The end-of-day review: close out the day in one message

The end-of-day review is one message that pulls the whole day together: the meetings you showed up for, the Actions you landed, the progress toward your Outcomes, and often a line in your own words from earlier. It ends with one optional question. There is no dashboard, no progress bar, and no form to fill out. There are two doors in:

• /review (or /daily_review): type it into the command bar whenever you want the review.
• The evening arrival: after your work hours end, the first time you open the app that evening, the review arrives on its own, marked quietly as “closing the day.” Nothing to tap and nothing to dismiss; the message bar stays live underneath it. A switch in settings, automatic reviews, turns arrivals off while leaving the typed door alone. A missed evening never shows up stale the next day; it folds into the morning as one closing line.

Not tonight sits beside the arrival itself. Tap it and both the day’s review and the week’s stop arriving for the rest of that night. It lapses on its own by the next evening, so there is nothing to switch back on and Donna never mentions it again. The review is never pushed to your phone.

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Your first review is a little different

The first review you ever get spends a few extra lines orienting you: what this moment is for, that nothing here keeps score, and what Donna counts as a piece of work. It happens once. If your first one lands on a rough day, it stays short like any other rough day, and the longer version waits for an ordinary evening. It ends with one question about what you most want Donna to aim at right now. The answers are tap-able and written in plain words, so picking one is the whole answer. Donna keeps what you picked and does not remark on it. Where you notice it is the next few mornings, which start from it. After your first weekly review it softens into one input among many rather than the thing steering you, and you can change it any time by saying so. Leaving the question alone is a complete answer too. Nothing is saved, and Donna does not ask again on a later night. The first two reviews after that each mention one thing this is not: Donna does not run on streaks, does not grade you on how much you completed, and does not need the day planned before you start. Each is said inside a sentence about your actual day, and after the third review it stops.

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What the review covers

The review is a single message in the same voice as the rest of Donna, and it runs once per day; ask again the same evening and Donna adds to it rather than starting over. Past reviews stay in your conversation history; scroll back to find one. It names the concrete things that happened, which are easy to lose track of by evening.

• What actually happened. The things you moved, the meetings you sat in, the shape of the day. For example: “you showed up for the 1:1, shipped the intro, and made a dent in the deck.”
• Where the day moved your Outcomes. Which of the things you are tracking got further along, and by how much.
• Your own words. A phrase from something you said earlier often comes back.

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One optional question

The message ends with a single question, not a mood score. Most evenings it is the same offer: anything you want to set down before you stop. Answer it and Donna picks up the thread. Leave it and the review still closes. If you go quiet, Donna does not send a reminder or bring it up the next day.

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Setting something down

Name the thing still running in your head, however half-formed, and Donna comes back with where you would pick it up and the first physical move, drawn from what it already knows about that work. Confirm it or correct it in a word and the night is over. There is no second question, nothing to promise, and no time you have to do it by: what you named is open, not owed. You do not have to raise it again in the morning. It carries on its own and shapes what the next brief opens on, and it does not depend on you coming back to the app first. Only the most recent evening carries, so something you set down on Sunday does not come back as a live loop on Wednesday. On a hard day, or a day you have told Donna was a write-off, the offer is not made at all.

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Good days and hard days

On a good day, the review can go deeper and name a pattern worth keeping. On a hard day, it stays short, or helps you set the day down without a look-back at all. Donna does not repeat the same review two days in a row.

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The weekly review

There is also a wider version for the week: type /weekly_review, or let it arrive the first time you open Donna in a new week, marked “the week.” Any numbers in it are descriptive: it names what happened, like four Actions on the report this week. When the day’s and the week’s are both due at once, the day’s arrives first and the week’s waits for your next visit.