# App Overview (website copy)
**Last updated:** August 16, 2026
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# Fido: AI-Powered Pet Behavioral Tracking
## Overview
Fido is a native Android application that leverages AI to help pet owners understand their pet's behavior and emotional well-being. Unlike generic pet apps or chat wrappers, Fido is a specialized behavioral intelligence tool that transforms pet videos into actionable insights through expert-level analysis.
## What Fido Does
Users can record or upload short 15-second videos of their pet's behavior. These videos are analyzed by AI using behavior-focused system instructions, generating:
- **Mood Score** — A quantified emotional state (0-100)
- **Behavioral Observations** — What the pet's body language and vocalizations reveal
- **Identified Triggers** — What likely caused the observed behavior
- **Actionable Advice** — Practical recommendations for the pet owner
The analysis results are displayed on an intuitive **Mood Dashboard** tied to the pet's profile, creating a longitudinal record of behavioral patterns over time.
## Core Features
### 1. **Pet Profiles**
Create and manage multiple pet profiles with pet type, name, breed, age, notes, and optional profile photos. Pet type is immutable after creation to maintain consistency with species-specific behavioral vocabularies.
### 2. **Video Analysis**
- **Record**: Native 15-second video capture via CameraX with high-quality audio
- **Upload**: Import videos from device gallery and auto-trim to 15s with optimized transcoding
- **Processing**: Videos are sent directly to AI for analysis (server-side, not stored long-term on Fido's servers)
### 3. **Mood Dashboard**
Display comprehensive analysis results including:
- Circular mood gauge (color-coded visual indicator)
- Emotional state summary
- Trigger identification
- Visual cues and vocalization analysis
- Actionable advice cards
- Pro-tier insights (body language breakdown, confidence scores, training recommendations, long-term outlook)
- Species/profile mismatch warnings for accuracy assurance
### 4. **Merged Behavioral Journal**
A single timeline that combines video analyses, structured ABC observations, and activity logs for each pet:
- **Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (ABC) logging** with species-specific vocabulary for the app's supported pet types: dogs and cats
- **Two observation modes**: Full Event (structured ABC details) and Quick Observation (notes-only)
- **Activity logging** — free-text routine activities (walks, feeding, play, etc.) alongside behavioral entries
- **Contextual tags** — weather, routine changes, guests present
- **Media tagging** — link photos or videos for reference
- **Time-windowed history** — filter by 7/30/90 days or all-time with month-based navigation
- **Usage streaks** — a daily engagement streak tracked from the pet owner's local calendar days
### 5. **Longitudinal Behavior Reports**
Generate AI-powered reports across 7/30/90-day windows when 3+ data points (sessions + journal entries) exist:
- **Mood trend chart** — Canvas-rendered visualization with Life Event markers
- **Behavior & trigger frequency analysis** — Top behaviors and triggers with temporal comparison
- **Narrative insights** — AI-generated summary of patterns and recommendations
- **PDF export** — Vet-ready formatted reports for professional consultation
- **Shareable** — Export as plain text or PDF
### 6. **Pet Chat (Conversational AI)**
Context-aware per-pet chat feature:
- Grounded conversation based on the pet's own session and journal history
- Citation chips linking answers back to underlying records
- Enables queryable insights on pet behavior trends
- Gated by tier-based usage limits
### 7. **Life Events**
- Household-level timeline of significant events (new pet, move, behavior intervention) that provide context for behavioral changes
- Events can be scoped to all pets or specific profiles
- Appear as markers on the Behavior Report's mood trend chart
### 8. **Cloud Sync & Account Management**
- **Google Sign-In** — Firebase authentication is required to use Fido; there is no guest or anonymous mode
- **Firestore Sync** — Account records sync to the cloud and hydrate after sign-in on another device. Profile-photo and journal-media files remain local; only their device URI/reference is synced and may not resolve elsewhere.
- **Account Deletion** — A confirmed, recently authenticated request recursively removes the Firestore user tree and Firebase Authentication account, then clears Fido's local database on that device. A minimal server-only marker blocks older cached sessions and delayed server events from recreating records. Other devices validate their saved session on the next app start and clear locally after Firebase confirms deletion; gallery exports and some cache files can remain device-managed.
### 9. **Trial & Subscriptions**
- **10-day Free trial** — Every signed-in account gets one 10-day trial using the Free-tier feature set and usage limits, starting when the account is first activated rather than at install time. No payment method is required, and the trial does not automatically convert to a subscription or cause a charge.
- **Premium and Pro** — Paid subscriptions purchased through Google Play that provide access while the subscription is active and raise usage limits; Pro adds deeper analysis (body language breakdown, confidence scores, extended report detail).
- After the trial ends, the app locks ordinary features until the user purchases a plan; account access, purchase/restore, and account deletion remain reachable at all times. No data is lost while locked.
- Deleting a Fido account does not cancel Google Play billing. A subscription must be managed or cancelled separately through Google Play.
### 10. **Accessibility & Notifications**
- **Theme support** — Light, dark, and system-default modes
- **Analysis notifications** — Get notified when analysis completes
- **Engagement nudges** — Optional daily check-in reminders (throttled to once per 7 days)
## Technical Highlights
- **Architecture**: MVVM + Clean Architecture (Use Cases, Repositories, Dependency Injection via Hilt)
- **Database**: Room 2.8.4 with Firestore cloud sync for every signed-in account
- **UI Framework**: Jetpack Compose with Material 3 design system
- **AI Backend**: Cloud Functions (TypeScript, Node 22) call third-party AI providers for video, voice, chat, and report processing. The specific provider can vary by feature and may change over time.
- **Video Processing**: Media3 Transformer for gallery uploads with automatic optimization
- **Monetization**: Google Play Billing with real-time renewal notifications (Pub/Sub)
- **Privacy-First**: Videos are not stored long-term on Fido's servers; sent directly to the AI provider for analysis
## Data Privacy & Security
- **No persistent raw-video storage by Fido** — Video passes through Fido's Cloud Functions to the AI provider and is not persisted by Fido after processing. Cloud and AI providers may retain limited safety or operational logs under their terms.
- **No advertising** — The current app contains no advertising SDK, serves no ads on any tier, and does not share data with advertising networks.
- **User ownership** — Users retain ownership of the videos, photos, recordings, messages, and notes they submit.
- **Encrypted sync** — Cloud data transmitted over HTTPS; stored in Firestore with server-enforced security rules
- **In-app deletion** — Users can request account deletion in Settings or from the expired-trial screen. The flow requires confirmation and may require recent Google reauthentication; it clears the account data described above but does not cancel a Play subscription or remove gallery exports.
- **Transparent data handling** — Clear disclosures on what's collected, why, and how to request deletion (see Terms & Privacy)
## Target Users
- **Pet owners** seeking deeper understanding of their pet's behavior and emotional well-being
- **Animal behaviorists** wanting to augment observations with AI-driven analysis
- **Veterinarians** looking for longitudinal behavioral context for behavioral consultations
- **Pet parents** managing multi-pet households and tracking behavioral changes over time
## Release Status
- **Current Version**: 1.0
- **Platform**: Android 8.0+ (API 26+)
- **Status**: Active development. Ethogram/RAG grounding is implemented and controlled through server configuration.