aime PA documentation

Everything you need to run your household with aime PA — every feature explained, and every setting walked through in plain English.

The big picture

aime PA is organised around a few simple ideas:

• Your household owns all your data and is completely private to the people you invite.
• People are the family members shown on the planner and points board — they don't all need a login.
• Users are the accounts that can log in and manage settings.
• Kiosk screens are always-on tablets that show the family dashboard without logging in.

Households & users Admin

A household is your private space in aime PA. All your events, meals, recipes, shopping and points live inside it, and nothing is ever shared with other households.

Getting set up

1. Sign up with your email, a password and a household name — you become the owner.
2. Go to Admin → Household & users to invite the rest of the family by email.
3. Next to each login, use This is… to say which family member it belongs to. That powers My tasks, the Me pill on events and who notes are written by. (Until you pick, aime PA matches a login to the person with the same first name.)
4. Each invitee gets a link to accept and set their own password.

Roles

People & avatars Admin

People are the family members aime PA plans around. Manage them in Admin → People.

Planner & calendar

The planner is aime PA's home screen — a shared, colour-coded view of what the family has on. It's designed to be glanceable from across the kitchen.

View modes

Use Today and Tomorrow to jump straight there. The planner opens on the view set under Settings (Dashboard to start with); tap the ☆ next to the view buttons to make the one you're on your own default.

Tap 🔍 in the top bar to search your events by title, place or description. Upcoming ones come first; tap one to open its day. When only Info notes are left on a day, List and Dashboard say the day is done, and when fewer than three things are left to do they show a look at the next day underneath. Info notes don't count towards the Dashboard's To do total.

Overdue items

When past events were never marked Done or Skipped, a red ⚠ overdue badge appears in the planner controls. Tap it to see everything still open from the last 7, 30 or 90 days, grouped by day. Tap an item to open it and edit it on its day. Tick items off one by one, or use Clear all — a confirmation popup asks whether to mark all done or skip all before anything changes. Repeating events are handled one occurrence at a time, so clearing an old school run never affects future ones.

Working with events

• Start and End each have a date box, an hour box and minute buttons (:00, :15, :30, :45 and :10, :20, :40, :50), with Custom for an exact time. Under Start, quick buttons jump to Today, Tomorrow, the next three days or Next week, keeping the time.
• Events have a title, optional description, location, a link (e.g. parcel tracking, shown as a 🔗 Link button on the card), time and an all-day option. Set the length with the Duration box or a quick pill (15m, 30m, 45m, 1h, 1.5h, 2h, 3h) — the end time and duration keep each other in step.
• Pick a Type. Event is a normal item with Done and Skip. Reminder and Meal work the same way with their own label (meals are left out of Clear dates and clash checks). Info (sticky note) is something to know rather than do: it has From and To days instead of times, sits at the top of each day it covers, never goes overdue, and shows as free time in calendar feeds.
• Routines. Add a ✅ Routine checklist to an event, usually a daily repeating one like “Bedtime” at 7pm or “School morning” at 7am. Add each step (Bath, Teeth, Pyjamas…) and tap the names it's for; a step with no names is for everyone on the event. From the start time each day, the Dashboard shows every person with their progress, e.g. Remy 1/4 in amber, turning green when they're done. Tap a person to tick their steps. The box disappears once everyone is green, and it all starts fresh the next day. You can also tap the event's card in List or Dashboard at any time to open its checklist in a panel on the right and tick it off there.
• Alert sounds. The planner screen plays a sound when an event comes round, at leave time or when it starts, three times in a row by default (set under Admin → App settings, with a ▶ to hear each sound). A pop-up shows the event with who's going and a Close button; if nobody's around, it closes itself when the screensaver comes on. Each event can pick its own 🔔 Alert sound or none. Browsers keep sound off until the screen has been tapped once, so it shows Tap to turn alert sounds on until then.
• 🔊 Read out the day. Tap the speaker in the planner controls and it reads the day aloud: how many events, then each part of the day with leave times and who's going. Today, it only reads what's still to come.
• A routine's progress also shows on the event card, with each person's avatar and their count, e.g. 3/3.
• Not sure yet? Tick 📌 Placeholder to hold the time. The card shows a dashed outline and a ✓ Confirm button instead of Done and Skip, it never counts as overdue, and calendar feeds show it as “TBC: …”. Tap Confirm when it's going ahead and it becomes a normal event.
• Give an event a location and its card gets a 🧭 Directions button: pick Apple Maps, Google Maps or Waze to start navigating there.
• Same event on several unrelated days? When adding a new event, tap + Add another date under Duration and give each extra date its own start time and length (e.g. Spanish lessons on 1, 4 and 12 Oct). Saving creates one event per date with the same title, people and details. For a regular pattern, use Repeats instead.
• Add the people involved so events are colour-coded. Tap a person once to add them as with (going along, e.g. the kids), and again to make them an ★ owner (the person taking or running it). An event with an owner shows once, in the owner's column, with the others' avatars on the card, so it doesn't appear three times. You can have more than one owner. Tap 👥 All to add everyone at once (owners stay owners); tap it again, now None, to clear them.
• Add 🚗 travel time before and after an event (e.g. 30 min each way). Picking the Before time fills in the same After time for you; change After if the trip back is different. The card shows “Leave 16:00 · home 18:00”, and the owners' calendar feeds block out the drive. See Calendar feeds for how it appears.
• Make an event repeat with the Repeats menu: every day, every weekday (Mon–Fri), every week, every 2 weeks, every month, every 2 months, every 3 months or every year. Add an optional Until date to end it (e.g. the last swimming lesson of term); leave it blank to repeat forever. Monthly repeats on the 29th–31st fall on the last day of shorter months.
• When you save changes to a repeating event, aime PA asks what you meant: just this event (e.g. this week’s swimming is 30 minutes later and your partner is taking them), or the repeating event. For the repeating event it then asks whether the change applies from this one onwards (earlier ones keep their old details — ideal when a routine changes from a certain date) or to every one, including past ones. A day changed on its own shows a ✎ This day only badge in the planner.
• Deleting a repeating event asks which ones to remove: just this event (e.g. swimming is cancelled this week), this one and all future ones (earlier ones stay in the diary), or all of them, including past ones.
• When a single event is cancelled, such as a one-off or just today’s swimming, Delete asks whether to keep it, crossed out or remove it completely. A kept event stays in the planner struck through with a red Cancelled label, so everyone can see it was meant to be on. It doesn’t count as overdue, and calendar feeds show it as “Cancelled: …” in free time. It stays in To do until you tap Done, then shows only in All. Tap Undo to put it back on.
• Deleted something by mistake? Straight after a delete the planner shows a bar such as “🗑 Deleted “Swimming”, every time” with ↶ Undo. Missed it? Recently deleted, at the bottom of the planner, lists the last 30 days of deletes and Clear dates runs, with who did them and an Undo on each. Undo puts back exactly what was deleted, including notes, things to bring and people, and keeps anything ticked off since.
• Half term or a holiday? Use Clear a range of dates at the bottom of the planner. Pick a From and To date and every event in between is listed, one line each with how many times it falls in the range. Untick anything that’s still on, then Cancel them (kept crossed out) or Remove them. Only those dates change; repeating events carry on afterwards.
• Filter by Everyone, Kids, Adults or tick any mix of people, and toggle between to-dos and all events. Events that include you show a small Me pill.
• The date bar stays pinned at the top as you scroll (on phones it folds down to just the date). Tap the day or date to open a calendar and jump straight to any date; the arrows (or a swipe) move a day at a time.
• In the List and Dash views, Morning, Afternoon and Evening bars split the day so it’s easy to see what’s coming up when. Change the times or add your own (e.g. “15:00 After school”) with the Planner day dividers setting.
• Tick off or skip action items right from the card.
• Add a things-to-remember checklist in the edit sheet — one row per item, with + Add item and − to remove — e.g. book bag, water bottle, rucksack. It shows as 🎒 chips on the card so recurring routines don't get half-packed.

Notes & history

Every event and task keeps a running history of notes — handy when more than one person is involved. For example, one person adds "Ragu booked the appointment", and someone else adds a follow-up later.

• Add as many notes as you like — the newest shows at the top, on the card and in the edit sheet.
• Each note records who wrote it (pick the household member; it defaults to you when you're logged in, and works on the shared kitchen screen too).
• Edit or delete any note as plans change.
• The single Description box is for the event's own details; the notes log is the back-and-forth history.

AI quick-add AI ideas

A floating assistant (the 💬 button, bottom-right, for logged-in users) turns plain English into a planner event. Type something like “Add a birthday party Friday 3–5pm for Brooke” and it creates the event, sets the date and time, and tags the right person — then offers a link straight to that day.

Providers & keys

It works with either Claude (Anthropic) or ChatGPT (OpenAI). Choose which under Admin → Settings → AI (“AI provider”) and paste the matching API key there. The WhatsApp PA always uses Claude.

Sending feedback

Spotted something wrong? Tap the small 🐞 Feedback button at the bottom-left of any page (logged-in users, kiosk screens that have it switched on under Kiosk devices, and always on the app owner's own screens). Then click the part of the screen that’s wrong — it’s outlined as you move over it — or choose Whole page instead. Pick whether it’s something broken, a change, or an idea, and describe it.

Your report automatically includes the page, the bit you pointed at, your screen size and your account, so we can see exactly what you saw without a back-and-forth. Press Esc at any time to cancel.

Tasks & Kanban

A shared household to-do tracker at /tasks. See everything on a drag-and-drop Kanban board, a stacked List or a month Calendar (tasks on their due dates, coloured by status — tap + on a day to add a task due then; on a phone the month shows dots with an agenda list underneath), and switch between All tasks and My tasks (the tasks assigned to the person linked to your login).

Creating a task

Each task has a title, an optional description, a status (the board column), one or more assignees (chosen from your People — shown as avatars), and a due date with an optional time. Tasks past their due date are flagged as overdue.

When a task is finished, tap ✓ Mark complete next to Save to move it straight to your Done status. On the Calendar (tablet or computer), drag a task onto another day to change its due date; its time stays the same.

Notes

Every task keeps a running note history — each note is stamped with its author and time, and can be edited or deleted, just like event notes on the planner.

A note is stamped with the time you add it, but you can set a different time when you add it (the 🕒 Time box under the note) or later with the note’s Time button — handy for logging a phone call after the fact. Times can’t be in the future. Any note whose time was set by hand shows 🕒 set by hand; tap it to see the audit log of who changed the time, when, and from what to what.

Moves are logged automatically: dragging a task to another day or column, or changing its due date or status, adds a note such as “📅 Moved from Thu 2 Oct to Mon 6 Oct on the calendar”, written by whoever made the change. That way you can always see where a task was and who moved it.

Attachments

Attach screenshots, photos, PDFs and documents to any task — tap 📎 Add files, drag files onto the Attachments box, or paste a screenshot straight in. Perfect for keeping pricing screenshots, booking confirmations and tickets together while you plan a trip. Images show as thumbnails, and cards on the board show how many files are attached. Up to 10MB per file.

Custom statuses

The board columns are yours to define in Admin → Task statuses: add, rename and reorder them, give each a colour, and tick Done on the column(s) that mean a task is finished (tasks moved there are stamped complete). New households start with To do, In progress and Done.

Meal planning

Plan what the family is eating across the week. Meals are organised by meal type (breakfast, lunch, dinner…) and can be assigned per person.

• Assign a recipe to a meal slot for any day, or a note, eating out, or a quick option like Lunch box or School dinner (set your own under Settings → Cooking).
• Tick who each meal is for, or tap Select all for everyone.
• Make a meal repeat weekly on the days you tick (e.g. a Lunch box at lunch every Mon–Fri), with an optional last date. Editing or deleting a day of it asks whether it's for only this day, this and later, or every day, so you can swap one day's meal or change who it's for without touching the rest.
• See how many of each recipe's ingredients you already have in stock.
• Optionally push planned meals into everyone's phone calendar at the right time of day.

What can I cook? AI ideas

The Cook page answers the daily question: "what can I actually make right now?" It looks at what's in your inventory and suggests recipes you can cook tonight.

Filters

• Speed — quick (under 30 min), about an hour, or any.
• Difficulty — easy, medium or hard.

Each suggestion shows ingredient coverage — how many of the recipe's ingredients you already have. Suggestions come from your own recipe library, plus AI-generated ideas. You can save any AI suggestion straight into your recipes.

Recipes

Your family recipe library, all in one place. Manage recipes from the Recipes page or Admin → Recipes.

• Import from a link — paste a recipe URL and aime PA pulls in the details.
• Import from a photo — capture a recipe from a book or card.
• Create manually — add ingredients (with quantities and measures), steps, prep/cook time, difficulty and servings.
• Recipes are private to your household and can be marked as favourites.

Storage boxes

A filing system for the household’s stuff (food stays in Inventory). Open Storage from the menu or the Inventory page.

• Locations — the places boxes live, like Garage, Loft or Under the stairs.
• Boxes — each gets a short code such as A1 (the next free code is suggested for you) plus an optional label, and can be assigned to a location or moved between them.
• Items — list what’s inside each box, with a quantity and notes. Items can be moved to another box.

Use the search box to answer “where did we put…?” — it finds items, box codes and labels, and tells you the box and location.

Turn on Show what’s inside each box on the Storage page to list every box’s contents right there under its code, so you can scan the lot without opening each box. Your choice is remembered on that device.

Inventory

Inventory shows everything currently in your kitchen, with total quantity and a breakdown by storage location (fridge, freezer, pantry…).

• See when each item was last restocked.
• Search by product name or barcode.
• Jump straight to supermarket prices for linked items.

Inventory is kept up to date by the scanner as you add and use things.

Scanner

A one-handed barcode scanner designed for the kitchen. Use it to add items as you unpack the shop and remove them as you use them up.

• Scan a barcode and choose a storage location to add stock.
• Unrecognised barcodes become unknown products, which aime PA can enrich automatically from Open Food Facts, or you can map by hand.
• Removing items keeps your inventory and shopping list accurate.

Shopping & prices

The Shopping area helps you buy the right things for less. It has two views:

Price history

For any product, see how its price has changed over time and which supermarket each variant comes from — so you know when something's genuinely a good deal.

Points & rewards

A motivating chore board for kids. Children earn points for helping out and spend them on rewards you choose. aime PA keeps score automatically and accurately.

Activities (earning)

Set up the things children can do to earn points in Admin → Points. Each activity has a name, a points value, a colour, an active toggle and an optional sort order — for example "Cooking +20" or "Homework +15".

Rewards (spending)

Set up what points can be spent on — each reward has a name, a cost, a colour and an active toggle. For example "30 min TV −50" or "Ice cream treat −75".

The board

Fairness & accuracy

• Balances are always calculated from the full history, so they never drift or get lost.
• An optional redeem PIN stops unauthorised spending on a kiosk; logged-in parents always bypass it.
• Turn the PIN on per child with Require PIN to redeem in People.
• The recent activity log lets parents undo or edit any entry.

Special days Admin

Mark birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and school holidays on the planner. Manage them in Admin → Special days.

• Set a single date or a date range.
• Make a day person-specific or household-wide.
• Tag it with a type (e.g. Birthday, Holiday) that carries its own colour.
• One-click sync of UK bank holidays.

Contacts & birthdays

Contacts (in the menu) keeps friends and family outside the household: first and last name, address lines 1–4, city, county, postcode, country (United Kingdom unless you pick another) and date of birth. Tap a contact to edit it; Delete contact is at the bottom of its page. Search the list by name or address.

• Birthdays on the planner. On the day, a pink sticky note says “🎂 Mum’s birthday – Today! Turns 60”. In the days before, a yellow note counts down: “🎁 Mum’s birthday – In 5 days”. The Week view shows the same notes, smaller, under each day. Tap a note to open the contact.
• Count down to a birthday. Tick ⏳ Show on Countdowns on a contact and their birthday appears on the Countdowns page and the Dashboard, e.g. “🎂 Mum’s birthday · turns 60”, counting down to it every year.
• A countdown from a diary event shows the people tagged on the event, on the Countdowns page and the Dashboard. When the Dashboard is filtered to one person, its Countdowns box shows only theirs and the ones not tagged to anyone.
• How much notice. The standard is 7 days. Change it on the Upcoming birthdays tab (or in Admin → Settings → Contacts). Each contact can use the standard, a custom number of days (say 14 for Mum, to find a decent present), or just on the day.
• Upcoming birthdays lists everyone’s next birthday by month, with the age they’re turning, how many days to go and when the reminder starts.
• Don’t know the year? Tick I don’t know the year and pick the day and month; the age is then left off. A 29 February birthday shows on 28 February in other years.

Countdowns

Countdowns (in the menu) shows how long until the things you’re looking forward to, each card ticking down live in days, hours, minutes and seconds.

• From the diary: tick ⏳ Countdown when adding or editing an event, such as a holiday from 1 to 31 August. A repeating event counts down to its next date. Once it starts, the card says Happening now and counts down to the end instead.
• Your own: tap + Add a countdown for anything that isn’t in the diary, such as “Last day of work”. Give it an emoji, a date, an optional time, and tick Every year for days that come round again.
• Quick add gives one-tap countdowns for Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas Day, New Year, Valentine’s Day and the summer solstice. The Bank holiday picker lists the upcoming bank holidays and special days from the planner.
• Tap Edit or Remove on your own countdowns. Diary ones change with the event: untick ⏳ Countdown to take one off.

Calendar feeds (iCal)

Every person gets a personal calendar feed URL they can subscribe to in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook — so aime PA events show up on their phone automatically.

• Each feed URL contains a long, random, unguessable calendar code — the link itself is the key, so there's no password to type and it works with Outlook.com / Microsoft 365 and Google, which can't send one.
• Add to Apple, Add to Outlook and Add to Google buttons, or copy the URL into any calendar app.
• Outlook app: add the feed in Outlook on the web (same account) and it syncs to the app on every device.
• If a link is shared by mistake, press New link — the old URL stops working immediately.
• Optionally include planned meals in each person's feed.
• A separate Meal plan feed shows every planned meal for the whole household, so anyone can subscribe to just the meals.
• Each event in the feed has an edit link. Tap it in your calendar and aime PA opens on that day with the event ready to edit. If you need to sign in first, you’re taken to the event straight afterwards.

WhatsApp PA AI ideas Admin

Your own personal assistant on WhatsApp. Message it like you would a real PA and it looks after the family diary for you. For example:

• “Dot’s party 12–1pm Sun 15 Nov” – it checks for anything similar or clashing, asks who’s going if you didn’t say, then asks “Shall I add it?”.
• “What’s on Saturday?” – it lists the day, with who’s going and what to bring.
• “Swimming is at 5 this week at the leisure centre, bring goggles” – it changes just that week of a repeating event, and adds the goggles to the things to bring.
• “Football’s off tomorrow” – it offers to cross it out for that day.

It always asks before changing the diary, and once you reply yes it confirms what it did with a link that opens the event. Reply “undo” to reverse the last change; every change is also listed under Recent changes at the bottom of the planner, with an Undo button. It remembers the conversation, so you can reply naturally (“both of them”, “make it 1pm”). After 12 quiet hours it starts afresh.

One-time setup

1. Under Super Admin, add your Claude API key and your Twilio Account SID, Auth Token and WhatsApp number. The PA always uses Claude, whatever the AI provider setting says.
2. Point your Twilio WhatsApp number’s inbound webhook (“When a message comes in”, HTTP POST) at https://your-site/portal/webhooks/whatsapp.

Linking your phone

Only linked phones can use the PA, and each phone is linked to a login, so changes are recorded under that person’s name.

1. Signed in, go to Admin → WhatsApp assistant and tap Connect a phone. You get a 6-letter code such as QXMRTA, valid for 15 minutes.
2. From your phone, WhatsApp the code to the number. On a phone, Open WhatsApp with the code types it in for you.
3. You get a welcome message back, and the phone appears under Linked numbers. Unlink it there at any time.

Kiosk wall screens Kiosk

Kiosk mode turns an always-on tablet into a family dashboard that never needs logging in. Each screen is registered as a device with its own settings.

Setting up a screen with a code (easiest)

Like linking a TV to Netflix or BBC iPlayer, so there's no long link to type on the screen.

1. On the new screen, open aimepa.app/portal/pair, or tap Link this screen with a code on the sign-in page. It shows a 6-letter code that changes every minute.
2. On your phone, go to Admin → Kiosk devices, type the code and a name (e.g. "Kitchen") under Link a screen with a code, and tap Link screen.
3. Within a few seconds the screen signs itself in and opens the planner. Use Edit on the new device to choose its defaults.

Setting up a screen with a link

1. Go to Admin → Kiosk devices and add a device (e.g. "Kitchen wall").
2. Copy the generated device link and open it once on the tablet.
3. The screen stays signed in, returns to today when idle, and opens with your chosen defaults.

Per-device defaults

Browser extension Admin

The companion browser extension keeps supermarket prices up to date and speeds up online shopping.

• Scrapes prices and barcodes from ASDA, Tesco and Sainsbury's as you browse.
• Adds an "Add" button to products, and experimental "add all to basket" for ASDA.
• Authenticates with an API key you create in Admin → Browser extension.

Price-check runner

Prices stay fresh as you browse, but to refresh the items you haven't visited in a while you can download the price runner — a PowerShell script (one per API key) from Admin → Browser extension. On a machine with the extension installed and signed in, it re-opens the 50 product pages that were checked longest ago so the extension can update them: one at a time in Chrome, with a human-like pause and scroll, in blocks of 10 (closing and reopening Chrome between blocks). It only drives the browser — no scraping happens in the script itself.

Settings overview Admin

All settings live under Admin → Settings and apply to your whole household. They're grouped into the sections below. The defaults shown are what a brand-new household starts with.

Location settings

Used for the weather shown on the planner when a screen won't share its location.

Display settings

Control how aime PA behaves on screens, especially always-on wall tablets.

Shopping settings

Cooking settings

Calendar settings

Points settings

AI & WhatsApp settings

Keys and options for the recipe/cook AI and the WhatsApp assistant. Secrets are stored in your own database.

Admin area Admin

The Admin area is your control centre, available to logged-in users. From here you manage everything that shapes how aime PA works for your family:

• Household & users and people
• Kiosk devices, the browser extension and the WhatsApp assistant
• Settings and points configuration
• Special days and special day types
• Recipes, ingredients, measures, supermarkets, storage locations and meal types
• Calendar subscriptions and database updates

Lists & library Admin

These small library lists keep the rest of aime PA tidy and consistent. Set them up once and reuse them everywhere.

Database & updates Admin

Under Admin → Database you can apply app updates and see scheduled background jobs.

• Run migrations applies any pending database updates after an app upgrade.
• Scheduled jobs shows background tasks, such as auto-enriching unknown scanned products.