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Family

Family is one place a family shares. It needs no host: every family machine keeps the family's things, and any online machine passes changes on.

The Family page

The Family page opens on a status line, such as "Family · 4 members · 3 online · folder in sync". Below it:

  • Members: the people in your Family ring in People, and the members who joined with only a phone.
  • The family folder: a folder in Files that every family machine keeps a copy of, encrypted with the family key on disk and on the way.
  • Calendar and birthdays, Notes and To-dos, shared by the whole family.
  • Phones, for members with no FrameBuff machine.

Start a family

  1. Add each person in People, in person, and put them in your Family ring.
  2. Start the family on the Family page, or just add the first to-do or birthday.
  3. Each member's machine gets an invite card. They press Join.

Whoever starts the family is its creator. Only the creator's machine can take a member out. Taking someone out makes a new family key, so nothing written after they left opens on their machine.

How it stays in step

Every change is signed by the machine that made it. Each family machine keeps the whole family history and swaps changes with the members it can reach. Two members who have never been online at the same time stay in step through any third member. A locked machine still passes changes on, but it cannot read or make any until you unlock it.

In the family folder, if two members change the same file while apart, both versions are kept. Each member can keep up to 4 GB in the folder on another member's machine, unless that machine's owner set a different limit.

Birthdays and to-dos

  • Everyone is reminded a set number of days before a birthday, either the whole family or one group. The birthday person is never reminded.
  • Each machine reminds its own owner, so nobody hears twice. If your own calendar already reminds you on the same day, you are not told again.
  • Someone born on 29 February is remembered on 28 February in other years, and the reminder says so.
  • There is a shared to-do list and a personal one for each member. A to-do assigned to someone goes to their phone at once. One with a due date is reminded when it is due.

Members with only a phone

Someone without a FrameBuff machine can join with just a phone. Press Show invite QR and they scan it. An invite works once, for one phone, for ten minutes. Their phone page shows their to-dos, the birthdays and an inbox for reminders.

Your own phone can join too. Then it receives every notification you route to your phone.

The family butler (optional)

Everything above works without it. Turn on Add a family butler on the Family page for extras:

  • Sharing this machine. A family member without strong hardware can use this machine for a model, a render or image generation, with their own limits: GPU-minutes, tokens, storage, your own hours and which models. Pause stops their new jobs at once. This works like Lend your GPU, with the same privacy: you see how much they used, never what.
  • Hosting phones for members, and morning reports.