Groups & seasons

Groups

Everything the app does happens inside a group: the members, the seasons they run, the proofs they post. This is what a group is, who holds which role in one, and what each role can actually do — read off the two checks the server puts every request through.

At a glance

There is one kind of group. A named container, with people in it, that you were let into.
Anyone can make one, and whoever makes it is its first admin.
Two roles, admin and member — and one group can hold several admins.
A group must always keep one live member and one admin. Every way the count could fall is refused.
Admins hold the group; members hold their own part in it. The split is exact, and it is below.
Archiving is a shelf, not a delete. Everything keeps working, and everyone else is told on the bell.

One kind of group

Earlier versions gave every member a private group of their own, minted on first sign-in. That is gone. Nothing creates one any more — a new account gets its default roles and nothing else — and a deploy step deletes the ones production still carries, because the column that told them apart from a real group has been dropped.

So there is no personal space, no drafts corner, and no group you are in by yourself without having asked for it. Every group on your dashboard is one you made, or one somebody let you into.

The dashboard: the date, Good evening Joe, a New group button, then one card per group — Iron Discipline, Morning Crew, Peak Fitness Gym — each with its photo, member faces, an Admin badge, and either its running season or No season yet. — Your groups, on the dashboard home. The Admin badge marks every group the viewer administers. /groups is only a redirect now — the list was absorbed into this page.

Making one

A name, between 1 and 255 characters, and that is the entire form. Creating the group writes the group row, and then an admin membership for you — so the person who made a group is always the first one able to run it.

The app then sends you straight on to creating a season rather than back to the dashboard, because an empty group has nothing to show anyone you might invite.

The Create Group page: a single Group name field with the placeholder e.g. Design Team, and a Create group button, greyed out until the field has something in it. — One field. The photo, the members and the season all come afterwards.

What you end up with is this: a header carrying the group's photo, its member faces and its count, and — because you are its admin — an Invite button and the settings gear beside them. A member of the same group sees the header without those two.

The group page for Peak Fitness Gym as its admin: a header with the group photo, four member faces, an Invite button and a settings gear; a Getting started strip reading Group, Season, You; a Start a season card with a Create season button; and Season history below. — A group with no season running. The Getting started strip is the app saying what is still missing — and Create season is a button only an admin is given.

The two roles

Every request that touches a group goes through one of two checks, and which one it is is the permission model. There is no third tier and no per-action setting.

Member: Holds a live membership row in the group. Anything less — never joined, left, or removed — is refused with “You are not a member of this group”.
Admin: A membership row whose role is admin. Everything a member can do, plus the group-level verbs below.
How many admins: As many as you like. Promotion is unconditional, so a group can be run by all of its members if that is what you want.
How few: Never none. Every removal, departure and demotion is checked against that before it is allowed to land.
Where the role is shown: Beside every name — in the group page’s member list, and again in group settings. The dashboard card carries your own role for each group.

The Members list on a group page: Joe George (you) with an Admin badge, then Sarah Chen, Priya Patel and Liam O'Brien each with a Member badge, and a dashed Invite someone tile beneath them. — The same page, further down: the roster with the roles drawn on it. The dashed invite tile is admin-only here.

What only an admin can do

These are exactly the actions the server guards with an admin check. A member who asks for one gets “Only group admins can perform this action”, whether or not the app offered them a button.

Rename it, change its photo: The pencil on the group settings card. A member sees the card without the pencil.
Start a season: The create-season form redirects a non-admin straight back to the group, and the endpoint refuses them anyway.
Answer join requests: Both seeing the queue and deciding on a request. Any admin can decide; the first decision is the last.
See and revoke invite links: The list of live links, and killing one. Making a link is not on this list — see below.
Add a member outright: Bypassing the invite flow entirely. The app offers no button for it.
Remove a member: Their membership ends immediately. Not quite the same as their walking out — see Leaving, and being removed.
Promote and demote: Make another member an admin, or take the role back off one.
Archive and unarchive: The group’s one consequential setting, and the only one that notifies anybody.

What a member can do

The rest. Opening the group, reading its timeline, listing its seasons, committing and posting, and walking out — all gated on membership alone.

The settings page, from both sides

Same route, same page, two very different pages. An admin gets a pencil and three extra cards; a member gets the identity card, the roster, and the way out.

Group settings as an admin: the group card with a pencil button, a Members list showing Joe George with an admin badge and Sarah Chen, Marcus Bell and Priya Patel with member badges and a three-dot menu each, then an Invite Link card. — As an admin. The pencil edits the name and photo, and every other member's row carries a menu — Joe's own does not, because he is the only admin and there is nothing valid to offer on it.

The same group settings page as an ordinary member: the same group card without a pencil, the same members list with no three-dot menus, and a Leave group card immediately below it. — The same URL as an ordinary member. No pencil, no row menus, and the Leave group card sits where the invite links, the request queue and the archive card were.

Changing who is an admin

An admin's menu on a member's row offers two things: make them an admin, or remove them from the group. On an admin's row it offers one — take the role back — and calls it Step down as admin when the row is your own.

An action sheet over a blurred members list, offering Make admin, then Remove from group in red, then Cancel. — What an admin can do to one member. On a phone the row menu opens as a sheet.

The rule that outranks everything

A group with nobody in it vanishes from every list and can never be reached again. A group whose last admin has gone is reachable but frozen — nobody can rename it, admit a request, remove anyone or start a season. Both leave a group only an operator can rescue, so both are refused at the same place, with the roster locked while the answer is worked out.

Leaving as the only member: Refused: “Removing the last member would leave the group empty; delete the group instead.”
Leaving as the only admin: Refused: “Removing the last admin would leave the group without an admin; promote another member to admin first.”
Demoting the only admin: Refused the same way — a demotion drops the admin count exactly as a departure does.
Removing anyone the group survives without: Allowed. The rule is about what is left standing, not about who is asking.
Two admins stepping down at once: One succeeds. The roster is locked for the length of each check, so the second is answered against the first’s result rather than against a stale count.

The app says so before you press rather than after. The leave card carries the reason and its remedy where the button is:

The foot of group settings: the pending join requests and Archive cards, then the Leave group card whose button sits above the line You are the only admin. Make someone else an admin before you leave. — The refusal, stated at the button rather than discovered by pressing it. The button stays focusable and announced — it is the press that is swallowed — and the server enforces the same rule regardless.

Leaving, and being removed

The two doors out of a group differ in who is allowed to open them — you, or an admin — and in one consequence. The departure itself is the same either way: the same guard, the same closed-out stint, the same residue swept. What differs is the commitment you were holding when it happened.

Your place on the roster: Gone at once. The membership is closed out as a finished stint rather than left lying in the table the app reads permissions from.
Commitments you still owe — if you leave: Ended, but only in seasons that have not finished yet. A commitment in a season that already ended stands as it was.
Commitments you still owe — if you are removed: Left running. Removal ends the membership and sweeps the residue; it does not touch the commitment, so one held in a season that is still going outlives the removal. Leaving is the only door that closes it.
Proofs you posted: They stay in the group’s timeline, photos and all, for the people still reading it. The timeline records what was posted; the roster records who is here now, and the two are allowed to disagree.
Tags naming you: They stay. A tag is a mention, and leaving does not unsay it.
Your bell rows for that group: Deleted. They were news from inside a room you have left.
Invite links you had minted: Every one still live is revoked at the moment you leave; one you had already revoked keeps the moment it was revoked at. The record of who came in through which link is kept either way.
Coming back: Through a fresh invite, like anyone else. If the season is still running you can pick your old commitment back up rather than starting over.

Archiving

Archiving is the group's one consequential setting, and it is deliberately dull: it writes down that the group is archived and who did it, and that is the whole of the change. Nothing is deleted, nothing is hidden, nothing is frozen. Seasons keep running, proofs keep posting, comments and likes keep landing, invites and join requests keep working.

A confirmation dialog reading Archive this group? Everyone in the group will be notified. Nothing is deleted — seasons, posts and comments all stay, and you can unarchive at any time. Cancel and Archive buttons. — Archiving asks first, because other people get told. Unarchiving does not ask — it only undoes this.

Who can: Admins only, both ways. Unarchiving is not restricted to the admin who archived it.
What changes: One stamp on the group: when, and by whom. There is no cascade and no access change.
What actually behaves differently: One thing: the nightly “you have a day open” reminder stops for that group. It is the only notification that reaches a member who did not act, so it is the only one archiving silences — every other still fires as before.
Who is told: Every member of the group except the admin who pressed it, in the same write as the stamp itself. Nobody is left unaware of an archive that happened.
How they are told: The bell, and only the bell. Archiving sends no email and no push, and unarchiving sends nothing at all.
What the bell says: “Sarah Chen archived Morning Crew” — or “Morning Crew was archived”, once the admin who did it has deleted their account and there is no longer a name to give.
Two admins at once: One stamp and one refusal. The loser is told the group is already archived rather than quietly overwriting who archived it.
Unarchiving a live group: Refused — “This group is not archived”. A no-op would hide which of the two verbs you actually got.

Group settings after archiving: an Archived card reading Archived by Joe George on September 1, 2026 — Unarchive to put it back with your other groups, beside an Unarchive button, with the invite link and join request cards unchanged above it. — After the press. The card shows one button or the other, never both — it reads the state off the stamp.

On the group itself the archive is a standing notice above a page that still works, and for an admin it carries the way back. A member sees the same line without the button.

The Peak Fitness Gym page with an archive notice above everything else, reading Archived by Joe George on September 1, 2026 beside an Unarchive button, over the unchanged group header, Getting started strip and Start a season card. — It states a fact and blocks nothing — because archiving freezes nothing.

There is no delete

Nothing in the app deletes a group. Archiving is the only group-level verb the product offers, and it is the reversible one; the destructive path exists in the code as an operator's tool, reachable only by someone with a database in front of them, and it has no button and no way back for the people who were in the group. That is why nothing offers it.

The way to end your own part in a group is to leave it — which needs someone else to be holding the room open behind you.