Your friends' streaks, side by side

In a squad, everyone keeps their own streak — there's no shared, single streak to break. The squad's job is to show them side by side: someone who knows you will usually see your column flatten on a Tuesday — meaning you didn't open the app that day — before you notice it yourself.

What an accountability app is actually for

Not motivation. An accountability app exists to make a lapse visible to someone else, because a lapse nobody notices is the one that turns into a stopped habit. That is the whole mechanism, and it means the useful design questions are narrow ones: who sees it, how soon, and what happens to them when you slip.

Most apps answer the last one badly. They give the group a single shared streak, or a leaderboard, or a challenge with a winner - and all three make your bad week into somebody else's problem.

Why nobody shares a streak here

There is no shared streak in a Cookrange squad. Each member keeps their own, and the squad's job is to display them next to each other. This is a deliberate decision and worth arguing for, because it is the opposite of what the category usually does.

A shared streak makes one person's Tuesday everyone's failure. That produces two predictable outcomes: the person who broke it feels responsible for the group, and the group has a reason to resent them. Neither helps anyone log a meal. Independent streaks side by side produce the noticing without the blame - your column flattens, someone sees it, nothing of theirs was destroyed.

The honest cost of this choice: independent streaks apply weaker collective pressure than a shared one. If what actually gets you to the gym is knowing you would break something belonging to five other people, a squad will feel gentler than a challenge-based app would. That is a real trade-off, not a hidden advantage, and which side of it you want is worth knowing before you pick an app.

What the streak actually counts

Worth stating plainly because most apps leave it vague: the streak is login-based. It counts the days you opened the app, not the days you trained or logged a meal. So a flattened column means "did not open Cookrange that day" - not "skipped a workout". It is a weaker signal than a training streak would be, and also a much harder one to game.

What your squad sees, and what it does not

Your squad only sees each other's streak status. Never nutrition history, never weight. A coach or gym connected to you is a separate path with its own tiered, default-off permission, and your raw weight history is never shared through it. The full answer is in the questions at the bottom of this page and on the security page.

How many people should be in one

Small enough that a flattened column is noticed by someone who will say something. We wrote up where that number lands and why inthe right group size when forming a squad, and the case for not using one at all insquad or solo.

Risk warnings arrive in real time

A 40-day streak can be flagged as "at risk today" — meaning it will end today unless you open the app before the day is over. That warning shows up in a context the rest of the squad can also see; nobody sees it alone.

Different from the gym leaderboard

The weekly leaderboard on the gym ecosystem page is about everyone at that location. A squad is a much smaller, private circle. Even if one person skips the gym, the rest of the squad knows and reacts to it.

Why it works

A habit maintained solo usually collapses around week three. The squad's role here isn't a pep talk — it's simply knowing that someone noticed. Behavior-change research describes this as the accountability-partner effect, and finds it tends to outperform solo effort (Wing & Jeffery, 1999).

The feed

You share what you cooked. One confirmation logs it and posts it — not two separate jobs. Posts take comments and reactions, and a friend's flattening streak shows up in the feed too. Direct and group chat sit in the same place.

You can report content you don't want to see

If a post, comment or message isn't okay, you can report it. Reports land in a single moderation queue and every one of them reaches it. The queue is not monitored around the clock yet, so expect a reviewed decision rather than an instant takedown.

Signal: a momentary status broadcast

A signal is a short-lived status broadcast that disappears on its own after a while — asking for help at the gym, or letting people know you've got a meal to share. Signals are currently visible to the whole community; a friends-only or gym-only scope isn't built yet.

Badges

Keeping a streak, sharing posts, or showing up at the gym regularly all earn badges — there are 15 distinct ones right now. Badges show up on your profile; this isn't a ranked, purchasable point system.

Groups are now one thing: feed + chat

A group can be one of three kinds: public, private, or a gym group — a gym's own group opens automatically once its application is approved. A group can be switched to announcement-only mode: only the owner/admin post, everyone else reads and reacts. Joining works three ways: open, request-to-join, or invite-code only — all three are built, including the request queue and code redemption.

The most active groups

Right below the title on the community tab there's a strip of the most active groups, plus a second, city-specific strip. Both are ordered by when the group was last active — a new post, a new member, a message — so the group at the front is the one something just happened in. One tap to join.

Chat is now WhatsApp-level

Whether you're in a direct message or a group, the same features apply: you can react to a message, reply to it, forward it (the forward count stays visible), edit it within 15 minutes, or delete it — for yourself or for everyone. Scroll up and older history keeps loading; it doesn't stall at a fixed message count. When an inappropriate message gets reported in a group, or a moderator removes it, that only works because of a tradeoff: unlike WhatsApp, messages aren't end-to-end encrypted — they stay readable server-side so moderation can actually happen.

XP and levels

Logging a meal, keeping your streak, checking in at the gym, or cooking a recipe all earn XP — each capped daily, all computed server-side, so the client can't forge it. Each level takes more XP than the last.XP has no monetary equivalent — it can't be bought, and Premium doesn't increase it. There's a separate mechanism too: a small AI credit is earned from the engagement a post or comment genuinely receives from different accounts — not from what you give, from what you get; brand-new or unverified accounts, and mutual "you-scratch-my-back" engagement, don't earn it. Premium only doubles that credit, never XP (full breakdown on the premium page). Your own group's weekly contribution leaderboard sits inside the group view.

Read how your long-term streak and progress get recorded on the progress analytics page.