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Donna checks in three ways. Inside a conversation, a quick tappable question when it helps. Once a day, a calm morning brief waiting when you open the app. And between conversations, on stricter terms, Donna may reach out on its own.

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In-the-moment check-ins

During a conversation, Donna sometimes asks a closed question, something like “That sound right?” Two or three tappable answers appear with it, chosen for that moment: “Sounds right,” “Not really,” or “Tell me more.” Tapping one answers as if you had typed it. This is the most common way Donna checks in.

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The morning brief

Once a day, when you open the app, Donna has a morning brief waiting: one calm screen with up to three Outcomes worth your attention and a single proposed opening move. It is prepared overnight, shown once, and walked through in full on its own page.

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When Donna reaches out

Between conversations, Donna can also reach out first. It lands as a notification on a device where you have turned the push toggle on, with the same note waiting in your feed for whenever you next look.

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What a reach-out is about

A reach-out is always about something you actually wrote down, in your own words rather than a generic prod. What it asks for depends on the shape of the note:
  • A note that is already doable gets an ordinary nudge toward it.
  • A note that reads more like a goal than a step gets an offer instead: Donna asks whether you want to scope it out together, quoting your own words back. Tap that one and it opens the conversation to shape it into an Outcome, on the note it came from.
  • A fragment too thin to act on is never pushed at all.
Across a day, Donna moves through your notes rather than circling one: whatever it has gone longest without raising comes up first.

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Opening the app is not an answer

Donna tells “you were around” apart from “you replied.” Opening the app counts as being around, which is enough for Donna to stop nudging you about that note for the rest of the day, but it is not treated as an answer: you will not get the same subject back in a different wording. Replying in chat, or tapping the reach-out itself, is what re-opens the thread, and the ordinary rhythm picks up from there. Every reach-out runs on enforced rules, built in rather than dialed:
  • Your active hours are respected, in your timezone. If Donna does not know your timezone yet, nothing is pushed at all.
  • There is a hard ceiling of five reach-outs in a day, and after a run of unanswered ones the next day quiets to at most one.
  • Starting work on an Action ends reach-outs for the rest of that day: you are already working, and anything further would be noise.
  • If you go quiet for a couple of days, the regular rhythm stops. Only a rare touch around day three, seven, and fourteen, then nothing until you come back.
  • At least two hours sit between any two reach-outs.
  • Once a note has been raised and not answered, that subject is done for the day, in any wording.
  • A reach-out never references how long it has been or counts what you missed.
If you came to Donna looking for an accountability partner that does not log what you missed, the guide on ADHD accountability partners covers how these reach-outs fill that role.

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How notifications get turned on

Donna may offer notifications once in the ordinary conversation, around the first time something of yours is real: your first finished Action, or your first Outcome. The offer arrives as an ordinary chat message, and it always reads the same way: “Donna can reach out when something needs you. Want that on?” If you say yes, the browser or phone then shows its own permission request; if you say no, the system prompt never appears and nothing is recorded against the site. After you answer, the message settles into a short note saying what happened: notifications on, declined with the settings switch pointed out, or blocked at the system level with where to change that later. Donna makes this offer at most twice ever, and never twice in one day. Declining twice ends it for good. You can still turn notifications on anytime with the per-device toggle in settings. Today the offer appears in the browser and in the iPhone build, on newer accounts.

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The controls

You control all of it in settings, under personalization, “reaching out”:
  • let Donna reach out: the master toggle. Off, Donna waits for you, always.
  • active hours: your working window; it also marks when you are open to Donna reaching out.
  • notifications on this device: a per-device push toggle. It appears once notifications are possible in your browser.
There is no frequency dial to manage: the limits above are the frequency, and they hold on their own.

Next: end-of-day review

Closing out the day in one message.