Release notes

Create gets clearer review-before-change behavior, introductions are easier to follow after someone accepts one, Guide pages are clearer, creator claim pages moved forward, and Haylo narration can be tested safely with stronger boundaries.

• Create is more careful before changing a card. Fresh ideas, compound requests, title changes, recommendation plans, and link ideas are more likely to show a clear preview or review step before anything is applied.
• Suggestion review is easier to control. You can keep shaping, apply a bounded change, or dismiss a suggestion with fewer stale actions hanging around afterward.
• Natural edits are safer. Title, What, Why, and For changes stay closer to the field you intended, long public copy is refused before it can become card text, and contact details are kept out of public card copy.
• Mobile and desktop Create feel steadier. The composer stays easier to reach, focus returns after common actions, and review sheets use clearer action styling.
• Haylo's writing help can be tested in a more controlled way. The new narration path is gated, display-only, and falls back to deterministic replies when it cannot run safely.
• Accepted introductions are easier to follow. Members can receive clearer follow-up after someone accepts an intro, while sensitive contact details stay protected.
• Signals and intro activation records are clearer behind the scenes, without exposing private contact details.
• Reserved creator claim pages moved forward with approval gates and safer mobile claim prompts.
• Guide pages now have clearer copy, richer share imagery, and better FAQ-style coverage for people learning how Guides work.

Create gets steadier follow-up help, public page styles stay closer to what you chose in the studio, Signals stays clearer, and public pages are easier to understand when shared or found in search.

• Haylo keeps follow-up edits attached to the idea you are working on, with clearer boundaries around starting over, revising a plan, and choosing a recommendation.
• Before a change is applied, you can see a clearer bounded preview and a more useful in-conversation status while Haylo prepares it.
• Day-style buttons now stay light on public Meet pages, and your chosen button color carries more reliably from Create into the Meet preview.
• Signals now includes a clearer view of the ways you show up, while an older intro prompt that no longer matched the current model has been removed.
• Public page descriptions and sitemap coverage are more complete, helping people understand HayloFriend when they find or share a page.

Refines how the Meet page's signals are counted. When someone who opened one of your intro cards later takes a next step toward supporting you, that is now counted separately instead of as Trust. Trust keeps counting completed acts of support: thank-yous, purchases, subscriptions, and claimed thank-yous. Also adds a 30-day window so an older intro no longer takes credit for an unrelated later action.

• Follow-through from an intro is counted separately, so Trust reflects only completed acts of support.
• Intro credit is now limited to a 30-day window.
• No change to how gratitude, purchases, subscriptions, payouts, or any money is counted. ---

Create studio reliability, public Meet and Signals surfaces, introductions, booking and connectors, trust content, support tooling, and safer operational checks.

• The homepage now speaks more clearly to the gratitude gap, with a stronger thank-you story and calmer trust framing.
• Public Meet pages feel smoother, with tighter spacing, better first-card motion, and a cleaner first impression across desktop and mobile.
• Signals and introductions are easier to understand: creators can see clearer reach, share, and joined signals while private details stay protected.
• The intro sharing loop is more complete, so a shared introduction can be measured from reach to contact exchange to a new member joining.
• Create is steadier across everyday editing: title, price, description, place, timing, feedback questions, and slash-command style edits are less likely to change the wrong field.
• Publishing and republishing are safer, with clearer review states, better timing text, stronger selected-card binding, and fewer stale-review surprises.
• Haylo's writing help is more bounded and useful, so copy suggestions can improve a card without taking over sensitive actions.
• Booking and connector flows are clearer, including better scheduler guidance, safer availability handling, and fewer confusing fallback states.
• Photo and stock-image flows are easier to use, with sharper curated images and clearer paths to add, replace, or remove cover photos.
• Trust, help, release notes, and AI-readable discovery surfaces were refreshed so public explanations stay clearer and easier to find.
• Founder support tools are safer, with clearer read-only behavior and stronger audit evidence when support views an account.
• Operational checks around sensitive payout readiness are more conservative, keeping payout movement separate from evidence collection and review.

Create card editing and publishing, recommendation and writing help, booking and connector guidance, photo flows, and stronger public profile sharing.

• Editing a card in Create is more reliable, so field changes, slash commands, follow-up replies, and published-card edits stay attached to the right card instead of drifting into stale state.
• Haylo's writing help is more useful and more direct, with cleaner copy choices and steadier recommendation prompts that stay on the card you are actually working on.
• Recommendation cards behave better around product and Instagram-style prompts, keeping the intended subject and context instead of slipping into the wrong draft or card type.
• Publish and republish review are steadier: missing details are easier to fill, timing stays readable, and acknowledgements stay tied to the real live card.
• Booking and connector guidance is clearer, with better fallback behavior when something is missing and a smoother path into connected scheduling or manual booking text.
• Photo flows are cleaner, including a larger curated stock-cover set and easier ways to remove or replace an image while editing.
• Public profile and sharing surfaces are stronger, with clearer introduction/share framing, richer previews, stronger metadata safety, and better brand presentation.
• Published-card help is more precise, so published-light shortcuts and help turns open the right deck instead of falling into unrelated edits.

Create studio reliability, connector visibility, public page polish, release notes, and safer admin-facing setup.

• Create kept getting steadier: command help, field edits, publish review, republish binding, and short Haylo replies were all tightened through smoke testing.
• Connector discovery is broader, while booking and scheduler guidance stays clearer about what can be connected and what still needs setup.
• Public pages and docs received copy polish so visitors get cleaner explanations, clearer release notes, and fewer internal details.
• Feedback and safety surfaces were tightened so Haylo can improve from signals without exposing private card wording.
• Admin-facing release tooling and setup notes were clarified so future releases can be checked more safely.

Create studio editing, Haylo replies, feedback questions, link handling, publishing review, and curated image quality.

• Create now treats edit prompts as setup for the next answer, not as card content, so phrases like "edit price" and "edit title" do not get saved into public fields.
• Haylo answers feedback and trust questions more calmly without changing your card when you are only asking how feedback is used.
• Link handling in Create is safer and more graceful when a pasted link is malformed or cannot be used.
• Publish and republish review stayed steady through smoke testing: cancel stays a preview, confirm publishes once, and republish stays tied to the selected card.
• The curated image library looks sharper in the photo picker and preview, so selected photos are less likely to look pixelated.

The Help Center, Create studio, Recommendation cards, Guides, affiliate copy, payout education, and Trust & Security pages all got clearer and easier to use.

• The Help Center now has a stronger hub, clearer article cards, better visuals, and more useful guidance for getting started, setting up payouts, sharing your page, and understanding what changed.
• The Create studio composer is easier to read and use, with smoother spacing, better mobile behavior, and a calmer chat experience while you build your page.
• Gratitude Wall moved from preview toward real selected notes: creators can choose public thank-you notes they want to show, while private notes stay private.
• Recommendation cards now track clicks more reliably, and affiliate copy is clearer that attribution is reviewed before anything becomes creator earnings.
• Amazon report matching is easier to review, helping Haylo connect qualifying recommendation activity without changing what visitors see.
• Guides and affiliate pages now use more precise language about how referrals, credit, and settlement work, so expectations are clearer before anyone signs up.
• New payout education pages explain weekly payouts, instant payout eligibility, and what has to be set up before money can move to your bank.
• Trust & Security is easier to find from the footer and Help Center, with clearer public pages for safety, status, and product trust.
• Public release notes and the changelog now show a fuller, sanitized history, so visitors can understand how HayloFriend has grown over time.

A faster way to receive the gratitude you have earned.

• Eligible members can now cash out their available balance in minutes, instead of waiting for the weekly run, for a small instant fee.
• Instant payout only appears once your payouts are set up and your balance is ready, so you always know when it is available to you.
• The standard weekly payout stays free and continues to run automatically every Friday.

People who sign up with a non-Google email get a smoother sign-in, a big set of public tipping guides goes live, and the Help Center is rebuilt to be clearer and easier to scan.

• If you sign up with an email address instead of Google, sign-in links now work end to end: welcome emails carry a real one-time link, and clicking a link in an email takes you where you meant to go instead of forcing a Google login.
• A full set of public tipping guides is now live, including a tip jar page, a tipping etiquette page, and more, with honest answers to the questions people actually search.
• The Help Center was rebuilt with clearer foundations and step-by-step guidance for creating your page, sharing your thank-you link, understanding what landed, and setting up payouts.
• Public pages were tuned so they show up well when shared and when found by search engines and AI assistants, while your private pages and dashboards stay blocked from crawlers.
• A new brand page and cleaner share previews make HayloFriend links look right wherever you paste them.
• An early preview of a Gratitude Wall is viewable while you create and preview your page. It does not publish anything publicly yet.
• Checkout success pages were hardened so a confirmation page never gets cached and shown in the wrong browser.

The legal pages were refreshed to match how the product actually works today.

• Terms now explain the current fee model in plain terms: the standard fee is 3.5%, and some Haylo Guide referral traffic can carry 4.5% so the extra 1% can fund Guide program credits when a referral qualifies.
• Terms clarify that Guide credits are founder-reviewed program credits, not wages or guaranteed payouts, and describe how Friday payouts and eligible instant payouts work.
• Privacy was updated to cover Guide applications, referral verification, matching a sign-up to an earlier tip, affiliate click reconciliation, non-Google email sign-in, and public pages.
• The Cookie policy now lists the short-lived cookies used for claiming a tip, paid-giver flows, Guide activation, and the public-page accent preference.

Creators can now style their public page from the create studio and see it the way visitors will.

• You can customize the feel of your public page: atmosphere, background, card shape, photo shape, glow, button glow, accent color, and how much your "for" and "why" stand out.
• A new free atmosphere, Purple Rain, joins the existing Studio blue and Blueprint looks.
• The live preview in the studio now tracks your public page more closely, so what you see while editing is what visitors get.
• Your saved style settings now stick reliably and load on your public page every time.

Recommendation links get a public home, better share cards, clearer Amazon disclosure, and steadier reliability.

• A new Affiliates page is live, explaining how Recommendation cards work, with a Lifetime Tally visual and clear, honest details.
• Thank-you pages now have branded share cards, so a link looks polished when posted to messages, Slack, or social.
• Every Recommendation card on a public page now shows the required Amazon disclosure right under its "Check price" button, and the disclosure no longer flickers on hover.
• Recommendation links pasted into the studio now reliably update the card text, and a mobile card no longer showed the raw link in its details.
• Behind the scenes, Recommendation clicks now record the details needed to match qualifying Amazon reports later, without storing any buyer personal information.

The activity view now describes bank payouts in plain language.

• Bank payout rows now read clearly: paid payouts say they were paid out, in-progress payouts say Stripe is still syncing, and failed payouts say the payout could not be completed.
• A failed bank payout no longer keeps showing as still settling.

A coherent set of public marketing pages goes live, and you can now sign up with an email link instead of only Google.

• The homepage now offers two clear ways to start: continue with Google, or enter an email and get a one-time sign-in link.
• A connected set of public pages is live and linked from a shared footer, covering the product, professions, and side-by-side comparisons with other tipping and support tools.
• Comparison pages now end with a simple sign-up card so you can claim your handle once you see how HayloFriend is different.
• Cookie settings open consistently from the footer across all marketing pages.

The first profession-specific landing pages go live, and creators can upload their own photos in the create studio.

• New pages built for doulas and teachers, each paired with a guide for the people who want to thank them, answering real questions like whether to tip, how much, and what is appropriate.
• The teacher guide honestly notes that many school districts cap monetary gifts, so nobody is put in an awkward spot.
• Each page shows a real, live example so visitors can see the actual flow before signing up.
• You can now upload your own photos into the photo library, set one as your cover, rename it, delete it, and reuse it. Drag and drop works, with clear guidance on accepted image types and size.

Haylo Pro becomes a clear upgrade, and free creators get a basic management view.

• Free creators can keep up to 3 live ritual or relief lights at a time; Haylo Pro creators can publish unlimited ritual and relief lights.
• Recommendations stay free and never count against that limit.
• Everyone gets a "published lights" view to browse, search, filter, and edit their lights and drafts; archiving, deleting, and keyboard search are Haylo Pro extras.
• When a free creator hits the 3-light limit, the studio now points calmly to Haylo Pro and the 14-day trial instead of showing an error.
• The "earned this week" figure now appears in the management view, connecting your work to recent support.

Payout handling got safer and the difference between your balance and Stripe's balance got clearer.

• Payout messages now use clearer language when you do not have enough withdrawable balance, so it is not confused with other balances.
• A failed bank payout can now safely return the funds to your HayloFriend balance so your records stay correct.
• Payout safety still holds the line: no payout proceeds unless your withdrawable balance confirms the funds are available.

Creators can now offer recurring support, and Haylo Pro powers a premium set of studio controls.

• Creators can turn on recurring support for eligible ritual and relief lights, and public pages can show a real Subscribe option instead of only one-time thanks.
• The studio now shows recurring pricing with take-home guidance, monthly versus yearly options, and clearer inline help on desktop and mobile.
• Haylo Pro unlocks the premium authoring layer: recurring management, full photo search, custom atmosphere skins, and accent color controls, with a cleaner billing and checkout flow.
• Subscription confirmation emails got their own reliable path so they send dependably.

Identity reliability so your chosen name and public handle move together and renames stop breaking things.

• Saving your chosen name now updates your public handle everywhere it appears, or fails clearly, instead of quietly drifting out of sync.
• Older versions of your handle now point to your current one instead of showing up as a separate identity.
• Renaming no longer destabilizes your public handle or who owns a payout.

New in-product guidance helps creators connect Stripe and pick up where they left off.

• Your Impact now includes two guided walkthroughs: connecting Stripe, and resuming a payment that was waiting on you.
• A recovery pill in the header lets you reopen a guide you dismissed without hunting for it.
• The amount a recipient sees now consistently shows what they will actually receive after the 3.5% fee, across text, claim emails, and direct emails.

Recommendation links now route through a safe redirect that adds HayloFriend's Amazon Associates tag.

• Recommendation cards now open through a safe redirect that checks the destination and adds the HayloFriend Amazon tag where it applies.
• Other retailers are supported too, not just Amazon, so the same Recommendation flow works cleanly across stores.
• Public-page Recommendation buttons route through this path so the tag is preserved when someone clicks through.

Reliability work so the amounts you see in your activity and balance always agree and never show confusing internal rows.

• Tips claimed by text now record correctly so the right amount shows up.
• Your lifetime total and your balance now agree on the same number across your activity view and your dashboard.
• Internal bookkeeping rows for claimed tips no longer appear in your activity view.
• Connected creators can see their earned total before payouts begin, without changing what is actually withdrawable.

A cleaner public page, a sharper create studio, a stock photo library, and a steadier instant-payout flow.

• Your public page was rebuilt to feel more intentional on desktop and mobile, with a cleaner hero, better card rhythm, and images that no longer clip on phones.
• Public pages now generate correct share previews when posted.
• The create studio is clearer: the chat sits near the composer, the help cheat sheet appears right where you ask for it, and editing your lights feels smoother.
• A stock photo library is live in the studio, with a curated set and a search path for more images.
• Instant payouts work reliably again, with the 1.5% instant fee intact alongside the standard Friday batch.

The homepage teaches the product in clearer steps, the Help Center gets steadier, and creators get an early recurring-support setup.

• The homepage now explains HayloFriend in three clear steps: choose a thank-you link, create a light, and share it, using real examples.
• Shared homepage links now show HayloFriend's own branding instead of guessing an image from the page.
• The Help Center, docs, and About pages now carry consistent navigation so you can always get home or get started.
• The full Stripe setup walkthrough renders reliably whether you open it directly or through the Help Center.
• Creators got an early recurring-support setup in the studio for monthly support with an optional annual discount.

The create-to-publish flow got more reliable and the public page got cleaner.

• Studio commands like publish and republish now behave predictably, and command text no longer leaks into your published content.
• Republishing now updates your existing live item instead of creating duplicates.
• Recommendation links act as buttons, and items priced at zero clearly show as Free.
• Public pages got polish: consistent styling, clearer calls to action, and a cleaner create-to-page presentation.

A fix so the people you send to see your name instead of "a friend."

• When you send gratitude to someone who is not yet a member, your name now appears correctly instead of showing as "a friend."
• This was an identity-only fix, with no change to money, payments, or your records.

Reliability and correctness work so each tip is attributed to the right person and your records stay accurate and private.

• Member tips now consistently show the correct named supporter, while public and envelope tips stay anonymous by design.
• Guest claim emails that had been intermittently delayed are now delivered reliably.
• The fee that applies to each payment is now applied consistently and correctly.
• These were correctness and safety improvements; no money was moved, reversed, or changed.

A batch of reliability work across sign-in, the activity view, and how tips to non-members are handled.

• Sign-in got steadier, removing a brief "page not found" flicker some people saw.
• Your activity view now shows your lifetime impact and is easier to navigate, with keyboard shortcuts and a calmer full-screen view.
• A "Send Light" tipping issue was fixed so those payments create and complete reliably.
• Tips sent to someone who is not yet a member are now safely held and credited to the right person once they claim, without ever rewriting history.
• Your activity record stays accurate and private to you.

Foundational money-safety work and an extra check when withdrawing funds.

• Withdrawals now require a quick human-verification step before any money action, protecting your funds.
• Your balance now reflects Stripe accurately, with a clear separation between your withdrawable balance and Stripe's own balance.
• Payments are finalized safely and can never be double-counted, even if a network retry happens.
• Stripe remains the sole custodian of funds; HayloFriend mirrors and reports but never holds or pools your money.

Server-enforced money rules and reliability monitoring so payments stay safe and predictable.

• Tip amounts are now checked and enforced on our servers, between $1 and $3000, so the rules cannot be bypassed from a browser.
• Payments are finalized in one safe place, and duplicate charges are prevented even when payment networks retry.
• A safeguard blocks any mismatch between test and live payment settings, preventing payment errors.
• New behind-the-scenes monitoring watches for stuck or failed payments and email delivery problems so issues get caught early.

The first public version of HayloFriend, with public thank-you pages, one-click sign-in, and working payments.

• HayloFriend went live with public pages, a creator dashboard, and a single, reliable one-click Google sign-in.
• Public thank-you links work so supporters can send a tip, and the site handles web and "www" addresses cleanly.
• Sign-in was made loop-proof and protected, so your dashboard and creator pages stay private to you.
• Basic search-engine visibility and analytics were wired up for the public site.