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Chores, Rewards, Goals & Routines

A second board: separate Chores, Rewards, Goals, and My Chores cards, all talking to their own backend, no calendar/todo entities needed (see Card configuration below for how to add them). Together they cover assignable chores with a star economy, a redeemable rewards catalog, one-off goals, and daily routine checklists, all gated by a granular per-person permissions system.

Chores

  • Assignment modes: Direct (assign to one person), Chore Bin (an admin assigns it later), Auto-rotation (takes turns through an ordered rotation group), or First come, first served (anyone can self-claim it with a Claim button). Chore Bin and First-come-first- served chores both start out sitting in a shared Chore Bin column.
  • Verification flow: the assignee taps Done, sending it to "Awaiting approval"; anyone with verify permission taps Approve (pays out its star value, extends a 🔥 streak if it was on time) or Reject ("↩ Sent back", with an optional note, reopens it for a redo).
  • Recurrence, two independent ways: a plain schedule (every N days, or specific days of the week) that reopens the chore once it's both approved and due again; and/or a sensor-driven auto-create trigger (an HA entity state change, e.g. "Dryer finished") that cycles it back to open on its own. A separate auto-complete trigger can also mark a chore done automatically from a sensor.
  • Dependencies, rotation groups, and notes: a chore can require other chores be approved first, cycle through an ordered rotation group of people, and carry a free-text Notes field.
  • Due dates, reminders, overdue penalties, streaks: an optional due date with configurable reminder lead times (the same 5m–1d choices as calendar-event reminders), an optional one-time star penalty applied if it goes overdue, and a 🔥 streak badge that grows with on-time approvals and resets on a late one.
  • Nudge button: a one-tap 🔔 reminder push to whoever a chore is currently assigned to.
  • Waiting to Recur column: an approved recurring/triggered chore moves into its own "↻ Waiting to Recur" column (collapsible to a small counter button) instead of sitting faded in someone's finished list.
  • The "+" FAB: a tabbed create modal, Chore, Goal, and (when Routines is on) Routine. It covers creating a chore, a goal, or managing someone's routine items, all from one button.

My Chores

  • A lightweight, personal companion card (family-hub-my-chores-card), built for a phone or a personal dashboard view, the same spirit as the Today card. It reads whoever is actually signed in and shows just their own world: their open and awaiting-approval chores, a live countdown on any chore timer currently running, a banner for a running reward timer, and nothing belonging to anyone else.
  • One tap to finish: each chore row shows its star value, due date (if set), and a single Done button. No need to open the full Chores board to wrap up a quick task.
  • An embedded Chore Bin: unclaimed First-come-first-served chores show up here too, each with its own Claim button, so picking one up doesn't require switching to the full board either. A Chore Bin chore still waiting on an admin to assign it (not self-claimable) shows "Waiting to be assigned" instead.
  • Read-only timers, on purpose: a running chore or reward timer's countdown is visible here, but starting or cancelling one only lives on the full Chores/Rewards boards; keeping that in one place avoids three different surfaces needing to stay in sync for very little benefit.
  • Goals don't show on this card; it's chores-and-timers only. See Show Goals on in the Settings Modal reference for where goals can be added to the full Chores or Rewards boards instead.

Rewards

  • Star economy: stars are earned via chore/goal approval and spent by redeeming a catalog item; a balance can go negative (shown as "owes") rather than being blocked from spending.
  • Reward catalog: title, star cost, an optional "what it's really worth" note (e.g. "$20", purely cosmetic), an icon (a 58-emoji picker across 6 collapsible categories (Treats & Food, Screens & Games, Toys & Fun Stuff, Outings & Activities, Money & Prizes, Achievement & Fun), and a card color.
  • How it works: Redeem any time (a plain logged redemption), Stacks up (e.g. allowance or TV time: each redemption adds a fixed amount to a running per-person bank instead of being a one-off, spent down later via a separate Use action), or One-time (the catalog item deletes itself after its first use).
  • Requires fulfillment: an optional checkbox ("needs a parent to mark it done before it counts", e.g. cash allowance) that holds a redemption as pending until someone with pricing authority marks it done.
  • Suggestions: anyone without pricing authority can suggest a new reward with no cost set; it waits in Suggested Rewards until someone prices and approves (or rejects) it.
  • History: every star change (chore/goal payouts, redemptions, overdue penalties, manual balance adjustments) is logged per person; a redemption can be Reversed (deletes the log entry and refunds the stars) or just Cleared (deletes it without a refund) by anyone with override authority.

Goals

  • What a goal is: a one-off achievement for one specific person: title, target count (log progress that many times to complete it), optional due date, and a reward that's either a flat star payout or one specific item handed over straight from the Rewards catalog.
  • Progress & verification: each Log (or Mark done, for a single-count goal) tap logs one occurrence; hitting the target sends it for approval the same way a chore does. Approve pays out the reward; Send back resets progress to zero for a genuine retry.
  • Standalone card, or embedded: Goals is its own Lovelace card, and can also be shown right inside the Chores board (Settings → General → "Show Goals on the Chores board") and/or the Rewards page ("Show Goals on the Rewards page"), two independent toggles, both off by default. Either way, goals can also be created from a Goal tab on the Chores/ Rewards "+" buttons.

Routines

  • Morning/Afternoon/Night checklists: a per-person daily checklist shown as an accordion on their own Chores board column, reset back to unchecked every local midnight. No stars, no verification: checking an item off is open to anyone.
  • Card-style items with optional due times and days: each item can carry a due time (shown as a badge, turns amber if it's overdue) and/or specific days of the week it applies to (leave the days blank for every day). The board only ever shows what's scheduled for today.
  • A real management modal: adding, editing, and removing routine items happens from a Routine tab on the Chores board's "+" button. Pick a person and a category, and manage every item for them regardless of which days it's scheduled (unlike the board itself, which is always today-only). The pencil icon on any routine item on the board jumps straight into this tab, pre-scoped to that exact item.
  • One household-wide switch: Settings → General → "Routines", off by default; once on, everyone gets the three checklist accordions on their own Chores column.

Permissions

  • Granted per-person from Settings → Permissions (admin-only): Can assign chores to others, Can approve/verify completed chores, Can mark any chore done (not just their own), Can override reward star costs, and Can add rewards to the catalog with a star cost (without it, their suggestions need approval first). A real Home Assistant admin account always has every permission implicitly.
  • What anyone can do with no grants at all: claim an unclaimed chore from the Chore Bin, mark their own chore done, check off their own (or anyone's) routine items, log their own goal's progress, and suggest a new reward.