Our standards

What we won’t do.

Four promises about how this app treats you, written specifically enough that breaking one would make this page false rather than merely optimistic. Then the design choices behind them, so you can check the promises against the product instead of taking our word for it.

The four promises

All four of these would probably sell more subscriptions. They are common enough that you have met every one of them this week somewhere else.

Made-up social proof: No invented user counts, no “1,284 people decided today”, no testimonials from people who do not exist, no review stars in the search listing without reviews behind them. When there is real usage worth quoting it will be quoted and it will be real.
Fake scarcity and urgency: No countdown that resets when you reload, no “3 seats left”, no limited-time price that is simply the price. This is also the technique most likely to be illegal, but it is on this list because it insults the reader.
Unpredictable rewards: Payoffs you cannot predict are the most powerful engagement mechanic known and they are the mechanism of a slot machine. The answer you get is a plain function of the answers you gave. If it is wrong you can push it, which is a lever you control.
Making you feel bad for leaving: The streak counts up. It does not beg, it does not warn you it is about to die, and nothing is taken away for missing a night. Something used by tired, hungry people at seven in the evening should not add a thing to feel guilty about.

The three tests

Every design choice in this product has to pass these before it ships. They are the difference between a shop arranging its shelves well and a shop moving the exit.

1You can see itNothing on this site influences you from behind a collapsed section or in wording designed not to be read. If a default is set, it is set in front of you and the other option is next to it.
2You can still take the other oneAt the same cost, in the same number of taps. A preselected yearly plan beside a one-tap monthly plan is a suggestion. A cancellation that takes an email to support is not.
3It serves something you already wantBeing reminded at seven that you have not sorted dinner serves your evening. Being interrupted at nine to keep a number going serves ours. Only the first kind is in here.

How the thing is built

Choices a reader could work out by looking, said out loud so the promises above have something to be checked against.

The plan that is already selected: The yearly plan is preselected, because it is the cheaper of the two per month and the one most people want.; Monthly sits on the same switch, the same size, one tap away, printing its own price in the same words. Nothing is preselected that is only in our interest.
The struck-through price: The yearly plan is shown against $59.88, which is twelve payments at our own monthly price.; It is a real alternative you can take on the same screen, not an invented “was”. Both numbers are computed from the two live prices, so the comparison cannot drift. There is no third tier that exists only to make another look better.
What is free is free permanently: The decide game, every dish, every recipe and every dietary rule. No account, no card, no expiry.; We say so directly above the price rather than three pages away, because a reader deciding whether to pay should know what they already have.
Where the effort went: The moment the answer lands and the moment you accept it get most of the design attention. The middle is deliberately plain.; People remember the best moment and the last one, so those are the two worth making good. Nothing is added to the middle to pad it out.
The count that falls: Every question prints how many dishes are still standing.; It is the real shortlist the answer comes out of, recomputed each time — not a progress bar dressed up as a number. Watching it fall is satisfying and it is also true.
The plan you write yourself: After a couple of decisions you can name the moment you usually need this — “when I get in”. Tying a thing to something that already happens is roughly twice as likely to stick as a time on a clock.; We read it back on the front screen at that hour and nowhere else. No notification, no email, no account, and it never leaves your device. If you want a real reminder you can take a calendar file, which your phone owns and we never see.
What your profile is worth: The profile page counts what you have told it and says how many dishes that takes off the table.; Both numbers are counted against the real catalogue with the same filter the game uses, so the panel cannot claim a rule the app does not apply.
What you would lose: If a subscription is ending we will tell you plainly what stops working.; Only where something is genuinely yours and genuinely at stake. Never as an invented deadline, and never as a reason to hurry.
When we mention the price: Tapping something marked Premium opens a card naming the thing you tapped, with the price, the trial and how to cancel on it.; And a “not now” the same size as the yes. It used to send you straight to a payment page in the same gesture, which was not a choice.
One obvious next thing: Each screen offers one loud action and puts the rest quietly underneath.; Nothing was removed to achieve it — every mode, every list and every setting is still here. Past a handful of equally loud options, people stop choosing at all.
Half a decision, kept: If you get four questions in and something interrupts you, the front screen offers to pick up where you left off.; It expires after six hours — what you felt like at lunchtime is not what you feel like at eight, and handing stale answers back as though they still counted would be worse than losing them.
What else is free, and what is new tomorrow: After you say yes to a dish, three free things you have not tried yet are offered, with one line about what is new tomorrow.; Only things that really do refill each day are in that line — five new dishes, fresh headlines, three more questions. It is a schedule you can check, not a surprise dangled to bring you back, and nothing counts down.
The preview is the real thing: The playable version on the front page uses the real questions, the real wording and real dishes.; It is a trailer rather than a mock-up, and the build fails if any dish in it stops matching the catalogue. Fifteen seconds is a fairer test of this than a paragraph about it.

If we break one of these

Then this page is wrong, which is worse than anything it describes. The four promises are also written into the repository, in docs/persuasion.md, and a test fails the build if they stop matching what is published here. That is not a guarantee. It is one more thing that would have to be deliberately switched off.

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