Notifications should work for you, not be work for you. So Smart Cue weighs the place, the hour and the card before it says a word. Start at home, drag yourself from downtown to the countryside, change the hour, and watch it decide.
Profile
Smart is what the app ships with. It reads the ground you are standing on and sets the ring and the wait for it, then re-reads as you move. The three fixed rings are what you get if you switch it off: one ring, everywhere.
Downtown
330 ft, chirps instantly
Suburb
1,000 ft, waits 15 s
Country
2,000 ft, waits 30 s
Fix a ring, then drag from downtown to the countryside and watch where it stops fitting.
or a fixed ring profile
When
12am6am12pm6pm11pm
Moving
The wait is the same for all three. What changes is how fast you are going when it ends.
Walk
About 3 mph. Passes.
Drive
About 25 mph. At or above 9 mph it refuses with "Passing by, not stopping."
Park
Stopped, and adds 5 for pulling in.
Drag the blue dot
Smart Cue is deciding
15
seconds of the wait left. It is checking whether you actually stopped, and measures your speed again when the timer ends. The phone shows nothing until then.
Zone reaches
1,000 ft
Waits
15 s
0224570100
Not scored: outside this card's ring, or blocked before scoring. Nothing happens, no banner, no nudge, no widget change.
Why it held back
0 to 21 · Nothing sentThe widget quietly refreshes. No notification, no sound. A gift card with money on it never lands here.
22 to 44 · Quiet nudgeWidget, Live Activity and a Watch tap. No banner, no sound. A gift card with money on it never lands here either.
45 to 69 · BannerA notification with the chirp, and the Live Activity. Silenced by a Focus.
70 and up · Time-sensitiveA banner that gets through a Focus, and through quiet hours when the card expires within a day.
The floor: a gift card with money on it is delivered as at least a Banner, whatever it scores; the score then only decides between Banner and Time-sensitive. The two quiet bands are for what the engine scores softly: a punch card with no punches yet, a loyalty card with no stamps, a heads-up before you arrive.
Want the red band? Reel Cinema expires today. Park at its door any time after 9am and it crosses 70. Try it at 11pm too: an expiring card is the one thing that gets through quiet hours.
Same arithmetic the app runs, nothing simulated. The four cards and the town are made up; the rules are not.
Why a notification is a promise.