Hobbes July Feature Drop

Until a few years ago, my favorite activity was wildlife photography. I would travel for hours, wait endlessly for that one elusive shot of a bird, chase a butterfly from one plant to the next, or hunt for the perfect light on a flower. If I came home after a full day of this with even one good photo, I felt accomplished.

I wanted a little of that joy in Hobbes. When you meet all your habits for the day, you're rewarded with an image from the natural world: a bird, a butterfly, or a flower. It's not a big celebration. It's a small dose of delight that hopefully makes you pause for a second and nudges you to finish your habits. It's different each day, and the images collect in a calendar view so you can watch your progress build over time. This was fun to build.

Next, I rewrote the chat backend from the ground up. The old version ran on an intent classifier. Every message you sent got sorted into a bucket before the app decided what to do, which made follow-up questions and longer conversations brittle. The new version runs an agentic loop. The model reasons about what you actually want and can take several steps to get there. In practice, chat is now much better at follow-ups, longer conversations, and understanding what you mean.

I also took another step towards reducing logging friction with a feature I call "usuals." The chat now surfaces chips for the foods you tend to eat at that time of day. Tap one to log it. For the meals you eat frequently, this is the fastest way to log yet.

As always, there are bug fixes: e.g., you can now correct errors in calories or macros through chat ("That bread was 80 cal, not 120"), UX improvements, and performance work.

Update the app if you already have it and try out these new features. If you haven't tried the app yet, download it from the App Store or Play Store and use the code THANKYOU for a discount on your first year.

Hit reply and tell me what you think: what's working and what is not. I'd love to hear!