Pip
Pip is your family's helper, and it lives in your family's own private chat. Ask it to remind you about swimming at 4, add milk to the shopping list, or tell you what's for dinner and what's on this week. It answers in plain words, on whatever phone or tablet each person already uses.
Everyone in the family gets their own Pip, in a private chat of their own. Pip remembers what matters to each person and keeps one person's private chat out of everyone else's. In the family room, Pip helps whenever someone mentions it.
Children can chat with Pip too, and the grown-ups stay in the loop. If a child's chat touches something worrying, Pip points the child to help and tells every grown-up straight away.
Pip is built on Hermes Agent, an open source AI agent, set up for families.
What's in the bundle?
Pip comes as a family bundle with everything it needs on day one:
- Pip itself, and its setup page.
- Family Chat, the private, end-to-end encrypted chat where Pip lives.
- Baikal, a family calendar for Pip to read.
- Donetick, for the family's chores.
- Mealie, for the family's recipes, meal plan and shopping list.
You don't have to use the calendar, chores or meals apps, and you can switch any of them off from your apps dashboard.
What can Pip do?
- Reminders. Ask for one in your private chat with Pip ("remind me to call Gran on Sunday at 5"), and it arrives in that chat at the right time.
- The noticeboard. One shared list for the family's bits and pieces: the shopping, the school trip money, the wifi password for visitors.
- Calendars. Pip reads the family calendar, and each person can connect their own too.
- Chores. Each person can ask Pip what's theirs to do and tick it off.
- Meals. What's for dinner, the week's meal plan, how to make the family's own recipes, and the shopping list: add to it, or tick things off once you've got them. Grown-ups can ask Pip to plan meals, and Pip only plans once they agree.
- A morning briefing. For anyone who wants one: their calendar and the family's, today's meals, chores due, today's reminders and what's on the noticeboard.
- Check-ins. A short, friendly chat now and then, started by Pip, with anyone you switch it on for.
- Looking out for the kids. Alerts for grown-ups, an evening digest, and helplines for children who need them.
How do I access Pip?
Pip is available:
- From your dashboard: https://your-username.elfhosted.com
- Directly: https://your-username-pip.elfhosted.com
Signed-in users see their own URLs
The addresses above show the general pattern. Sign in and these become your personal, clickable links.
How do I use it?
Open Pip from your ElfHosted dashboard. Its setup page is only for you (the account holder), and it walks you through four steps.
1. Your Family Chat account
Pip lives in Family Chat, and the first account on your Family Chat becomes its admin. That account needs to be yours, not Pip's, so create it first, using the steps on Family Chat's setup page. Then invite your family to Family Chat, so they show up in Pip's setup.
2. Your family
Pip lists everyone in your Family Chat. For each person, choose:
- whether they're family (anyone else, Pip treats as a guest),
- whether they're a grown-up,
- the name Pip uses for them,
- and their email, so Pip can link them to the family's apps.
For each child, you also choose what grown-ups can see: summaries and alerts, or full conversations. And whether Pip tells the child that grown-ups can see.
You can write a short note about each person to help Pip help them ("Mia is 9, loves dinosaurs, and is learning her times tables"). For a child, the note has a Big questions part, for how you'd like Pip to handle the tricky ones.
3. Pip's brain
Pip needs an AI to think with, and one sign-in covers the whole household. Choose either:
- Use your ChatGPT. Sign in with your ChatGPT plan, using a code on any device. No API key needed, and your plan's usual limits apply.
- Use an API key. Paste a key from OpenRouter or Anthropic, and pay as you go.
4. Say hello
Pip joins Family Chat, starts a private chat with each family member, and says hello. From there, everyone just talks to it.
Your household
Under Household on the setup page:
- Where you live. Your country decides which helplines Pip suggests to a child who brings up something serious. Your time zone is what "at 5pm" and "tonight" mean.
- Family calendar. The calendar the whole family shares. Everyone's Pip can read it, and children only read it. Choose where it lives: Baikal (included), iCloud, Fastmail, Nextcloud, or another calendar server. For iCloud and Fastmail, use an app-specific password, so you can switch Pip's access off any time.
Setting up Baikal for the first time
Open Baikal from your dashboard and finish its short install wizard straight away: it sets Baikal's admin password. Then create a user for the family and a calendar for that user. Those are the username and password Pip asks for. See Baikal for the details.
Pip only reads calendars for now. It can tell you what's on, but it can't add or change events yet.
Each person's apps
On Family, open a person to see the apps Pip can help them with, and where each one is up to. Pip sends each person a link in their private chat to connect their own account, so nobody has to share a password:
- Donetick: their chores, and ticking them off. Register your own Donetick admin user first, then invite the family in Donetick.
- Their own calendar, alongside the family one.
- Mealie: meals and the shopping list. Mealie starts with a built-in admin login (email
changeme@example.com, passwordMyPassword): change both first, under Settings → Users. Then add a Mealie user for each person who should use it. Children can read the meal plan and recipes, and add a few things a day to the shopping list. - TREK, if your family uses it for trip planning.
Check-ins and the morning briefing
Both are switched on per person, under Family:
- Check-ins. Pip starts a short, friendly chat now and then, on the days and around the time you choose (between 7am and 8:30pm). The grown-ups' evening digest says when Pip checked in with a child, and whether they answered, never what was said.
- Morning briefing. A short "what's on today", on the days and at the time you choose (between 6am and 11am). If there's nothing to say, Pip stays quiet.
Anyone can ask Pip to stop their own check-ins or briefing, and Pip respects that.
Safety
The Safety page shows what Pip has flagged. When a child's chat touches something worrying (self-harm, abuse, bullying, violence, sexual content, drugs, strangers or running away), Pip:
- points the child to help, such as helplines in your country,
- tells every grown-up in the family, straight away,
- and includes it in the grown-ups' evening digest.
Pip always tells the grown-ups, even when the worry involves someone in the family.
Pip in OvertChat
If your family also has OvertChat, each family member with an OvertChat account can choose Pip as a model there, and talk to their own Pip in OvertChat's apps. The same oversight applies to children's OvertChat chats as to their Family Chat ones.
What's new
Pip keeps improving. The bottom of the setup page shows Pip's version, and What's new opens a short list of what changed. The setup page also opens it for you once, after an update.
Frequently asked questions
Who can read our chats? Family Chat is end-to-end encrypted and invite-only. The messages Pip answers are sent to the AI service you chose for Pip's brain, so it can reply. Grown-ups see only what you chose for each child.
Can Pip see the family room? Pip only answers in the family room when someone mentions it, and a person's private chat with Pip is never shown to anyone else, except a child's, as you chose under Family.
Someone new joined Family Chat. How do they meet Pip? They appear on Pip's setup page under Family. Mark them as family, save, and Pip says hello.
Pip also works with
How do I get support for Pip?
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For general use of Pip, refer to the official site or to one of the links in the resources section below.
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For specific support re your ElfHosted configuration / account, see the ElfHosted support options!
Pip resources
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