Invite family

Inviting someone gives them their own sign-in to your household. They see the shared circles and people, and keep their own seen state. This is different from sharing a circle, which lets someone copy people into their Homestead.

Pick a role

Role	Good for	Can
Viewer	Grandparents and anyone who just wants to look	Read the feed, stories, people and circles; mark seen; check in; snooze; edit their own profile
Member	A partner or sibling who helps keep things tidy	Everything a viewer can, plus add and edit people, accounts, circles and shares, create agent tokens, invite viewers

Members can invite viewers. Only owners can invite members. See Household and roles.

Invite with a QR code

1. Create an invite. Today the last welcome step shows a viewer invite with a QR code (“Anyone with this link can join as a viewer”). Household settings will let you create invites with a role, see them and revoke them. Available on main (W-09)

2. Show the QR code to your parent’s phone camera, or send the link.

3. They open the link and see who invited them to which household, for example “Mali invited you to The Wongs’ Homestead”.

4. They enter their name, a username and a password, and select Join. They’re signed in.

If the invite has expired they see “This invite has expired. Ask Mali for a new one.”

Invite with the API

Until household settings land, a member or owner can create invites with a device token (see how to get one):

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/invites -H "Authorization: Bearer hsd_YOUR_DEVICE_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"role":"viewer","expiresInDays":7,"maxUses":1}'

Field	Values	Default
role	viewer or member (owners only)	required
expiresInDays	1 to 30	7
maxUses	1 to 20	1

The reply carries code, url and qrPayload. They’re shown only once. To list active invites, GET /api/v1/invites; to revoke one, DELETE /api/v1/invites/{inviteId}.

Set it up for them

For someone who won’t configure anything:

• Make them a viewer, so there’s nothing to break.
• Add their people for them, and put the closest ones in Family with closeness “Closest”.
• On their device, turn up the text size (100 %, 115 %, 130 % or 160 %) from the Aa appearance menu. See Languages and text size.
• Put Homestead on their home screen. On a phone, that’s the web app installed from the browser, or the phone app once its feed is ready. Coming in 1.0 (M-03)

Tip

For the phone app, a pairing QR code (“Open on my phone”) signs a phone in as the member who made the code. To sign in a parent’s phone as the parent, make the code while signed in as them, or let them sign in with their own username and password.

Change roles or remove someone

The owner can change a member’s role or remove them (PATCH or DELETE /api/v1/members/{memberId}). A household always keeps at least one owner. The members screen is part of household settings. Available on main (W-09)