# Habits

> Check-ins, streaks, six months of history at a glance, and a partner in the household who can see whether you actually did it.

A habit is something you mean to do again and again. Margin tracks whether you
did it, and leaves how you felt about it to you.

## Set one up

A habit has a name, an icon and a color, then two settings that decide how it
is counted: how often, and a target. The icon is one of The Margin's own
drawings, with a target as the default, or an emoji you type yourself.

| Frequency | The target is                 | The period counts as done when       |
| --------- | ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| Daily     | Times a day                   | Every rep for that day is in         |
| Weekly    | Days a week, Monday to Sunday | That many different days are checked |

So "Every day" is daily with a target of one, "3× a day" wants three check-ins
before the day fills in, and "3× a week" is kept by any three days that week.

> **Known limit:** A habit cannot be pinned to particular weekdays, such as Monday, Wednesday
> and Friday only. Weekly with a target of three is the nearest shape.

## Check in

Check off the habit on the Habits page. Under the list, the This week grid shows
every habit against Monday to Sunday, and you can tap any day in it to log it,
which covers the evening you did it and forgot to say so.

The dashboard shows how many of today's habits are done.

> **On the phone:** On the phone, a check-in is a swipe along the habit's row.

## A daily reminder

Press the bell on a habit and pick a time. Every day at that time The Margin
sends you a reminder: a notification in the app and, where push is on, on your
phone, whichever device you set it on. A day you have already checked in is
skipped. The time is kept in the time zone you set it in, so 8:00 AM stays
8:00 AM across daylight saving. Pick the time again, or **No reminder**, to
change or stop it.

On the phone, open the habit and choose a time under **Remind me**. An
assistant connected over MCP can set one with `update_habit`
(`reminder_time`, `reminder_timezone`) or stop it with `clear_reminder`.

## Reading the history

**Three readings of the same check-ins**

- **Streak**: the current run and your longest, counted in the habit's own unit, days or weeks. Today, or the week in progress, never breaks it. Only a missed day or week that is already over does.
- **Last fourteen days**: a row of bars on each habit card on wider screens. A bar's height shows partial progress, so "2 of 3" looks different from nothing.
- **Activity**: open a habit for 26 weeks of squares, one per day, with the completion rate beside it and its working shown ("3/7 weeks").

The squares are the view worth opening. A streak turns one missed Tuesday into
a zero. Six months of squares shows a half-year that is mostly filled in, which
is closer to what happened.

## Accountability partners

Partners are set per habit. Open the habit and choose **Add Partners** under
Accountability. A partner sees how that one habit is going. They see nothing
else in your workspace.

It is scoped to the habit on purpose. Handing someone your whole workspace so
they can check you went running would be surveillance with a friendly name.

### What a partner hears

Each partner has two switches for each habit, and both start on.

- **Celebrate streaks.** When your run reaches the milestone they picked
  (every 3, 7, 14, 21 or 30 days), they get a note such as "Sam hit a 14-day
  streak on Read". A run of 30, 100 or 365 days is always marked, whatever
  the setting. For a weekly habit the run counts in weeks, so "every 7 days"
  means every week and "every 21 days" means every third week.
- **Notify on missed days.** When a daily habit's previous day ended without
  its target, they hear about it the next morning, with what did get logged
  ("ended at 1 of 2"). A weekly habit is judged once the Monday-to-Sunday week
  is over.

In the phone app, the switches and the milestone are in the habit's share
sheet, under each person it is shared with.

These arrive in the bell and, where push is on, on their phone. A few rules
keep them fair:

- Days are your days. "Yesterday" is counted in your time zone: the one set
  in Settings, else the one your reminder was set in, else UTC.
- Nothing arrives while your partner is likely asleep. Notes wait for 8 AM to
  9 PM in their time zone.
- Each one is sent once, however many times the check runs.
- Missed-day notes stop when the habit has had nothing logged for a week (four
  weeks for a weekly habit), so a habit you have put down does not nag anyone.
  They start again with your next check-in.
- A partner hears nothing about days before they were added, and nothing at
  all about an archived habit.

The habits you are a partner on are listed under **You're a partner on** at
the foot of the Habits page, each with the owner's last seven days and their
current streak, in the phone app as well as on the web. Tapping a streak or
missed-day note opens that list with its habit first. Only the owner can tick
their habit.

> **Note: Who can be a partner** Partners come from the family workspace the habit lives in: anyone there
> with Share Habits switched on. It is on by default, and each person can turn
> it off in **Family → People**, under "You in this family". A personal workspace has nobody to pick.

## In a family workspace

The family page has a Habits together card. It lists the habits the household
shares and how many people have done each one today, so "everyone reads before
bed" is tracked as one thing rather than five private streaks. See
[Family](https://themarginapp.com/docs/family).

## Limits

Free allows 10 habits per workspace. The paid plans do not cap them.

> **Known limit:** An archived habit still counts toward Free's ten. Deleting one frees the
> slot. A new account starts with two sample habits, Read 30 Minutes and
> Weekly Review, which also count and can be renamed or deleted like any other.

> **For agents:** The assistant and MCP clients can create and edit habits, log or remove a
> check-in, and read a habit's history (`create_habit`, `log_habit_entry`,
> `remove_habit_entry`, `get_habit`, `list_habits`).

**Where to next**

- [Focus and Journal](https://themarginapp.com/docs/focus-and-journal): the other half of the daily loop
- [Family](https://themarginapp.com/docs/family): where partners and shared habits come from
- [Plans and limits](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits): what Free holds and what it does not


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Section: The rest of life. Checked against the running product on October 5, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/habits. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt