How to play

A field guide to keeping Frankie.

Everything here happens inside the app — no accounts, no setup beyond this.

Day one: fostering

Every keeper starts as a foster. Frankie arrives from the kennel with a clean slate, and you set up the daily habits you'll be judged on — the real ones, from your real life. You're not asked to become a new person; you're asked to look after a dog.

Habits are the food, water and walks

Habits live in three categories — Body, Mind and Routine — and each category has a health bar that decays around the clock. Completing a habit tops its bar back up; ignoring your habits lets it slide.

• Schedule them your way: pick which days each habit runs and whether it belongs to the morning, the middle of the day, or the night.
• Tick or count: some habits are one tap (brush teeth), others fill up in steps (eight cups of water, minutes of a walk).
• Goals: longer-term targets with a due date, tracked with their own progress bar. Hit one and the whole screen celebrates.

Swipe a habit row for the good stuff

Every habit row hides quick actions behind a swipe, just like Apple's own Reminders:

• Swipe right → Pin. Keeps a habit at the top of its list (swipe again to unpin).
• Swipe left → Edit · Defer · Minus · Miss.
  • Edit opens the habit for changes — name, days, steps, anything.
  • Defer nudges a habit to later in the day when the morning got away from you.
  • Minus takes one step back off a counted habit — for when you logged a cup of water you didn't actually drink.
  • Miss is the honest button: admit today's not happening. It stings less than pretending.

The options adapt to the row — goals and not-scheduled-today habits only offer what makes sense for them, and completed rows just offer Edit.

Moods: read the sky

Frankie's world tells you how you're doing. Keep the bars healthy and it's blue skies and a waggy dog; let things slip and the weather — and Frankie's face — turn. If you see sad eyes, you know what to do.

Bones and Irene's Market

Completed habits earn bones 🦴 — the only currency in Frankie's world. Spend them at Irene's Market on collars, toys, scenes and treats, or invest them in training skills that Frankie learns permanently. Irene will comment on your taste either way.

The Doggy Talkie

The Doggy Talkie is the running feed of your life together — every habit, purchase and mood swing, narrated by Frankie (translated, naturally), Bill the vet, and Irene. Checking in on it daily builds your bond with Frankie, level by level. Bond never goes back down.

OH NO moments

Dogs find trouble. Now and then an OH NO takes over the screen — a swallowed sock, a dug-up flowerbed — and you'll need a healthy stash of bones to get Frankie out of it. Save the day and it's a story in the feed; fail, and there's an incident card on your record.

The weekly check-in

Once a week you get a gentle summary of how the two of you are doing — what got done on time, what slipped, and how Frankie's feeling about it. It's the honest mirror, minus the guilt trip.

Strikes

Serious, sustained neglect earns a strike, marked on your Owner's Card. Three strikes and Frankie is rehomed — genuinely gone. Strikes can be cleared: two straight weeks of flawless habit-keeping wipes the slate. It's meant to sting a little; that's what makes keeping Frankie mean something.

Fostering vs adopting

Fostering is free, forever, in 30-day cycles — at the end of each cycle your foster dog returns to the kennel and a new Frankie arrives. Adopting ($3/month) makes it permanent: your Frankie, your name for them, no more goodbyes, plus extras like exclusive cosmetics and monthly kennel days. Payment and cancellation are handled by Apple in your App Store account.

The Owner's Card

Your card shows Frankie in whatever outfit and scene you've put together, along with your days together, bond level and — yes — your strikes. Share it anywhere; wear the crown with pride.