How Set Adrift Works

Getting Started

Set Adrift will be available on iOS, Android, and as a web app at setadrift.app. Creating an account takes about a minute — you'll need your name, a profile photo, and an email address. That's it for the basics.

If you're the one receiving an invite (not initiating a Drift), you never pay anything. Partners always join free.

What Does the Onboarding Quiz Ask?

The onboarding quiz is how Set Adrift's AI learns enough about you to generate meaningful questions and compatibility analysis. It takes about three minutes and covers six areas: your spice level (how comfortable you are with intimate topics), vibe keywords that describe what you're looking for, your food preferences, your location, streaming services you use, and your current music mood.

None of this is shared directly with your partner. Instead, the AI uses your combined profiles to generate questions that are relevant to both of you and to build your compatibility archetype. You can update your quiz answers anytime in your profile settings.

How Do I Invite Someone to a Drift?

You invite someone by sending them a link. When you create a new Drift, Set Adrift generates a unique invite code. You can share it via text, DM, AirDrop — however you normally communicate with that person. The link expires after 72 hours for safety.

When your person taps the link, they'll open the app, complete their own onboarding quiz, and join your shared Drift. They don't need to pay — partners always join free. They only need their own subscription if they want to initiate Drifts with other people.

What Happens When My Partner Joins?

Once both of you have completed onboarding, the Drift activates. The AI analyzes both of your profiles — your quiz answers, your spice levels, your vibe keywords — and generates your compatibility archetype. This is a name and explanation for the dynamic between you two, based on what the AI sees in your combined data.

Your Drift is assigned a unique color pair that becomes its visual identity. This isn't just decorative — when you have multiple Drifts, the color helps you instantly recognize which connection you're in. Every element inside the Drift takes on its color: the Moment Button, avatar rings, progress indicators, card accents.

What Is the Archetype Reveal?

The Archetype Reveal is the first thing you experience together in a Drift. It's a short, cinematic moment where two orbs (representing each of you) animate toward each other and merge. Then your compatibility archetype name appears, followed by an explanation of what the AI sees in your dynamic.

Archetypes are descriptive, not prescriptive. They're not telling you whether you're compatible — they're giving you a starting vocabulary for the kind of connection you might have. Think of it as a hypothesis that the rest of your Drift will test.

How Do Questions Work?

Questions are the core of a Drift. The AI generates questions tailored to both of your profiles, and they arrive progressively — you don't see all of them at once. Each question has a category: warm (getting to know you), hot (values and deeper preferences), and spicy (intimate, only available if both partners have opted in).

Both of you answer the same question independently. You can't see your partner's answer until you've both submitted. This is enforced at the server level, not just in the UI — there's no way to peek. Once both answers are in, the reveal happens: you see both responses side by side, and the AI updates your compatibility map based on what it finds.

There's no timer or pressure. Answer when you're ready. Some questions will take a minute to think about. That's the point.

What Is the Moment Button?

The Moment Button is the large pulsing circle at the center of your Drift. Tap it when you're thinking of your person. That's all it does. It records the timestamp and sends it to the server.

Here's where it gets interesting: if both of you tap the Moment Button within 15 minutes of each other — without knowing the other person tapped — that's a Moment Sync. The app detects this and notifies both of you. It's a small thing that feels like a big thing. No one planned it. No one coordinated it. You were just thinking of each other at the same time.

The Moment Button pulses with your Drift's color — a gentle heartbeat animation that runs continuously, like a quiet reminder.

How Does the Private Journal Work?

The journal is your private space to process how you're feeling about a connection. Write whatever you want — your partner will never see it. This isn't a promise; it's an architectural guarantee. Journal entries are stored in your personal user data, and the security rules physically prevent any other user from reading them.

What the journal does enable is blind analysis. Server-side (never on your device), the AI reads both your journal and your partner's journal separately. It extracts abstract themes — not content, not quotes, not paraphrases. Then it looks for patterns across those themes. If it finds something meaningful, it generates an insight like "You're both sitting with the same unasked question" or "There's a shared sense of momentum this week."

The insight never reveals what either person wrote. If the AI can't generate an insight without hinting at the content, it doesn't generate one at all.

What Is the Compatibility Map?

The compatibility map tracks seven dimensions of your connection: adventure, humor, values, ambition, family, money, and intimacy. Each dimension gets a score that updates as you answer questions, submit flags, and interact within the Drift.

Think of it as a living snapshot of what the AI has observed so far. Early on, most dimensions will be empty — the AI doesn't have enough data yet. As you answer more questions and the AI analyzes more of your interactions, the map fills in. It's never "complete" in a final sense; it's always the current best picture.

The map is shared — both partners see the same scores. This is intentional. It gives you something concrete to talk about.

What Are Sparks?

Sparks are disappearing photos. You can send a photo to your partner that's visible for a limited time, then it's gone. Sparks can be tied to a question (a visual answer, an expression, a moment) or sent independently.

On Android, screenshots are blocked at the OS level. On iOS, screenshots can't be prevented, but the app detects when one is taken and immediately notifies the sender. The photo is marked, and the sender can choose to delete it from both devices. On the web, the photo is displayed with protections (no right-click, no drag), but a clear warning reminds you that screenshot prevention has limits on browsers.

How Do Green and Red Flags Work?

After you see a question reveal (both answers side by side), you can flag your partner's answer: green flag, red flag, or interesting. Your partner does the same with your answer. These flags are hidden until a threshold is reached — enough flags from both of you to make the reveal meaningful.

When the Flag Reveal happens, you see every flag both of you placed, all at once. It's designed to be a moment of honest conversation — not a judgment, but a starting point. What felt like a green flag to you? What concerned your partner? What did they find "interesting" instead of clearly positive or negative?

What Is Tonight?

Tonight is a swipe-matching feature for activities. You and your partner independently swipe through restaurants, movies, and activities. When you both swipe yes on the same thing, it's a match — and the app celebrates with a match screen in your Drift's color.

The items are personalized to your location and preferences from onboarding. Restaurant suggestions come from the Google Places API and reflect your food preferences. Movie suggestions factor in your streaming services. Activities are generated based on what's available near you.

How Does the Shared Playlist Work?

Our Vibe is a shared Spotify playlist that Set Adrift creates for your Drift. When one or both of you connect Spotify (using the secure PKCE flow — no passwords shared), the AI generates a playlist based on your combined music moods, question themes, and general vibe.

The playlist is created under the initiator's Spotify account, and the partner is added as a follower. Both of you can listen, and the playlist evolves as your Drift progresses. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen directly in the app. If not, the app links to Spotify.

How Do Multiple Drifts Work?

If your subscription allows it, you can have more than one active Drift at a time. Each Drift is completely isolated — different partner, different color, different questions, different compatibility data. Nothing from one Drift leaks into another.

When you're on the Drift Dashboard (the home screen), you see all your active Drifts as cards. Each card shows the partner's name, their avatar with a ring in the Drift's color, the compatibility archetype, and a mini version of the compatibility map. Tap a card to enter that Drift.

The One Drift plan allows one active connection. The Drifting plan allows up to three. Full Drift is unlimited.

What Is Your Pattern?

Your Pattern is a set of private insights about you — not about any specific partner, but about patterns the AI has observed across multiple Drifts. It requires at least two active or completed Drifts to generate anything, and it's available on the Drifting and Full Drift plans.

Pattern insights never identify which Drift or partner they're drawn from. They use language like "Observed across 3 connections" instead of "In your drift with Alex." The point is self-knowledge: what themes keep showing up in how you connect? What do you consistently value? Where do you keep hitting the same walls?

Your Pattern is visible only to you. It lives in your profile, not inside any Drift. No partner will ever see it.

What Are the Subscription Tiers?

Set Adrift has three subscription tiers:

Partners always join free. They only need a subscription to initiate their own Drifts with other people.

How Does Set Adrift Protect My Privacy?

Privacy isn't a feature of Set Adrift — it's the architecture. Here's what that means in practice:

Your journal is readable only by you. This is enforced by Firestore security rules at the database level — no server-side code, no admin panel, no support agent can read your journal entries. The blind analysis that generates insights happens entirely server-side and only outputs abstract themes, never content.

Your Pattern insights never identify partners by name, Drift color, or any distinguishing detail. They only reference patterns observed "across N connections."

When you delete your account, your journal entries and Pattern insights are deleted immediately. Your Drifts are archived (not deleted) so your partner can still access the shared history for 90 days. After that, the Drift data is permanently purged.

Set Adrift doesn't sell data, doesn't show ads, and doesn't share your information with third parties beyond what's needed to run the service (Firebase for infrastructure, Stripe for payments, Spotify for playlists if you connect it).

Something's Not Working — Now What?

If your partner's invite link isn't working, make sure it hasn't been more than 72 hours since you sent it. Invite codes expire for security. You can generate a new one from the Drift settings.

If questions aren't appearing, both partners need to have completed the onboarding quiz. The AI can't generate personalized questions without both profiles.

If the Moment Button isn't showing syncs, remember the window is 15 minutes. Both taps need to happen within that window, and the detection runs on the server — it might take a minute to process.

If Spotify isn't connecting, make sure you're using the Set Adrift app (not a browser) and that you're granting all requested permissions. The app uses Spotify's PKCE authentication flow, which requires a redirect back to the app.

For anything else, reach out through the in-app support option in your profile settings. We read every message.