Pinmate documentation

Sign-up takes an email and a password. We send a confirmation link to that address; you have 24 hours to click it. Until you do, your account exists but can't host pins or RSVP — only the public map is visible to you.

Sign-in uses the same email + password. A six-digit two-factor code is then sent to your inbox; entering it gives you a session that survives across page reloads. You can request a new code if the first one didn't arrive (check spam) or expired.

The dashboard is the home screen for signed-in users. It loads up to 200 active pins inside your observation radius, sorted by start time. Pins outside the radius do not load — neighbouring cities won't surface unless you widen the radius in the filter panel.

Markers carry two pieces of information at a glance: the sport (encoded as the dot's fill colour) and the timing state. Live pins pulse in a lime ring; pins starting soon get a static violet ring; expired pins fade to half opacity. Selecting a marker adds a soft violet halo on top so you can tell which one the side panel is describing.

Filters live in a right-side panel that's collapsible on mobile. Changes apply client-side immediately — the map redraws without a round-trip to the server. URL state is not synced, so refreshing the page resets filters to your saved defaults.

Tap any point on the map to start placing a pin, or use the "place a pin" button which arms a crosshair cursor and waits for your next click. The modal that opens is pre-filled with the chosen lat/lng — you can re-pick the spot from the modal header.

Required fields: title (max 120 chars), category, audience, start time, duration. Optional: description (up to 2,000 chars), discipline (40-char free-text sub-type like "MTB" or "5v5"), and visibility (public vs group). Social links from your profile are auto-attached — you don't need to paste them per pin.

Editing an existing pin keeps the same form. Some fields stay locked once the pin exists: the location can be edited only by deleting and re-creating, and visibility cannot be flipped between public and group (that would surprise RSVPed members).

Each pin shows two RSVP buttons: Going (a commitment, with a hard count) and Interested (a soft watchlist signal, separate count). You can switch between them or clear your RSVP entirely at any time before the pin starts.

RSVP counts are visible to anyone who can see the pin — including non-RSVPed viewers. Names of who's going aren't listed unless the host explicitly enables that (a future setting). Your own RSVP is highlighted with a sage badge.

The Activities page is your personal calendar across all pins. It splits into three buckets: Upcoming Going, Watching (Interested), and Past Going. Each bucket is server-paged.

Past Interested is intentionally not surfaced — if you only watched and didn't commit, there's nothing to remember afterwards. Pins you hosted appear here too, alongside ones you joined.

Your public profile lives at /profile/[your-id]. It shows your display name, avatar, bio, social handles, verification badge (if you have one), follower count, and your upcoming public pins. Group-only pins are hidden from non-members even on your own profile.

Edit profile fields from Settings → Profile. The avatar can be a photo you upload or one of the eight Trail Mix colours with your initial. Verified badges ("organizer" or "creator") are admin-curated trust signals — the auto-verify cron promotes you to "creator" once you've hosted five pins.

Tap Follow on someone's profile to surface their upcoming pins in your Network tile on the dashboard. The follow is one-directional — they don't need to accept and they aren't notified that you started following them. The reverse direction (who follows you) is shown only on your own profile.

Per-follow preferences live in the /network page. You can mute a follow (suppresses notifications without unfollowing), toggle email vs push channel independently, restrict notifications to specific categories, and add a geographic radius so distant pins from the followed user don't surface in your local feed.

Notifications for follows fire on a 12-minute delay after the pin is created. This is intentional: it absorbs the create-edit-delete loop that hosts often go through in the first few minutes, so you don't get spammed about a pin that no longer exists.

Groups are invite-only circles that share private pins. Currently only the secret mode is available — discoverable closed groups (request-to-join) and public open groups are deferred. Pins dropped in a group are invisible to non-members at every layer, including the public map and search.

Create a group from /groups. You become its owner. Invite members by generating a shareable link with an optional expiry and use cap, or invite a specific user by id. Direct user invites notify the recipient in-app.

Leaving a group is one click. If you're the only member and you leave, the group is deleted. If you're the owner with other members, you must transfer ownership or remove the other members first — the action will refuse otherwise to prevent ownerless groups.

Pinmate has two channels: push (web push via service worker, requires browser permission) and email (sent via SMTP in dev, Elastic Email in production). They're independent — turn either one off without affecting the other.

Channels are configurable per-pin (your RSVP reminders), per-follow (notifications for someone else's new pin), and globally in Settings (master toggles, reminder timing offset). When a follow's notification fires, the server re-checks that the pin still exists, hasn't expired, and is still visible to you before sending — late deletions or visibility flips don't produce ghost notifications.

Pinmate is built around the idea that your local map stays local. Concretely, the server enforces visibility scopes for every pin query, your home location is never broadcast, and there is no third-party tracker shipped with the default build.

Cookies are categorised into strictly necessary (session, locale, theme), analytics (off by default, opt-in via banner), and marketing (off by default). The cookie banner is the canonical source of truth; flipping a switch there immediately revokes consent on the next page load.