Your decoderHealth Buddy is a small animated companion that presents suggestions alongside your daily dashboard. It uses local recorded signals, rather than making an online AI request. The selected Buddy also appears in Check-In and while a chat response is being prepared.
What your Buddy uses
Suggestions are built from the supported information available to decoderHealth. This can include daily health summaries, recorded sleep timing, nutrition fields, water, activity, cycle, and glucose context. A suggestion depends on the data that has actually been recorded and made available.
Local suggestions, separate from chat
The Buddy's suggestion system runs on the device. It does not upload a Buddy package or make an AI-chat request to generate its message. decoderPro chat is a separate online feature with its own account and subscription requirements.
Choosing your companion
1. Open Buddy settings
From Settings, open Buddy to view the available companions. decoderHealth includes a bundled Robot, so the dashboard can show a Buddy without requiring an imported package.
2. Select a Buddy
Choose the companion you want to use. Your selection persists across app restarts and changes when you select or import another Buddy. If a saved package is unavailable, decoderHealth falls back to the bundled Robot.
3. Import a supported package
Buddy settings accepts supported ZIP packages from Petdex. Select a package through the file picker. decoderHealth validates the manifest and spritesheet before keeping it in the app's local storage.
4. Review the dashboard message
The dashboard presents a relevant suggestion from local recorded data. Several suggestions can be relevant at once; the system considers how actionable they are and the available recorded signal when choosing what to show.
5. Tap the Buddy
The companion has an idle animation and a tap reaction. The app pauses off-screen animations. These visual behaviors keep the companion present without making it a separate activity you need to manage.
Reading suggestions in context
1. Check the underlying records
If a suggestion refers to a recorded habit, open the corresponding metric to review its history. Missing records or incomplete nutrition fields can limit what the app can infer from that day's data.
2. Consider the time window
A message based on the current day may use values recorded so far. Recorded meal timing, sleep windows, and daily totals are different forms of context; none guarantees complete coverage of the day.
3. Keep measurements and estimates distinct
Weight and connected source readings differ from calculated expenditure or energy balance. A suggestion can use those estimates, but it does not make the underlying value a direct measurement.
4. Use Check-In for personal observations
Mood and energy ratings let you record your own description of a moment. They supplement connected records rather than replacing them. A context tag describes something occurring alongside that observation, not a proven cause.
5. Explore chat when you want a conversation
Pro chat can answer questions using selected health summaries and conversation context online. The Buddy's local suggestions remain available without a chat subscription. Review the Pro guide for account access, limits, and data scope.
Keep your Buddy personal
Choose a companion you enjoy seeing, then use the message as another way into your recorded data. The Buddy does not diagnose a condition or measure unrecorded bodily changes. For app setup and metric permissions, read the quick start guide.