Why Robin can't set reminders for other people (yet)
The NestBoard team · 2026-06-29
The request we keep getting
Someone stands at the kitchen tablet and says, "Robin, remind Alex to pick up his prescription on Thursday." Or they type it: "Remind Mom about the parent-teacher conference."
Robin can't do this yet. It's one of our most-requested features, and we understand why, household life is full of nudges and follow-ups, and it feels natural to ask your shared AI assistant to help.
But every time we work on this, we run into the same question: who gets to decide what reminders land in your head?
The consent problem
If I create a reminder for myself, the consent is clear. I asked for it. I can dismiss it or ignore it. The relationship is simple.
If I create a reminder for you, the dynamic shifts. Now I'm putting something in your notification stream, your mental space, without you asking for it. Maybe you welcome that. Maybe you don't. Maybe it depends on the day, or the subject, or who's doing the reminding.
We've seen how this plays out in shared medication bottles, one person adds a supplement to NestBoard, and suddenly everyone in the household gets a daily reminder to take it. We reworked that feature so you only get reminders for things you've opted into. It matters.
Reminders feel smaller than medication schedules, but the principle is the same. We don't want Robin to become a way to nag someone, even unintentionally.
The kid account wrinkle
This gets more complicated with kid accounts. Parents reasonably want to remind children about homework, chores, or practice. That's not nagging, it's parenting.
But kid accounts already work differently in a dozen ways, and we're still figuring out where the boundaries should be. A seven-year-old and a fifteen-year-old need different levels of autonomy, and a one-size-fits-all "parents can remind kids" rule doesn't feel right.
What we're considering
We're not saying no forever. We're saying we want to get it right.
One path: explicit consent per reminder. "Robin wants to remind you about the prescription, accept or dismiss?" But that might just move the annoyance from the reminder itself to the permission request.
Another path: household rules you set once. "Alex can send me reminders, but only about shared calendar events." Or "I'm open to reminders from anyone in the house." This feels closer, but we're still working through the edge cases.
Moving carefully
Robin already has access to a lot of household information. We wrote about what it reads and what it doesn't because we think those boundaries matter.
The same care applies here. Just because something is technically easy doesn't mean it's the right thing to build quickly.
So for now, Robin can't remind other people. We're listening to how you'd want this to work, and we're moving carefully. When we ship it, we want to feel good about it.