Staying in Touch

Groupthink keeps track of how long it has been since you talked to someone, tells you who you are falling behind with, and helps you do something about it. Set how often you want to be in contact with a person, and everything else on this page keys off that number.

These steps cover the web app at app.groupthink.com and the Groupthink desktop app, which show the same screens.

Summary

• Set how often you want to be in contact with each person (a cadence) from the Cadence dropdown on their page, or for several people at once from Relationships. Everything else on this page keys off it.
• See who you are falling behind with in Relationship check-ins on Today, the Going Cold filter on Relationships, and Your weekly.
• Before you reach out, Ask a question about the person, or click Draft for an email or text. Nothing is sent for you.
• Schedule writes a real event to the calendar you have connected, and Groupthink asks you about it once its time has passed.
• Last really caught up, what you want a relationship to be, the sign-up step, drafting from a follow-up and the FAQ are in Reference.

Set how often you want to keep in touch

Watch: tick several people, give them one cadence or the suggested one for each, and see who was skipped, in 35 seconds.

Groupthink calls this a cadence. It is a per-person setting, and it is what makes the check-in and Going Cold surfaces work.

1. Click Relationships in the left sidebar.
2. Click a person's row. On a wide window the person opens in a panel that slides in from the right. On a narrower window it opens as its own page.
3. In the header, under the row that starts with Last met, find the control labelled Cadence. That dropdown is the cadence picker.
4. Pick one of None, Weekly, Biweekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Every 6 months, or Yearly.

It saves as soon as you pick. If the save fails you get a Couldn't save cadence message next to the dropdown.

Take the suggested cadence

If a person has no cadence set and you've been in touch often enough to see a rhythm, a highlighted box appears at the top of their page. It starts with what Groupthink counted, then asks:

You've been in touch on 5 days in the past year, most recently Sep 3, from meetings and conversations you logged. Check in with Alex quarterly?

Groupthink counts days, not messages: a meeting and three texts on the same day count once. It reads meetings, the calls, texts and emails you log, and planned check-ins you completed. The suggestion can be anything from weekly to yearly.

• Click Use quarterly (or whichever cadence it suggests) to accept it.
• Or pick a different cadence, or No schedule, from Choose your own.
• Click the X to dismiss it. It stays hidden for the rest of your browser session.

Nothing changes until you click. Groupthink never sets a cadence for you.

Messages history and yearly contact change what the box says. See More on the suggested cadence.

Set a cadence for several people at once

1. Click Relationships in the left sidebar.
2. Tick the box at the start of each row you want. The header box ticks every row on the page you are looking at, and no rows on other pages.
3. Click Set cadence (n) in the toolbar, where n is how many people you ticked.
4. Choose a cadence. Suggested for each person gives each of them the rhythm Groupthink sees in your contact with them; the others set the same cadence for everyone.
5. Groupthink asks you to confirm, with the count, for example Set a monthly check-in for 12 people? Click Set cadence. Nothing changes before you do.

The card then says how many people it set. If anyone wasn't updated, it lists them by name with the reason, for example No suggestion yet for someone you haven't been in touch with enough to suggest a rhythm. Those people stay ticked, so you can pick a cadence for them and try again.

Set a cadence from Today

When you have met someone at least three times in the last 90 days and they have no cadence, Today may ask how often you want to keep up with them, in the People you see often section. Click Every 2 weeks, Monthly or Quarterly, or pick another cadence from Other. It saves as soon as you click. See People you see often.

What the Status chip means

The Status column, and the matching chip on the person's page, reads:

Chip	Meaning
On track	You are inside the cadence you set.
Falling behind	You are past the cadence but not badly.
Overdue	You are well past it.

People with no cadence set have no Status chip. Without a cadence there is nothing to be behind on.

A cadence on someone you have nothing logged with yet reads differently. See A cadence with nothing logged yet.

See who you are falling behind with

There are three places to look, and they answer slightly different questions.

Today

1. Click Today in the left sidebar.
2. Scroll to the Relationship check-ins section.

You get a table of people, split into two groups when both apply:

• Overdue, the people you are past due with.
• Coming due this week, with the note "Not late yet, a light touch now keeps them on cadence."

Each row shows the person, Last met as a relative date, Days since the last interaction, and an Urgency chip reading either Overdue or Coming due. Click a person's name to open their page.

Only people with a cadence set appear here. When nobody is due, what the section says depends on whether you have set any cadences:

• No cadences set yet: "Set a check-in cadence on the people who matter and this list will tell you who's slipping", with a Set your first cadence button that opens Relationships.
• Cadences set, nobody due: "Nobody's drifting, everyone is within the cadence you set. Nice."

On the iPhone, the same list is the Check-ins section on the Today tab. See Check-ins on iPhone.

The Going Cold filter

Watch: how Going Cold measures each person against their own rhythm, in 32 seconds.

1. Click Relationships in the left sidebar.
2. Click Going Cold in the toolbar above the table. The number on the button is how many people match.
3. The table narrows to people who have been quiet for longer than is normal for them.
4. Click Going Cold again to go back to the full list.

This filter is broader than the Today section. It measures each person against what is normal for them:

• If you set a cadence, the person appears once you are past it.
• If you have not set one, Groupthink works out the rhythm you usually keep with that person from all your contact with them (meetings, texts, emails and anything you log), and lists them once you have been quiet for longer than that. The inferred rhythm is only used for this filter. It doesn't set a cadence and doesn't show a Status chip.
• If you set the cadence to None, the person never appears.
• Someone with no regular rhythm, for example a person you have met only once, never appears either, because there is nothing to compare against.

If you have set an intention for someone, Going Cold follows it. People you marked Let it drift naturally or Fine to go quiet never appear, and Occasional / annual people appear only after about a year. See Say what you want this relationship to be.

Your weekly

Once a week, Groupthink writes a short paragraph about your relationships: who you stayed close to and who went quiet. It arrives by email, and you can read every one in the app.

1. Click Relationships in the left sidebar.
2. Click Your weekly at the top of the page.
3. Your weeks are listed newest first, each with its dates and its paragraph. Click a week to open it.
4. To see older weeks, click Show earlier weeks at the bottom of the list.

What an open week shows is in Reference. Right now not every account gets a weekly. See Who gets a weekly.

Ask about someone

Before you reach out, you can ask a plain-language question about a person and get an answer drawn from what Groupthink has on file: your notes, meeting history, open threads, and observations.

1. Open the person from Relationships.
2. Scroll down the main column to the Ask heading.
3. Type a question in the box, for example "what did we agree on last time" or "what has changed since we last spoke".
4. Click Ask, or press Cmd+Enter (Ctrl+Enter on Windows).

The answer appears below the box. Numbered markers in the answer are clickable:

• A meeting reference opens that meeting.
• A note or open-thread reference scrolls you to the matching row further down the same page.

The chips under the answer are the same references in list form. This is a single question at a time. There is no history, and the answer clears when you ask again or leave the page.

To tell Groupthink what you know about the person instead, click the Tell me about button under the Ask box. See Telling It About Someone.

Draft a note before you reach out

1. Open the person from Relationships.
2. In the header, click Draft.
3. Under Write, choose Email or Text.
4. Under What do you want to say?, pick one or more things Groupthink remembers about the person (their open threads and the details on their page), or type it in your own words, for example "Ask how the move went". You can do both. Groupthink doesn't choose what to mention for you, so the draft button stays off until you've chosen something.
5. Click Draft an email or Draft a text. Groupthink writes the message about what you chose and helps with the wording. It doesn't bring up anything else it knows about them.
6. Check the To field. Groupthink fills in the person's email address (for an email) or phone number (for a text) when it has one. Change it if you want a different one.
7. Edit the message, and the Subject for an email, as much as you want. Groupthink writes the subject along with the message, so it says what the email is about. If you change the subject, Regenerate leaves yours alone.
8. Send it yourself:
   • Open in mail app opens a new email in your own mail app with the recipient, subject and message filled in.
   • Open in Messages opens a new text in your messages app with the number and message filled in. This works on a Mac, an iPhone or iPad, and an Android phone. On Windows or Linux, use Copy draft and send the text from your phone. In the Groupthink desktop app on a Mac, Groupthink first asks whether to open Messages, and copies the text as well. If the message box in Messages is empty, paste it with ⌘V.
   • Copy draft copies the message so you can paste it anywhere.

Nothing is sent for you. You press send in your own mail or messages app. To redo a draft, type what you want changed under What you want to say, for Regenerate (for example "Shorter") and click Regenerate. If the draft comes back unusable you get a warning and can click Regenerate. If you have already edited the message, Regenerate asks before replacing it, and Close asks before throwing away your edits.

To start a draft from a specific follow-up, see Draft or schedule from a follow-up. To shape how drafts sound, see Shape how the draft sounds.

Schedule the next touchpoint

This writes a real event to the calendar you have connected to Groupthink.

1. Open the person from Relationships.
2. In the header, click Schedule. A form opens below the buttons.
3. Title is prefilled as "Catch up with [Name]". Change it if you like.
4. Set Starts and Ends. The default is a 30 minute block at 10am on the next weekday.
5. Attendees starts with the person you opened. Add more with the Add a person... box. If someone has no email on file their chip reads "(no invite)", and you can type an address in the box beneath to invite them instead.
6. Optionally fill in Note (optional).
7. Click Schedule.

A few things worth knowing:

• The form says it plainly: "This writes to your own calendar. Attendees with an email get a calendar invite from your provider when you save, nobody is messaged automatically."
• If you have no calendar connected, a warning reads "No calendar connected. Connect Google or Outlook in Settings to schedule a touchpoint" and the Schedule button stays disabled. See Connect your calendar.
• Once scheduled, the person's header shows a Planned entry with the title and date. If a regular calendar meeting with them lands sooner, the header shows that one as Upcoming instead. The header shows only the nearer of the two, and both are about what is still ahead. Once a planned touchpoint's start time is more than 3 hours past, it stops showing as Planned and Groupthink asks you about it instead. See After the touchpoint.

Reference

The rest of this page covers the parts of staying in touch you need less often.

Say when you last really caught up

A text or a quick hello isn't the same as catching up. A person's page has a Last really caught up line for the last time you each heard what is going on in the other's life.

1. Open the person's page from Relationships.
2. Find Last really caught up, under the cadence controls. Until you fill it in, it shows Groupthink's guess, or Not set when there is nothing to guess from (see below).
3. Click Add, pick the day, and if you like add a line in What you talked about (optional), for example "dinner in Lisbon, heard about the new job".
4. Click Save.

Click Change to edit it, or Clear to remove it (the line then goes back to the guess, or Not set). You can't pick a day in the future. The line is yours to keep: Groupthink doesn't turn it into a score or a day count.

Groupthink's guess. When you haven't filled it in, Groupthink looks for the latest meeting or logged interaction with this person that read as the relationship warming, cooling or shifting. If it finds one, the line shows that conversation's date and title with a Groupthink's guess tag, and the reason in grey underneath, for example "The conversation read as the relationship warming up." Hover the tag to see the reason too.

• Click That's right to keep it. It becomes your own answer, and the tag goes away.
• Click Add to pick a different day instead. The guess's reason isn't copied into your line.

A guess has no Clear, since there is nothing of yours to remove. Once you fill the line in yourself, Groupthink stops guessing for that person.

When that person comes up in Relationship check-ins on Today, or in the Touch base widget on your iPhone's Home Screen, the row also says it under the cadence line, for example "last really caught up Sep 30 (Coffee with Sam): heard about the new job". If you haven't filled it in but a conversation on their page read as the relationship warming up, cooling off or changing, the row offers that conversation as a guess and says so: "our guess: last really caught up Sep 12 (Dinner in Lisbon), which read as the relationship warming up". The Lock Screen widget never shows it, so what you wrote about someone stays off a locked phone. What you fill in always replaces the guess.

Say what you want this relationship to be

A cadence says how often. An intention says what you want right now, and it changes how Going Cold reads a quiet stretch with that person.

1. Open the person's page from Relationships.
2. Under Last really caught up, find What you want this to be and click Add (or Change if you have set one).
3. Pick one, add a line for yourself if you like, and click Save.

Intention	What it does to Going Cold
Invest more	Works as usual: shown as soon as you fall behind your rhythm.
Close, low frequency	Long gaps are expected. Shown only once you are well past your rhythm.
Maintain warmly	Works as usual.
A professional relationship I value	Works as usual.
Occasional / annual	Expected about once a year. Not shown before then.
Let it drift naturally	Never shown.
Fine to go quiet	Never shown.

Your intention is private. Only you see it, and Groupthink never uses it in drafted messages, in answers to connected assistants, or in emails. It shows the date you set it. Click History to see what you chose before and when you changed your mind. Click Clear to remove it; the history stays.

If your intention stops matching your own reflections or how often you've been in touch, the person's How it's felt section asks whether it still reflects what you want. See How It's Felt.

When you first sign up

If you connected a calendar when you signed up, the setup steps include one called Who do you want to keep up with?, after Groupthink shows you who it already found. It lists up to 20 of the people you've been in touch with most, each with the cadence Groupthink suggests already chosen and the same line about what it counted.

1. Tick the people you want to keep up with. Select all ticks everyone.
2. To use a different cadence for someone, pick it from the dropdown on their row. That ticks them too.
3. Click Keep up with 10 people (the button counts who you ticked).

Nobody starts ticked, and nothing is saved until you click the button. Skip this step moves on without setting anything. The step doesn't appear if you didn't connect a calendar, or if Groupthink hasn't seen enough contact with anyone to suggest a cadence yet. You can set or change any of these later, as described above.

Change one cadence from the list

The Relationships table has a Frequency column that holds the same setting.

1. Click Relationships in the left sidebar.
2. Click the Frequency cell on the row you want to change. It is a dropdown, so one click opens it, and clicking it does not open the person.
3. Pick a value. It saves on selection and you get a "Relationship updated successfully" toast.

None in the Frequency column means no cadence is set for that person.

More on the suggested cadence

If you turned on Messages import on your Mac, the suggestion box adds a second sentence about how long you've been texting this person. It covers up to the last three years, and stops where their imported texts begin:

Your Messages history shows texts in 31 months, starting March 2024.

Each of those months counts once toward the suggestion, however many texts it holds. When that history is the only contact Groupthink has for the person, the first sentence counts months too: "You've been in touch in 9 months of the past year, most recently in November 2025."

If you've been in touch with someone every year for the last three years without a regular rhythm, the box says so, and offers Check in yearly or No schedule.

A cadence with nothing logged yet

If you set a cadence on someone you have nothing logged with yet, the person's page reads Monthly, nothing logged yet (or whichever cadence you picked) in grey where the Status chip would be, and the Status column reads Nothing logged yet. Groupthink waits one full period from the day you set the cadence before it calls that person overdue. Hover the line to see the date you set it. Once you log an interaction or meet with them, a normal Status chip takes its place.

What an open week shows

An open week shows:

• The paragraph, the same one the email carried.
• Who that rests on: the people you were behind with that week. Each name has a chip (Falling behind or Overdue, or No cadence set for someone you had not heard from in a long time) and how long it had been since you last spoke. Click a name to open that person.
• A line summing up everyone else, such as how many people were on track.
• What you captured: how many observations Groupthink recorded that week and about how many people, with a link to each person.

Everything on a week's page is as it stood at the end of that week, not today. The page says so under Who that rests on. Someone marked Overdue in an old week may be fine now.

Before your first weekly is ready, the page reads "Your first weekly is still being written" and explains that Groupthink writes one every Monday, covering the week just gone.

Who gets a weekly

Right now the weekly is written for a small group of accounts while we try it out. The Your weekly button shows only if your account is in that group, or if you already have weeklies from before. If you open the weekly page some other way and your account is not in the group yet, it says your account doesn't get the weekly yet. The weekly follows the Relational Weekly email setting in Notifications. If you switch that email off, Groupthink stops writing new weeklies, in the app as well as by email.

Draft or schedule from a follow-up

You can also start a draft from a specific follow-up. Under Open threads further down the person's page, use a thread's Draft outreach action and that thread is what the draft is about, so you don't have to pick anything else. You can do the same from Today: each row under Open threads there has a Draft button, which starts writing as soon as you click it: a text if the person has a phone number and your device can send texts, otherwise an email, with Draft an email instead or Draft a text instead to switch. See Acting on an open thread.

You can also schedule from a specific follow-up: under Open threads, use a thread's Schedule touchpoint action and the event title and note are prefilled from that thread.

Shape how the draft sounds

The wording of a generated draft follows two things you control:

• What you type under What do you want to say? in the draft panel, which applies to that one draft.
• The Communication style field, which applies every time.

To set Communication style:

1. Open the person from Relationships.
2. Find the Stable fields heading. On a wide window it is in the narrow column down the right side of the page. On a narrower window it sits at the top of the page, above the timeline.
3. Click the Communication style value (it reads "e.g. prefers async, brief, direct" when empty).
4. Type something like "prefers async, brief, direct" and click Save.

Below Stable fields is a Voice profile section with Formality, Directness, Warmth, Length, Emoji OK, Mirror their style, Do not say, and Register notes. These settings shape how Groupthink phrases answers about this person in the Ask box. Click any field, pick or type a value, and click Save.

After the touchpoint

Tell Groupthink what happened to a touchpoint you planned. Where you do that depends on whether its time has passed.

• While it shows as Planned: there is a ... button next to the Planned entry in the header. Click it and pick It happened, Reschedule or Not happening.
• Once its time has passed: when the start time is more than 3 hours past and you have not answered, a line in the person's header asks about it. It reads like "Planned for Sep 19: Lunch with Mom. Did this happen?" and has three buttons: It happened, Reschedule and Not happening.

If one touchpoint is still ahead and an older one was never answered, you see both: the one ahead as Planned, and the older one as the question.

Each choice opens a small confirm step below the header. It names the touchpoint it will change, and has a Cancel button if you change your mind.

• It happened: add a note in the How did it go? (optional) box if you like, then click It happened to confirm. The touchpoint counts as contact from that moment, so Last met moves to today and the Status chip recalculates. It also shows up on the person's timeline, with your note. If the meeting from that calendar event is already on the timeline, the timeline shows the meeting instead of a second card for the same get-together, and your note stays on the touchpoint.
• Reschedule: under Move it to:, pick a new date and time, then click Reschedule. The touchpoint stays planned and does not count as contact until it happens.
• Not happening: the confirm step reads "This won't count as contact, and the plan stops showing here." Click Not happening to confirm.

Reschedule and Not happening change the plan in Groupthink only. The event on your calendar stays where it is, so move or cancel it in your calendar app as well.

The ... button only appears on a touchpoint you planned. When the header shows an Upcoming calendar meeting instead, there is no menu, because that is a meeting Groupthink found on your calendar rather than a plan you made.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to set a cadence for any of this to work?

The Going Cold filter does. Where you haven't set a cadence, it uses the rhythm Groupthink sees in your contact with that person. The Status column and the Relationship check-ins section on Today do not: they only cover people who have a cadence set.

Does Groupthink email me when someone goes cold?

Not person by person. Check-ins are in-app, on the Today page. The Daily Brief email covers tomorrow's meetings and today's recaps, not cadence check-ins. If your account gets Your weekly, that email looks back over the whole week, including who went quiet.

Does Groupthink ever send a message for me?

No. Drafted emails and texts open in your own mail or messages app for you to send. Scheduled touchpoints are written to your own calendar, and any invite comes from your calendar provider when you save the event.

Where did the cadence dropdown go on my person page?

Look under the row that starts with Last met, for the control labelled Cadence.

If you remember it as an unlabelled dropdown tucked at the end of the Last met row, that was the older layout. It now carries a visible label.

Can I set a cadence like "every 10 days"?

Not from the dropdown. The choices are Weekly, Biweekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Every 6 months, and Yearly.

Getting Help

Questions about staying in touch? Email support@groupthink.com