What the Fairness Score actually means

The dial on your Tasks tab is a single number from 0 to 100 describing how evenly the household’s work is falling. It is the one number Equal House exists to produce, so it is worth understanding what it is and is not.

It counts effort, not jobs

Ten minutes putting the bins out and ninety minutes of batch cooking are not the same thing, and a score that counted them equally would be easy to game and useless to trust. Every task carries a difficulty, and the engine weighs by that rather than by how many rows each person ticked.

It is measured against capacity, not against each other

A straight 50/50 split is the wrong target for most households. Someone working six days a week, on a night shift, or off sick is not failing by doing less. Each adult has a capacity share, and the score compares what they did against what it is reasonable for them to do.

If you set up work patterns, the engine goes further and expects less of someone during the hours they are actually at work.

What it does not know

It only knows what is written down. This is the single most common reason a score looks wrong: the person who feels the load is carrying jobs nobody has ever added — remembering the dentist, noticing the shoes are too small, keeping the birthday list. Until those exist as tasks, they are invisible to the maths as well as to the household.

If the score disagrees with how it feels, that gap is usually the answer, not an error.

The first week

A day of data is noise, and the score says so now. Until a household has about a week of history and a handful of jobs ticked off, the dial reads Settling in, drawn in grey rather than a colour, with the number still shown. A couple of tasks can swing it either way at that stage; treat it as a first impression, not a verdict. The full explanation under How is this worked out? says the same, first.

Changing the window

The score can be read over a day, week, month or year. A week is the fairest default: a day is noise, and a year hides a bad month. Tap the period toggle above the dial.

On a suggestion

From version 1.16.0 of the app.

A suggestion card from Bric or a connected assistant shows this score worked out for the grown-ups’ jobs planned for the next 7 days, today included: what it is now and what it would be if you approved, as “Next 7 days 71 → 78”. It is the household’s number, never one person’s share, and children’s chores never count towards it. A suggestion worked out on an earlier day says which 7 days it covers, such as “7 days from Mon 12 Oct: 71 → 74”. A fairer week ahead shows its own “Now” and “If applied”, which also count the last 14 days of finished work, so the two can differ.

What to do about a lopsided score

• Auto-Balance the week, under the dial on the Week view, shares out the tasks nobody has yet (see below)
• Fairer Week Ahead proposes a redistribution you can accept or ignore
• Time Breakdown shows where the hours are actually going
• Check nobody’s capacity share is set wrongly — an adult accidentally left at a low share will look permanently virtuous

From version 1.16.0 of the app, with Pro, Ask Bric why under the dial puts that question in Bric’s box, for the period the dial is showing. Nothing is sent until you send it — see Bric’s page.

Auto-Balance

Auto-Balance the week hands the open tasks nobody has picked up to whoever has the most room for them, by the same weighting as the score. The dial then shows where the week is heading if it goes to plan, and one line says what happened: “Shared out 5 tasks. On track for 82/100.” With one grown-up it says where they went instead: “All 5 tasks are on your list.”

The line names nobody. Sharing the week out is the household’s, not a contest, so there is no buzz and no confetti. Beside it, Bric holds his arms out flat like a balanced scale only when the projection really is balanced — 90 or more — and otherwise just nods. The line goes when the projection does: refresh, or switch to another period.

The other grown-ups aren’t sent anything for it. The next time they open Equal House, once a week at most, Bric says Tasks were shared out — “Some may be on your list now.” — without saying who did it.