Manual · Tasks

Creating tasks

Creating a task should not feel like filling in a form. In PiggyTask you write it the way you think it — the app pulls out the kid, the recurrence and the due date. Everything else is optional and one tap away.

The fastest route: just write it down

In the parent area under Tasks there is a single text field. Write the task as a normal sentence:

Tidy the room for Ben every Wednesday due Friday

PiggyTask picks out four things — the task text, the kid, the recurrence and the due date — and shows them as chips below the field. Whatever was recognised is highlighted in the sentence. If something is wrong, tap the chip and correct it; you never have to rewrite the sentence.

None of this is mandatory. "Tidy the room" on its own is perfectly fine — you then set the details through the chips, or leave them out entirely.

From the simplest to the most complete example

Each step adds exactly one piece of information. You never have to start at the last one — the first covers everyday use perfectly well.

Two things stand out that nobody usually mentions: coins in the sentence automatically turn the task into a bonus task (it moves to the pool and gets no target date), and names work with or without "for" — "Make sandwiches Ben Lisa on Mondays" is understood just the same.

What PiggyTask reads out of your sentence

The important distinction is between a weekday and the word "due": "on Wednesdays" sets both the appearance and the due date to the same day. Only "due …" or "visible from …" separates the two — for example "on Wednesdays available from Tuesday".

Mandatory or bonus

Every task is one of the two, and the difference shapes everyday life:

• Mandatory tasks are part of family life. They show up in the kid's dashboard and are meant to be done — with or without coins.
• Bonus tasks go into the bonus pool. Kids grab them themselves when they feel like it and earn coins for them. Availability controls how many copies sit in the pool (1–10), regardless of how many kids can see it. A task with availability 1 is gone once one kid has grabbed it.

A kid can keep at most 2 bonus tasks open at the same time. That is deliberate: the pool is meant to be an offer, not a stockpile.

Due dates: the three variants

The due date decides when a task is flagged as overdue — not whether the kid can see it.

No target date. The kid sees "as soon as possible" instead of a date, and the task never goes overdue. It should simply be done soon. This is the default for bonus tasks.

Fixed date. A specific calendar day. This option only exists for one-off tasks — for series you set the rhythm through "Custom…" instead.

Custom. Appearance day and due day separately: "appears on the 1st, due on the last day of the month". If the two do not differ, a single day covers both.

There is one exception: for daily and weekday-recurring tasks the due date is always the day it appears. A new instance is created every day here — only that way does a skipped task get an overdue flag at all, instead of quietly sitting there.

PRIO: pulling one task to the front

The PRIO flag moves a task ahead of all others in the kid's dashboard and marks it as "must be done before all other tasks". Useful for the one thing that genuinely comes first today — and useless once half the list carries it.

For a recurring mandatory task, setting PRIO in the edit dialog always applies to the whole series — every open instance and all future periods pick it up. A small flag icon also sits next to every open instance in the task list — overdue or not: tapping it sets PRIO for that one instance only (the flag lights up), without touching the template, future periods, or other kids' rows — tap it again to remove PRIO.

Drafts: prepare instead of publishing right away

Tasks can be saved as a draft rather than going live immediately. When saving you choose how the draft is published later:

• Manually — you publish it yourself from the drafts list.
• Automatically — with a start date it is published on exactly that day.

Handy for holiday plans or tasks that should only apply after the move, the start of school or a birthday. Drafts are a Premium feature; on the free tier the list is locked.

Editing a series afterwards

For recurring tasks there is one simple rule worth reading once:

• Saving applies the change to every upcoming date in the series.
• Deleting asks whether only this one date or the entire series including future periods should be removed.

So there is no way to edit a single future occurrence differently — if you need that, delete that one date and add a one-off task next to it.

Free-tier limits

Without Premium you can have at the same time:

• 5 recurring mandatory tasks
• 20 open one-off mandatory tasks (across the family)
• 5 entries in the bonus pool

Completed tasks do not count — the limit applies to what is currently open. Details are in Premium and the free-tier limits.

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