Frequently Asked Questions

ChoreMatrix is a deterministic household workload optimizer. Instead of acting as a passive checklist or a random assignment wheel, ChoreMatrix models your household members, their individual capacities, schedule availability, and task constraints to calculate balanced, workable chore allocations.

It replaces arbitrary domestic chore negotiations with clear mathematical schedules that respect everyone's real-world time limitations.

No account is required for first-use planning. You can explore the optimizer, test sample household presets, customize members and chores, and calculate full weekly plans directly inside your browser without entering personal information or signing in.

Creating a free account is only needed if you want cloud synchronization—saving your household data across devices, preserving custom chore rosters, and managing your configuration persistently.

Yes. ChoreMatrix is built as a fully responsive web application that runs directly in modern mobile browsers on iOS and Android. There is no separate app store download required.

On mobile screens, inputs, schedules, and metrics adapt into full-width cards and touch-friendly layouts so you can easily review allocations, adjust member availability, or trigger rebalances on the go.

ChoreMatrix calculates plans using a deterministic constraint-satisfaction and scoring engine. When you request an optimization:

• The engine normalizes all task occurrences across your requested planning horizon (1 to 4 weeks).
• It filters potential candidate assignments against strict hard constraints (availability, eligibility, and fixed days).
• It evaluates eligible assignments using weighted criteria—penalizing workload imbalance, daily workload spikes, and avoided tasks, while rewarding preferred tasks and balanced cadence.
• It refines the schedule through systematic local search improvements (2-opt candidate swaps).

Because the engine is deterministic, identical inputs and constraints always produce the exact same verifiable allocation without random drift.

Equal Workload (balanced mode) is an optimization objective designed for households where participants intend to split domestic chores evenly—such as roommates or adult partners with similar schedules.

In this mode, the optimizer minimizes the difference in total weighted chore minutes assigned to each person, striving to distribute total chore volume equally across all participants.

Capacity-Aware optimization distributes work proportionally according to each member's declared weekly capacity minutes.

This mode is essential for families with teenagers, children, or partners working disparate outside hours. For example, if Member A has 300 minutes of weekly chore capacity and Member B has 150 minutes, Capacity-Aware optimization assigns Member A approximately double the weighted chore load of Member B, targeting an equal percentage of capacity utilization rather than an identical number of minutes.

Effort reflects the physical and mental intensity required to complete a task. ChoreMatrix uses an explicit 5-point effort multiplier scale:

• Level 1 (1.00x multiplier): Light, low-friction activities (e.g. wiping down a kitchen counter).
• Level 2 (1.25x multiplier): Routine maintenance chores (e.g. emptying the dishwasher).
• Level 3 (1.50x multiplier): Standard active chores (e.g. vacuuming the living room, routine cooking).
• Level 4 (1.85x multiplier): Demanding physical labor (e.g. scrubbing bathrooms, thorough mopping).
• Level 5 (2.25x multiplier): Heavy or exhausting chores (e.g. deep oven cleaning, extensive yard work).

Raw task duration is multiplied by this factor to calculate "weighted minutes," ensuring 30 minutes of deep scrubbing is accurately weighted higher than 30 minutes of folding light laundry.

Hard constraints are mandatory scheduling boundaries that the optimizer will never violate. Common examples include:

• Unavailable days: If a member is traveling or working late on Thursdays, the optimizer cannot assign chores to them on Thursdays.
• Eligibility restrictions: If a chore is flagged only for adults (e.g. using chemical detergents or power tools), younger members are strictly excluded.
• Fixed-day tasks: Chores that must occur on a specific day of the week (such as putting out trash cans on Sunday evening) will only ever be placed on that designated day.

If a hard constraint cannot be satisfied, the chore is flagged as unassigned rather than assigned improperly.

Soft preferences represent non-binding inclinations, such as a member's preferred tasks, disliked tasks, or preferred execution days.

The optimizer factors preferences into candidate scoring by applying bonuses when preferred tasks are assigned and applying penalties when assigning avoided chores. Preferences guide the engine toward agreeable arrangements, but they will yield when necessary to satisfy hard constraints or maintain workload feasibility.

Calculate Plan generates an optimized schedule from scratch based on your current household members, capacities, and chore lists.

It considers the entire planning horizon without being anchored to past allocations, establishing the most balanced baseline schedule possible. It is best used when setting up your household for the first time or creating a brand-new weekly cycle.

Rebalance performs minimal-disruption rescheduling when circumstances change mid-week or mid-cycle.

Instead of throwing out your settled schedule and reassigning everything, the Rebalance engine applies a specific penalty to moving tasks that are already scheduled. It keeps unaffected tasks in place and calculates the smallest necessary adjustments to accommodate the new conditions, accompanied by an itemized diff summary explaining what changed and why.

Use Rebalance whenever unexpected schedule adjustments occur in an active plan.

Concrete Example: Suppose a household member falls ill or gets called away on Wednesday. You edit that member's availability to mark Wednesday as an unavailable day, then click Rebalance. Rather than rewriting Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday chores for everyone, ChoreMatrix preserves unaffected tasks and moves only that member's Wednesday responsibilities to available, eligible members.

The fairness index (or balance score) is a mathematical metric reflecting the spread in capacity utilization across household members. A score of 100 indicates that all members have an identical workload utilization relative to their capacity.

This metric does not claim to represent objective moral justice or philosophical fairness for your specific family. It simply measures how evenly the workload is distributed according to the numbers, capacities, and constraints you provided. If tight constraints force one person to carry a higher utilization, the balance score decreases accordingly.

When a member's utilization exceeds 100%, it means they have been assigned more weighted chore minutes than their declared weekly availability. ChoreMatrix surfaces this honestly as an overload diagnostic.

Overload typically occurs when household chore demands exceed total available member hours, or when strict eligibility rules leave only one specific member qualified to perform demanding tasks. ChoreMatrix flags the capacity deficit rather than masking the imbalance.

If a task cannot be assigned without breaking a hard constraint, ChoreMatrix lists it in an explicit Unassigned Tasks diagnostic table.

Each unassigned entry includes an explicit diagnostic code (such as ERR_NO_ELIGIBLE_MEMBERS or ERR_ALL_ELIGIBLE_UNAVAILABLE) and specific remediation suggestions. ChoreMatrix never silently invents invalid assignments or forces a chore onto an ineligible person.

Infeasibility indicates that the combination of requested constraints mathematically leaves zero valid allocation options.

For instance, if a chore is locked to Friday, requires an adult, and all adult members are marked as unavailable on Fridays, no schedule can be generated that satisfies every rule. Infeasibility diagnostics highlight these conflicting constraints so you can adjust task days, expand eligibility, or update availability.

When you create an account, ChoreMatrix establishes an authenticated profile using email verification. Your household configurations, custom chore rosters, and saved schedules are persisted in the cloud database.

This allows your data to sync seamlessly whenever you log in from a desktop browser, laptop, or mobile phone.

If you use ChoreMatrix without an account, your configuration and plans reside entirely in your browser's local storage.

For authenticated users, household data is stored in the ChoreMatrix cloud database backend managed through Supabase PostgreSQL infrastructure, with traffic encrypted in transit via standard TLS.

No. User data is isolated per account. In our database backend, strict PostgreSQL Row Level Security (RLS) policies enforce that queries can only access rows matching the authenticated user's ID (user_id = auth.uid()).

No user can access, inspect, or modify another account's household configurations or task allocations.

Logging out terminates your authenticated session and clears authentication tokens from browser storage. Protected account and sync screens become inaccessible until you log in again.

The ChoreMatrix Account dashboard provides three distinct session termination scopes:

• Sign Out This Device: Closes the session on your current browser while leaving other devices signed in.
• Sign Out All Other Devices: Revokes access on all other computers and phones while keeping your current browser active.
• Sign Out Everywhere: Invalidates refresh tokens across all devices simultaneously.

Yes. You can permanently delete your account and all associated household records at any time directly through the Account Management dashboard under the Danger Zone.

Initiating account deletion triggers complete database removal of your profile, saved households, members, tasks, and historical plans. This operation is permanent and irreversible.

Following strict data minimization principles, ChoreMatrix collects only what is required to compute schedules:

• Your account email address and password credentials.
• Household configuration names and member nicknames/labels.
• Member capacities and unavailable days.
• Chore descriptions, categories, effort ratings, and cadence requirements.

ChoreMatrix does not collect home street addresses, GPS locations, phone numbers, contact books, children's birth dates, photos, biometric data, or payment card numbers. Review our full Privacy Policy for complete details.

No. ChoreMatrix does not use large language models, generative AI, or speculative machine learning in its core optimization engine.

The scheduler is built entirely on deterministic combinatorial algorithms and discrete mathematical scoring rules. This guarantees that your schedule is mathematically grounded, explainable, and consistent, without AI hallucinations or unpredictable changes.

No. ChoreMatrix contains zero advertising trackers, zero social media pixels, and zero cross-site behavioral cookies. Product usage analytics are currently disabled in the application.

We do not monetize your attention, track your activity across other websites, or sell household data to third-party ad brokers.

Yes. You can manage your storage preferences at any time using the Cookie Preferences link in the footer of any page, or review details on the Cookie Policy page.

ChoreMatrix only uses strictly necessary storage (such as session authentication and theme settings) and optional UI preferences, with zero third-party marketing storage.