# Routines and timetables

> Steps you do in order, a weekly timetable, exams and revision, and goals that fill in from the work you link to them.

A routine is a short run of steps you do in order: a morning, a study hour, a
child's bedtime. A timetable is the shape of your week: the classes, shifts
and standing hours that repeat. Both live under **Routines**, in the sidebar
beside the planner (on the phone, in the Plan list), and Today, the planner
and the command palette open it too.

## Make a routine

Five starters sit above the tabs under **Start from one of these**: School
morning, Bedtime, After school, Homework hour and Saturday reset, each with its
own drawing. Pick one and the dialog opens already filled in, ready to change.
In a household, a kids' starter is set for every child. Or press **New
routine** and start from a shape (Morning, Evening wind-down, prayers) or a
blank one. Then:

- **Steps.** Type a step and press Enter, or **Link one you have** to point a
  step at a habit, a chore or a checklist item that already exists in the
  workspace. A linked step is the real thing: ticking it logs the habit for
  the day, ticks the chore (with its approval and points, exactly as on the
  chore list) or ticks the checklist item. Nothing is copied, so a streak or
  a chore's points are counted once.
- **Order.** Drag a step by its handle on the web. On the phone, hold a step
  and drag it, or press it and choose Move up or Move down.
- **Minutes.** Give a step its minutes and the routine knows how long it
  takes. Once a step has minutes, **Count down each step** puts a timer on
  each one while it runs, which helps kids getting ready.
- **Must do or nice to do.** A step you add starts as **Must do**: the run is
  finished when all the must-do steps are ticked. A starter marks only the
  one or two that matter (at bedtime, brushing teeth and lights out) and
  leaves the rest **Nice to do**, which can be skipped on a busy day. Every
  card on the list shows which is which. Tap a step to switch it. When a routine's time has
  passed with must-do steps still open, Today names them, gently.
- **When a step happens.** A step follows the one before it, or sits at its
  own time ("School 6:40"), or, with prayer times on (see below), at the
  day's prayer time.
- **When.** Any day (you start it when you are ready), a part of the day
  (morning, after school, bedtime, as on the kids' wall), or at a time on the
  days you pick, with an optional last day such as the end of term.
- **Who it's for.** Your own routine is yours. A routine for someone else in
  the household, such as a child, comes with Family. Pick several people and
  they share one routine: two sisters with the same morning keep one list,
  and each ticks her own steps on her own run. The list shows it as one card
  that says **One routine, ticked by each of them**, with a row and a Start
  for each person. When one of them needs a
  different morning, **Make a separate copy for** her gives her her own
  routine, and today's ticks go with her.

## Prayer times

Prayer times need two switches. First your own **Muslim features** in
**Settings → Profile** (see [Muslim features](https://themarginapp.com/docs/muslim-features)); until
it is on, nothing about prayer shows, including the switch below. Then the
household's **Prayer times** at the bottom of Routines (on the phone, on the
Routines screen). With both on, the day's five prayer times show on Today,
worked out on the device from the household's town (the one set for the
wall). A new **Prayers** routine is offered whose five steps sit at Fajr,
Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha each day, and any step of any routine can be set
to a prayer's time. They are ticked like any other step. Both are off by
default.

If a linked chore or habit is deleted later, the step stays with its own
label and ticks as a plain step.

Delete a routine or a goal and it waits in **Recently deleted** (Settings,
then Data) for 30 days, a routine with its steps and a goal with its links,
so either comes back whole.

## Run it

Press **Start**. One step shows at a time, large enough to read across the
room, with its timer when the routine counts down. Press **Done** and the next
step comes up. When every must-do step is done the run is finished for the
day. Steps tick the same way on Today, on the wall and on a child's own
phone, each person on their own run. A
household routine can carry a finishing bonus: points paid once a day, on top
of each chore's own, and never twice however many times it is ticked.

On the family wall, a child taps their face and ticks the steps there. The
routine on now and the next one show in full; the rest of the day's routines
are one line each, so routines that repeat every day never crowd the page
([the wall display](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-wall-display#tap-a-face)).

A busy day needs no skipping: leave the nice-to-do steps and tick the must-do
ones. To rest a routine for a while (the summer holidays), open it and press
**Archive** under **Options**; **Bring back** returns it with its steps.

## The timetable

The **Timetable** tab is your week as a pattern. **Add a block** makes a
timetable block: a calendar event of the kind _Timetable_, usually weekly on
the days you pick and ending at the end of term. Blocks use the calendar's
own repeats, so "this one or all" edits, reminders and A/B weeks (every other
week) all work as they do for events. A routine with a time is its own
timetable entry, drawn with every step at its time; it is never copied into
blocks. Blocks are for time that is not a routine you run: school periods,
shifts, classes.

On the calendar's week and month a daily routine is one slim line (its time
and name). The day view and Today show it in full. In the calendar's list,
what has already happened today folds to one line and what is ahead shows in
full.

The planner's Hours view draws your blocks and timed routines beneath your
cards, quietly, so you can plan around them. They do not count toward a day's
planned minutes; card time blocks stay the card's own.

On Family, pick a person to see their timetable, or **Everyone, side by side**
for one day across the household. Time someone has in another workspace
shows only as **Busy**, with no title.

## Start from a photo

Press **Start from a photo** on Routines (on the phone it is at the bottom of
the screen) and give Margin a class timetable, a sports schedule, a shift
rota, an exam datesheet, a chore chart or a list of steps, as a photo, a PDF
or pasted text. It reads the page once and shows every row before anything
is saved:

- a weekly slot becomes a **timetable block**, repeating on its days until
  the end of term when the page says so;
- an exam becomes an **exam** on the calendar, with its paper and room;
- a list of steps becomes a **routine**, in order;
- a **daily schedule** (a column of times, even handwritten: "5:00 Fajr,
  6:40 school, 2:30 lunch") becomes one routine whose steps keep their times.
  A line marked "negotiable" is a nice-to-do step and "non-negotiable" a
  must-do one, and a prayer line (Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha) follows
  the day's prayer time.
  Times are read forward through the day, so "2:30" after "6:40" is 2:30 PM.
  A free or off day on the page ("Saturday free day") sets the days it
  repeats instead of becoming a step, and anything else written on the page
  (a target, a note) is kept in its notes.

Edit any row, say who it is for, then add the rows you want. For a schedule
you can change each step's time and wording, mark it must do or nice to do, and
pick its days. It is saved as one routine that shows on the timetable, the
calendar and My week with each step at its time. Choose several people and
they share that one routine, each with their own ticks. Dates without a
year are read as the coming term. This is on every plan and counts against
the AI allowance; school letters by email stay a Family feature.

When a revised datesheet moves a paper, adding it again moves the exam that
is already on the calendar instead of adding a second one.

## Exams and revision

**My week** lists your exams for the next four weeks. **Plan revision**
places four sessions before each one in your free time across every
workspace, closer together as the day nears, after school or work and before
bedtime. You see each slot and why it fits, then **Add them**. They are
one-off timetable blocks, so they never count toward a plan's repeating
blocks. If the exam moves, on the calendar, from a revised datesheet or
through Margin Intelligence, the sessions move with it and keep their spacing.
A session you changed yourself stays where you put it, and so does one
already past. **Plan again** replaces only the sessions you have not
touched.

Homework and assignments are cards with a due date: put them on a board for
the subject, in the student's workspace or the family's, and the people the
board is shared with see how they are going.

## Goals

A goal is an outcome with a date: "Pass maths with an A", "Learn Arabic by
June". Set one from **Goals** on the planner, or let **Plan a goal** build the
board for it and keep the goal too. Then **Link what gets you there**: a board
or a card, a habit, a routine, an exam, a savings goal. The bar fills from
that work on its own: the board's cards done, the habit kept over four weeks,
the routine finished, the exam sat, the money saved. There are no key results
to keep; mark it done or let it go when you are finished with it.

## Capture knows what you meant

Type or say several things at once into capture ("ugh tired, gym tmrw? also
mom's bday sat") and the Inbox sorts them: a routine with its steps, a
household chore or a task of your own (it asks which when both fit), a habit,
an event, a timetable block. Each comes as one chip; nothing is made until you
press it. Your device sorts the capture straight away, offline too, and
Margin's own reading refines it once the capture has synced. A line like
"Morning: pray, exercise, shower" is one routine with three steps, so it is
offered as a routine rather than as a shopping list.

## My week

**My week** brings together everything with a time from every workspace you
belong to: blocks, events naming you, your timed routines and your card time
blocks, each tagged with its workspace. Where two overlap, both are marked
and Margin suggests a way out (move the later one, end the first one sooner,
or ask someone else to take it). Nothing moves until you move it.

## Margin Intelligence and other assistants

Tell Margin Intelligence "my mornings: pray, exercise, shower, breakfast, out
by 8" and it proposes the routine, linking the habits you already have, and
writes it only after you say yes. It reads your week across workspaces before
planning a day, and can find free time for something that has no time yet.
Assistants connected through MCP have the same tools: `list_routines`,
`get_routine`, `create_routine`, `update_routine`, `delete_routine`,
`tick_routine_step`, `split_routine`, `get_my_week` and `suggest_time`. They
take the people a routine is shared with, must do or nice to do steps, and a
step's own time or prayer time, and `tick_routine_step` ticks one person's
run.

## Plans

|                                      | Free                   | Pro      | Family                                 | Team               |
| ------------------------------------ | ---------------------- | -------- | -------------------------------------- | ------------------ |
| Routines                             | 3                      | No limit | No limit                               | No limit           |
| Timetable blocks                     | 30 (one person's week) | No limit | No limit                               | No limit           |
| Routines and blocks for other people | No                     | No       | Yes, with the kids' routines and stars | Shared team blocks |

Timetable blocks stay on The Margin's calendar; they are not sent to Google
Calendar.


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Section: The rest of life. Checked against the running product on October 25, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/routines-and-timetables. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt