Family workspaces

A family workspace is a workspace with a household in it. Create one from the workspace switcher and add the people you live with. The Family plan holds six people, and children count. A bigger household can add people past six; see More than six.

It does everything a personal workspace does. On top of that it adds chores, pocket money, the week's meals, the shopping list, a points game if you want one, and a screen for the hall.

Adding the people you live with#

There are two ways in, and most households use both.

• Invite someone with an email. You say who they are to the house (parent, partner, caretaker, roommate, or child for a child or a teenager), and that role is theirs the moment they accept. They sign in as themselves and see the family from their own phone or laptop.
• Add a household profile. A name, a role and, if you want them, a face and a PIN of four to six digits. Someone with no face shows their initial. No email, no account and no waiting. This is the door for a five-year-old, who needs chores but not a mailbox.

Faces: a photo, a portrait, a drawing or an emoji#

Everyone can pick how they look beside their name, and a grown-up can pick for a child's profile. There are four kinds, and the picker has a tab for each:

• Drawn. Two dozen characters drawn in The Margin's own pen: a fox, an owl, a robot, a dragon, a ghost, a wizard, a cupcake and more, each on its own color.
• Portraits. 64 round watercolor faces, from a laughing baby to a grandfather with a white beard, on four shelves: Kids, Younger adults, Older adults and Elders. Pick the shelf, then the face.
• Emoji. Any emoji, one shelf at a time, with search ("cat", "star", "pizza"). Search also knows each emoji's official name, so "slightly smiling" finds the slight smile.
• Photo. Take a selfie or choose a photo, then drag and zoom to frame it in the circle.

Not sure what one is? Point at it, tab to it or press and hold it, and its name shows ("Fox", "Little monster", "Portrait 12: a kid with curly light brown hair"). Holding only names it; it doesn't pick it. The one you have chosen is marked, and a screen reader says "selected" after its name.

A photo shows first, then a portrait or a drawing, then an emoji, then the initial. Portraits are part of the app, so they show with no signal too. A choice you made is never replaced by something the app or your sign-in provider picked.

Photos stay private. The location, the time and the camera details are taken out before anything is kept. A photo is shown only to people who already see that person in The Margin: the household for a child, and your workspaces, chats and connections for you. Nobody else can open it, even with the link. A child's photo is set by the household's owner or an admin, and it shows on the wall display and the phone even with no signal.

On the web, open a profile from Family→People. In the phone app, Settings, then People: open a profile to change its face, or use Your avatar for your own (Your photo in a workspace that is not a family). Choosing your initial again clears a portrait, a drawing or an emoji, and Remove the photo clears a photo. Photos are not in the sandbox, because it keeps everything on your device and has nowhere to store pictures.

Margin Intelligence and connected assistants can set an emoji or a portrait for someone ("give Maya portrait 12"). They pass it to add_family_member or update_family_settings as portrait:p12. Drawings and photos are picked in the app.

Add someone on the People card of the family hub opens the profile form. Open invitations and profiles both count toward the six.

More than six#

The owner adds people past six in Settings→Billing, one at a time. Each extra person costs $3 a month on annual billing ($36 a year) or $4 a month on monthly, up to six more, so twelve people in all. Founding Family members pay the same. When the household is full, the refusal carries an Add a person button that opens Billing with one more filled in.

A change is prorated: people you add are charged for the rest of the billing period on your next invoice, and ones you remove come back as a credit on it. You can't go below the people already in the household, open invitations included. A free trial stays at six, because there is nothing to add the extra people to until you subscribe.

A child with two homes#

When parents live apart and each runs a household in The Margin, the child can belong to both. The household that added the child shares them; the other parent accepts into their own family workspace.

1. In Family→People, under A child with two homes, an owner or admin picks Share a child, chooses the child and the other household's owner, and sends the offer. The other parent has to be one of your connections, or someone you already share a workspace with.
2. The other parent gets a notification and sees the offer on their own People page, picks which of their family workspaces the child joins, and presses Accept or declines. Until then you can withdraw the offer.

Each home keeps its own chores, points, pocket money and rewards. Three switches under The two homes show each other decide what each home can read about the child in the other, and nothing else in either household is shared. They start on, each one covers both directions, and an owner or admin in either home can turn one off.

Pocket money shares only the allowance setup. The child's balance, their statement, savings goals and points stay in the home that holds them. See Pocket money and points.

See Sam's other home (with your child's name) opens that read-only view, and a switch that is off shows as "Not shared." Add their other home's calendar puts the other home's events for the child into your calendar as a subscribed calendar; it needs the Calendar switch on. It carries only events assigned to the child or about them, with their times but not where they are or their notes. Turning the Calendar switch off, or ending the share, cuts that link at once; turning it back on means adding the calendar again. The child's birthday shows in both homes by itself; the copy in the second home is read-only and follows the original. On the web, a child signed in as themselves does not see this section.

A shared child takes a seat only in the household that created their profile. The other home sees them, assigns them chores and puts them on the calendar without using one of its own places, whether you ask Margin Intelligence, an outside assistant or the People page. Either home's owner or an admin can end the share. Ending it takes the child out of the other home only. Nothing is deleted: the profile and each home's chores and history stay where they are.

Roles#

There are five: parent, partner, caretaker, roommate and child. The first four are names for how a household describes itself, and all four carry the same grown-up controls. Child is the one that changes what a person can do.

The child role restricts for real. A child cannot manage members or billing, approve a chore, award or deduct points, or credit or debit anyone's balance, including their own. The one thing a child can do with money is move it between their spendable balance and their own savings goals.

Roles are per workspace. The same person can be a parent in their own household and an ordinary member of a friend's workspace.

Who can change a role:

• A parent, a partner, or the workspace's owner or an admin can change anyone's.
• Nobody can raise their own. You can keep your role or step down, and that is all. A child who asks the assistant to make them a parent gets a polite no.

The same rule holds everywhere a role can be written: the web, the phone, the assistant and any app connected to your account.

In the phone app, Who's who in the family section lists everyone with their role. A parent or partner taps a person to change it. Everyone, children included, can set their own nickname and choose whether their expenses, habits and focus time are shared. Connections in the same place shows who is whose (parent of, sibling of and so on). A grown-up can add or remove one there; a child sees the map but cannot change it, here, on the web or through the assistant.

Everyone in a family workspace has a role. The person who makes the workspace a family is its first parent, and an invitation carries the role you picked when you sent it. An invitation sent without one arrives as a child, and a parent can raise it in one tap.

Chores#

A chore has a title, an optional icon and description, a reward, a person and a due date. It happens once, or repeats daily, weekly or monthly. Assign it and it shows up in that person's Today next to everything else they have on.

You can say most of that in the title. "Trash every week @Sam Tue" fills in the repeat, the person and the first due day as you type, and each one shows as a chip you can remove. A repeat a chore cannot hold, like every two weeks, is pointed out instead of being rounded to weekly.

The icon is one of The Margin's own drawings: a broom, a trash can, a paw, a plate and about twenty more, in your theme's ink. Pick one when you make the chore. If you leave it alone, the chore takes its mark from its title, so "Litter duty" gets the paw and "Take out the trash" gets the trash can. A chore an assistant made with an emoji shows the nearest drawing instead.

A repeating chore can also:

• rotate between several people, so the trash moves down the list fairly instead of landing on whoever complained least,
• stop on an end date,
• be paused without losing its history.

The chore board has four columns: Unassigned, To do, Needs approval and Done.

This week, as a list#

The switch above the chores reads Board and List. The List shows this week as one table, a row per chore: its mark and name, who has it, when it is due (Today, Tomorrow, or the day of the week) and its status, in the same four words the board uses. Rows run in due order, and anything past its day sits at the top marked late. A chore that takes turns says whose turn it is under its name.

The week is today and the six days after it, plus anything late and anything with no date. Approved chores stay on it for a week. A chore due later than that stays on the board, and the list tells you how many there are.

Each row's ... menu holds what you can do to it: mark it done, approve it, give an open chore to someone, edit it, undo an approval or delete it. On a laptop the page opens on the Board and on a phone on the List, until you pick one. Your pick is remembered on that device, so the laptop and the phone can each keep their own. The phone app has the same switch at the top of its chores screen.

Taking turns#

Pick two or more people under Take turns and the chore takes turns. The first person you pick has the first turn, and the form spells out the order before you save.

Every card on a rotation says where it stands:

• Whose turn it is. "Sam's turn", or "Your turn" when it is yours.
• Who did it last time and who is up next. With two people, a card that is Sam's turn reads "Alex did it last time and goes again after Sam". A longer rotation names them separately: "Alex did it last time. Jo is up after Sam". The first card of a new rotation has no last turn, so it only says who is up next.
• Where a finished turn went. A card in Done reads "Alex's turn, done" and "Passed to Sam" once Sam's card exists.

The next turn is made the moment a grown-up marks the current one done or approves it, and the message that confirms it names the person: "Sam has the next turn, Thursday, Oct 1". If nobody finishes a turn, the next one still arrives on its due date, overnight. When a new turn lands while you are looking at the board, its card opens on "Passed from Alex" and settles on "Sam's turn". With reduced motion turned on, it just says whose turn it is.

A card's "late" label counts whole days from that card's own due date. A weekly turn that was due last Thursday and never checked off reads "7 days late" this Thursday, which is also the day the next person's turn is due. Once a chore is done, the count stops at the day it was done: a chore finished a day late and waiting for a grown-up's yes says "1 day late" however long the approval takes, and one finished on its day or before says "On time".

When a week goes badly#

A repeating chore keeps only its latest occurrence open. If a newer one arrives while an older one is still not done, the older one counts as missed. It leaves the board and the count of what is due, and comes back as a single line on the chore:

Nothing is deleted. A family back from a busy two weeks finds one open trash chore with a line saying how many were missed.

Morning and bedtime routines#

A routine is a few daily chores that belong to one part of the day. When you make or edit a chore, pick Morning, After school or Bedtime under Part of a routine. Picking one makes the chore daily if it was a one-off.

While a routine is on, the wall display shows it at the top of the chores panel as one checklist per child, and the steps of the other routines stay off the wall until their hour, so "pajamas on" is not on the kitchen screen at breakfast. In a child's own view the routine that is on now comes first, with a count of what is left, then the next routine, then their other jobs.

A routine step is an ordinary chore in every other way: the child presses Done, a grown-up approves it, and the reward you set (points, for most routines) lands on approval. Each day's step comes back the next morning in the same routine. Margin Intelligence and connected assistants can set it too ("make brushing teeth part of Sam's bedtime routine").

Approving a chore#

When a child marks a chore done, nothing pays out yet. It moves to Needs approval on the chore board and into Waiting for you, a list on the chores page and on the family hub's Today card. Each row shows, newest first, who did it, when they finished, when it was due, and what that timing does to the reward, with Approve and Review at the end of the row. In a narrow browser window it collapses to one button, "3 waiting for you", that opens the same list as a sheet.

1. Press Approve. The chore moves to Done and the reward is credited. There is no confirmation step.
2. Changed your mind? The toast offers Undo, which reverses the points and the money with opposite entries. Nothing is edited in place.
3. For anything that needs a word, press Review instead. From there you can adjust the reward, reject it with a note, or ask for a redo.

When a grown-up who can approve marks their own chore done, that counts as the approval. It goes straight to Done instead of waiting in their own queue.

Pressed Done on the wrong chore?#

Every Done shows a message with Undo, on the chore board, the kid view, the wall display and the phone.

• A child's Done goes back to To do, and the "finished" line it added to the family feed is removed. If a grown-up has already approved it, the approval's own Undo is the way back.
• A grown-up's Done (done and approved in one tap) goes back to where the chore was before the tap. The points and money are reversed with opposite entries, the streak goes back to what it was, and the next turn of a repeating chore is taken off the board if nobody has touched it yet. The feed keeps an "Approval undone" line, so the record stays honest.

Pressing Undo twice does nothing the second time.

What a reward is worth#

A chore pays money or points, never both.

Money goes onto the person's balance in the family ledger when the chore is approved. See Pocket money and points.

Points move with timing:

A chore never pays less than one point. Streaks add a bonus at 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 and 100 chores in a row.

Anything else a chore offers (a gift, a snack, screen time, an outing, or whatever you type) is a description. It moves no balance, and the household settles it the way households always have.

The family hub#

Family in the sidebar opens the hub. Today runs across the top: what needs a person today, including chores waiting for approval. Under it the page is two columns, the day's work on the left and the household on the right.

Everyone, their roles and PINs on the People card opens the full People page. More is a short list of the doors no card already opens: the calendar, pocket money, family stats, the wall display and Family settings. On a phone the two columns stack into one, in that order.

Each person on the People card can have a birthday or an anniversary. It goes on the family calendar, on the wall display and in the Daybook, with a reminder a week and a day before. See the Calendar.

The House Cup card shows which house leads the season and how long is left. Start a season, change its end or prize, or end it early from the card. The full chart and past seasons stay on the points page.

To pin something, open a board or note in any of your other workspaces, choose Pin to a family from its menu, and it appears under Pinned here, live, until you unpin it.

Family settings#

Every setting the household has sits on one page, reached from More→Family settings.

House Cup

the houses and the current season.

Wall display

the town the weather comes from.

Meals

dietary rules, dislikes, default servings, and whether planned meals add to the shopping list.

Pocket money

allowances and payday.

People and roles

a door to the People page: roles, profiles, PINs and the history of who changed them.

Sounds and notices

which chime plays for chat, approvals and reminders.

The workspace itself

name, currency, plan and who can join.

What else a family workspace gives you#

• Recipes and the meal plan: the weekly plan, and the shopping it generates.
• The shopping list: one list, shared, that works in a basement with no signal.
• Pocket money and points: the ledger, allowances, savings goals, houses and the House Cup.
• The wall display for a tablet in the hall.
• A family calendar: a color per person, repeating events, reminders, birthdays, and the dates out of a school letter by photo, PDF or a forwarded email.
• Shared budgets and a household expense report. See Expenses and money.
• Family stats: chores done, points earned and money moved, per person.

Chat is on every plan, and the household is part of it. A child with a profile and no email is a full member of the family thread.

Notifications from the family#

You have one inbox, whichever workspace you are in. A notification about the family (a chore waiting for approval, a message in the family thread, an event someone added or moved, a letter whose dates are ready to confirm) says which workspace it came from. Open it and the app switches to the family first, so the chore is there when you land. Push notifications name the workspace too, if you belong to more than one.

Privacy inside a household#

Sharing a workspace does not mean sharing everything in it. Boards are visible by board membership. Notes and whiteboards can go to one person at a time. The Vault and Hide from memory work exactly as they do in a personal workspace.

What Margin Intelligence learns here is the household's memory, and every member can read it. Each fact keeps who taught it, and only that person or a grown-up who is an owner or admin can edit or forget it. When you tell it something about yourself, it asks once whether to keep it For the household or Just for me. "Just for me" goes to About you, which nobody else in the family can see.

Focus sessions follow your own switch. With Share focus status off (on the phone, Show when I'm focusing), your sessions never reach anyone else's device, and the assistant will not show them to anyone else either. You still see all of them yourself. Turning the switch back on shares your past sessions in that workspace again.

The assistant is scoped the same way. Nobody can use a family workspace to ask the assistant what the teenager has been writing.

Availability#

The family suite needs a Family plan and a workspace of the family type. Pro does not include it. Neither does Team, and that is the one capability the two group plans do not share. The trial covers it if you start the trial in the family workspace. See Plans and limits.