One animal, its whole story.

Open the Enclosures tab and tap “Add enclosure”. Give it a name (e.g. “Rex's arboreal”), pick the type of setup (arid, tropical, temperate, aquatic turtle, paludarium), enter the internal dimensions in centimetres (width × depth × height) and — if you need them — add the features: bioactive, UVB, misting system, rack. Then save: Squamy already switches on the parameters and target ranges typical of that kind of enclosure.

The type is a single choice, features add to it: a bioactive tropical enclosure with UVB is “Tropical” + “Bioactive” + “UVB”, not one instead of the other.

The dimensions are not decoration: length is what decides whether the enclosure can hold a real thermal gradient, meaning a basking spot and a cool side genuinely far apart.

Open “Add a measurement” — from the grid menu at the top, or from the enclosure whose values you are logging — and type naturally, e.g. “basking spot 34 in Rex's” or “humidity 65”. Squamy recognises parameter, value, unit and enclosure, converts to the reference unit and shows you its interpretation with a confidence score. Confirm with a tap and it's saved. Everything runs on-device, even offline.

Yes. In “Add a measurement” tap the microphone icon and dictate the value (e.g. “humidity sixty in the tropical”). Voice recognition is the operating system's on-device engine; the recognised text goes through the same parser as typed input. It needs the microphone permission. Where dictation isn't available (e.g. Windows) the app tells you and you can type instead.

Open an enclosure and tap a parameter: you'll see the trend chart with the target band highlighted. The enclosure dashboard shows at a glance how many parameters are balanced and which are out of range, with an alert when a value leaves the limits you set.

In the Activities tab tap “Add” and pick a type: feeding, cleaning, UVB lamp replacement, supplement, soak, weighing, misting, substrate change, vet visit or a free-form reminder. You can attach a product and a dose, set a recurrence (custom too) and, for treatment courses, an end date. The Note field takes the details that don't fit in a title (e.g. “mist the warm side only”, “weigh before the meal”): you see them right on the activity card. When it falls due you get a local notification on the device.

The reminder nobody remembers unprompted is the UVB tube swap: it keeps making light for months after it stops making useful UV, so looking at it tells you nothing. Set it as a recurrence and let the app carry it.

Open the animal and tap Animal card at the top. The app builds an image with its history — latest weight and length, last meal (with the prey and how it went), how many of the last ten meals it accepted, last shed and its quality — plus the enclosure's temperatures and humidity. Share it wherever you like: WhatsApp, a Facebook group, a forum, stories, or save it to your gallery.

The environment sits in the same image on purpose: the first answer to “why won't it eat?” is always “check your temperatures”, and sending two separate images would mean a second round of messages.

The card is meant to be read by someone who doesn't have the app: units always spelled out, target values next to the numbers, and out-of-range values marked in words too, not only by colour. A single refusal is not flagged as a problem (reptiles refuse while shedding, in winter, before laying): a regurgitation, a stuck shed and a run of missed meals are.

Before sharing you can leave out the animal's name, the enclosure's environment or the target values: the choice is remembered for next time. The preview you see is the image that gets shared, and it contains only that: no account data, no location. It is free for everyone.

Yes: Squamy is offline-first. Your enclosure data is stored on the device and that is the source of truth. No account is needed to use it. The cloud is optional and only matters if you want to sync across devices.

Open the Account section (profile icon) and sign in with email and password, with Google, or — on iPhone and iPad — with Sign in with Apple. With an account you can start cloud sync: on the Free plan it's manual (“Sync now”), on Premium it becomes automatic in the background. Your local data remains the source of truth.

Yes. On first launch Squamy shows a short run of cards explaining how the app is laid out: where you create an enclosure, what the four bottom tabs are for, and where the AI lives. You can skip it at any point with the button in the top right.

Two helpers stay behind afterwards. At the top of the enclosure list you'll find “First steps”, a small checklist that ticks itself off as you create your first enclosure, log your first reading, set a reminder and try the Assistant; it disappears once complete, or you can close it with the ✕. And the first time you reach a spot that isn't obvious — the enclosure menu, the dictation microphone — a callout points it out: “Got it” closes it, “Skip” turns them all off.

To replay it: Tools menu (the grid icon at the top) → Tutorial, or Account → Replay the tutorial. It starts again from the first card and the callouts come back.

When an important new feature ships, the tutorial updates itself: instead of replaying the whole run you'll just get the callout for what's new, with a “New” tag next to the title.

It is an AI-assisted diagnosis (a Premium feature): from the enclosure menu open Enclosure doctor, describe the problem in your own words (e.g. “the shed comes off in pieces and the toes stay stuck” or “it has been refusing food for three weeks”) and the AI answers with hypotheses ranked by plausibility, useful questions and concrete steps.

What sets it apart from a generic AI is that Squamy knows your enclosure's history: it automatically attaches a summary of your data (recent parameters, out-of-range values, feedings, sheds, activities) so the advice fits your case. It is opt-in with its own consent, off by default (revocable from your account) and only answers about reptiles and terrariums — it is not a general assistant. It is not a vet: these are hypotheses to verify, and a serious illness needs a vet experienced with exotics.

Transparency (AI Act): answers are generated by an artificial intelligence and marked as such in the interface.

The AI assistant (a Premium feature) is the Assistant tab at the bottom of the screen: ask it anything about reptile keeping in general — “how often does an adult ball python eat?”, “what UVI does a bearded dragon need?”, “what substrate for a leopard gecko?” — and it answers in words, with a few practical tips and follow-ups to continue with.

How it differs from the Enclosure doctor: the Assistant answers in general, the Doctor looks at your enclosure. If the problem is there — incomplete sheds, refused meals, odd readings — go to the Enclosure doctor (from the enclosure menu, or the button inside the Assistant): it reads recent parameters, out-of-range values, animals and activities for that enclosure and ranks hypotheses by plausibility.

What gets sent: your question and, at most, the profile of your enclosures (name, type, dimensions, age) — never the readings or the log, which stay on the device.

Squamy isn't downloadable yet. The app works, but it has no store listing anywhere: the copy proofread and the species-card review come first, and the store releases come after that.

To be notified, write to squamy.app@gmail.com: we'll send one message when there's something to install, and we don't use that address for anything else.

How it will be distributed. On Android and on iPhone and iPad it will be a native app, free and usable without an account. From computers and tablets you'll also be able to use it straight from the browser, with nothing to install; from a phone browser you'll be able to add it to your Home screen. The native Windows version comes later.

⚠️ Two things depend on the operating system and won't be there in the browser: reminder notifications and voice dictation.

Your data will move between devices only if you sign in with an account: without one it stays on the device where you entered it (see the entry about accounts and syncing).