# Family workspaces

> Roles that actually restrict, chores that can be checked and approved, and the household pages a family workspace turns on.

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](#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.

> **Note: Kids are people** A profile takes a seat like anyone else, so a household of two adults and
> four children is full. The limit counts heads, not accounts.

## 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.

| Switch       | What the other home can read                                                                                    |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Chores       | The child's chores there that are not paused: the title, how often, when each is due and whether it is done     |
| Pocket money | The allowance set up for the child there: amount, currency, how often, the next payday and whether it is paused |
| Calendar     | That home's events involving the child over the next 60 days                                                    |

**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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/pocket-money-and-points#a-child-with-two-homes).

**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.

> **For agents:** The assistant and MCP clients can do the same: `share_child_with_household`,
> `respond_child_share`, `list_child_shares`, `update_child_share`,
> `get_child_other_home`, `subscribe_child_calendar` and `end_child_share`.

> **On the phone:** The phone app has the same section in **Settings → People**:
> answer an offer, change the switches, look at the other home, add its calendar
> and end a share.

## 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:

| Repeats | What the line says            |
| ------- | ----------------------------- |
| Daily   | Missed 2 of the last 7 days   |
| Weekly  | Missed 1 of the last 4 weeks  |
| Monthly | Missed 1 of the last 3 months |

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.

| Routine      | When it leads |
| ------------ | ------------- |
| Morning      | 5 am to 11 am |
| After school | 2 pm to 6 pm  |
| Bedtime      | 6 pm to 11 pm |

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.

> **On the phone:** On the phone, the approval sheet has **Approve**, **Send back** and
> **Reject**. Reject needs a note and puts the chore back in To
> do with nobody on it. A long press on any chore lets a grown-up edit it or give
> it to someone else.

### 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.

> **Tip: Check what can be checked** Use approval where the result is visible: the trash is out or it is not.
> An approval step on "tidied your room" mostly teaches negotiation.

## 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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/pocket-money-and-points).

**Points** move with timing:

| Finished                | Points                  |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------- |
| Two or more days early  | a quarter more          |
| One day early           | a tenth more            |
| On the day              | as set                  |
| One day late            | a quarter less          |
| Two days late           | half                    |
| Three or more days late | a quarter of the reward |

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.

| Column        | What it holds                                                                                                                             |
| ------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| The work      | Chores and stars, Meals & shopping, then **Activity**: the family's day, told back                                                        |
| The household | **People** (who lives here and their roles), the House Cup, money, habits together, **Pinned here** when anything is pinned, and **More** |

**Everyone, their roles and PINs** on the People card opens the full [People
page](https://themarginapp.com/docs/people-and-roles). **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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/planner-today-and-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**.

- **Meals**: dietary rules, dislikes, default servings, and whether planned meals add to
  the shopping list.
- **People and roles**: a door to the [People page](https://themarginapp.com/docs/people-and-roles): 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.

- **House Cup**: the houses and the current season.
- **Wall display**: the town the weather comes from.

- **Pocket money**: allowances and payday.

## What else a family workspace gives you

- [Recipes and the meal plan](https://themarginapp.com/docs/recipes-and-meals): the weekly plan, and the
  shopping it generates.
- [The shopping list](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-shopping-list): one list, shared, that works in
  a basement with no signal.
- [Pocket money and points](https://themarginapp.com/docs/pocket-money-and-points): the ledger,
  allowances, savings goals, houses and the House Cup.
- [The wall display](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-wall-display) for a tablet in the hall.
- [A family calendar](https://themarginapp.com/docs/planner-today-and-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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/expenses-and-money).
- Family stats: chores done, points earned and money moved, per person.

[Chat](https://themarginapp.com/docs/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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-mind#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.

> **For agents:** The family tools cover chores (`create_chore`, `assign_chore`,
> `complete_chore`, `verify_chore`), points and houses, the shopping list, the
> meal plan and the ledger. `get_family_daily_summary` and
> `get_family_activity_feed` answer "what happened at home today".

## 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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits).

> **Note: If the plan ends** The family pages stay readable. Each one shows "Your Family plan has ended"
> with a **See plans** link, and the buttons that would write are switched off.
> Your chores, balances and history are all still there.

**Where to next**

- [Pocket money and points](https://themarginapp.com/docs/pocket-money-and-points): the ledger behind every money reward
- [The wall display](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-wall-display): put the household on a spare tablet
- [Sharing and permissions](https://themarginapp.com/docs/sharing-and-permissions): what the rest of the household can see


---

Section: Together. Checked against the running product on October 7, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/family. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt