The streak grows
Every pact keeps its own streak. On your own, that’s your run of kept days. In a pair you also get the number that bonds the two of you — “days we both kept it” — which only climbs when neither of you skipped.
- A missed day is never scolded. Everyone gets one automatic grace day a month, so a single slip doesn’t wipe a good run — and Pro makes it one a week, plus the ability to repair a broken day up to 7 days back.
- A per-person scoreboard celebrates consistency — but there’s no “worst offender” callout, on purpose. Shame drives people off; encouragement keeps them.
6. Cheer, react, reward
One-tap cheers (🙌 / 👏 / 💪) and quick emoji reactions back your people without nagging.
- Attach a real-world reward to a pact — “2 weeks kept → ice cream”, “30 days → movie night.”
- Set it for one person, everyone individually, or the whole circle — and when it’s earned, everyone sees the trophy on the Rewards shelf.
7. Frictionless changes, admin-guarded removals
Everyday moves are instant; the two ways to remove someone are guarded.
- Adding, editing, or pausing a pact applies instantly, by any member — no vote to wait on.
- Adding a reward, removing a pact, and removing a member are admin-only, so nobody gets ejected — or promised a prize — on a whim. Admins also approve joins, rename the circle, and can delete it.
A gentle note. Pacts is deliberately light — about 30 seconds a day, no shame, no pressure. Some days you’ll miss. That’s fine; one slip doesn’t undo a habit. Just check in tomorrow. The people in your circle are on your side.