Sidenote
A note beside what you're already doing.
On screens that carry the Ask Benjamin pill, Benjamin quietly checks the numbers behind the page. When he finds something worth saying, he bounces, a notice appears over his head, and the pill's label changes. Most of the time he finds nothing — that is the design. Benjamin is the character and the chat; Sidenote is him not waiting to be asked.
Every figure in a Sidenote was computed by the server from the same data the screen shows. A model chooses the words, never the numbers.
The reveal
Land on a page and settle for a moment. If an insight exists for this screen, Benjamin bounces with a haptic, the notice lands above his crown, and "Ask Benjamin" crossfades to a fixed label in his voice — never the feature name.
How loud the arrival is — and what the pill says — depends on urgency:
| Tier | Notice | Label | Feel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | Red alert | Heads Up (ruby shimmer) | Warning haptic; may interrupt even when Benjamin has already spoken this session |
| Opportunity | Sparkle | Found Something | Medium haptic, one bounce |
| Informational | Idea bulb | Noticed This | Light haptic |
| Ambient | Idea bulb | unchanged | No bounce, no label change — discoverable, never demanding |
Benjamin bounces at most once per session for anything short of critical. A screen he has already spoken on stays quiet for the rest of the session.
The callout
Tap the pill and the note takes its place — a glass card crossfading in where the pill stood: what he found, in a couple of sentences, with the numbers already in place. Dismissing crossfades back to the pill.
Talk it through hands the finding to Benjamin's chat with the facts preloaded, so the conversation starts from the insight instead of re-deriving it. × dismisses — that topic stays gone for several months, not just today.
The quiet tiers
Lower-urgency notes change less. An informational find stays on the resting silver shimmer and drops the fanfare — a light haptic and the label Noticed This.
States not pictured: the red critical notice with its ruby label shimmer (reserved for things like a balance that will not cover upcoming bills) and the ambient bulb, which changes nothing but the badge.
Where it appears — and what he's checking
Any pushed screen with the Ask Benjamin pill. Each insight is pinned to the page (and entity) it is about — a groceries note surfaces on Groceries, not on a sibling category. Everything below is computed deterministically from your data; the model only chooses the words.
| Screen | What Benjamin checks there |
|---|---|
| Transactions | Spending-limit pace, month running hot vs your own history, double charges, refunds, unused or duplicate subscriptions, a few merchants dominating spend, weekend/day-of-month pattern shifts |
| Category detail | Budget projected over / blown early / pacing hot, a never-used budget, this month vs the category's 6-month baseline, steady month-over-month climbs, unusual volatility, new categories, share-of-spending shifts |
| Merchant detail | Spend level vs that merchant's baseline, visit frequency up or down, average ticket growing or shrinking, brand-new or disappeared merchants, one merchant taking over a category |
| Group detail | Group budget overage / pace, the group's spend level vs baseline |
| Needs / Wants detail | The needs/wants split drifting from your typical mix |
| Account detail | Runway at the current burn, credit utilization (level and trend), balance lower than this point in past months, new monthly low, an account that flipped from filling to draining, stale sync |
| Income detail | Income below expectation, a late deposit, income riding on one source, unusual income volatility |
| Recurring detail | A missed payment, a charge off its usual schedule, a vanished stream, price creep, usage-based amount swings |
| Goal detail | Off pace or ahead of pace for the target date, a missed trim commitment, a passed target date |
| Cash flow | Consecutive negative months, a still-positive but deteriorating trend, spending up while income stays flat |
| Transaction detail | The largest charge ever at that merchant, a first sizable charge somewhere new |
Related
- Benjamin — the pill, chat, and voice this rides on
- Insights — the Home stack and notification digests
- The Rundown — the period story; Sidenote is the day-to-day counterpart
- Transactions — the data most findings are computed from