What Is a Warmth Score? How NurtureNet Rates Relationships

A warmth score is NurtureNet's short read on the state of a single relationship. It answers one question in plain language: how much heat is left in this connection right now? Instead of asking you to remember the last time you texted a college friend or checked in on a former colleague, the app keeps track and shows you the answer on the person's profile.

The purpose is not to grade you or the other person. It is to make drift visible before it turns into distance. People rarely lose touch in one dramatic moment. They lose touch through a hundred small, reasonable postponements, and a warmth score simply surfaces the pattern early enough that a short message still feels natural.

What a Warmth Score Actually Measures

Think of the score as a temperature reading for a connection, not a judgment about the human being on the other end. Warm means contact has been recent and the relationship is easy to pick back up. Cooling means the thread has thinned. Dormant means a long stretch has passed without a touch. The label shifts as time moves and as you log contact, which is why it stays useful rather than becoming a one-time verdict.

Every connection in NurtureNet carries one of five states: Warm, Steady, Cooling, Dormant or New. These labels are directional rather than precise. They tell you what kind of attention a relationship might want, not an exact number to optimize against. A person does not become a scoreboard, and you are not chasing a high score. You are reading a signal.

The Five Warmth States

Warm

A Warm connection is one where contact has been recent and the relationship feels easy to continue. You would not hesitate before sending a message, and you probably would not need a reason to do it. The useful work here is maintenance rather than rescue: a short note, a link you thought they would like, a quick check-in that keeps the thread alive without turning into an obligation.

Steady

Steady is the healthy middle. Contact happens at a comfortable interval and nothing is visibly wrong, but nothing is actively tended either. Most long friendships live here for years, which is fine until it is not. Steady is the best place to spend a small amount of attention, because a little effort now prevents a slide into Cooling later. It is the cheapest point of intervention you will get.

Cooling

Cooling means the thread has started to thin. You have not logged a touch in a while, and the gap is now long enough that reaching out may feel slightly awkward. This state is where good friendships quietly stall, not because anyone decided to let go but because both people waited. The right response is small and early: a two-line message beats an elaborate plan to catch up properly.

Dormant

A Dormant relationship has gone quiet for a long stretch. This is not a verdict on the friendship and it is not a suggestion that you failed. Dormant connections are often the ones people most want to revive and least know how to restart. The app surfaces them so the decision stays in front of you rather than disappearing into the background of a busy month.

New

New means the person was added recently and there is little history behind the score yet. NurtureNet has less to work with, so the reading is more of an invitation than an assessment. Treat New as a prompt to establish a rhythm while the connection is fresh, because the first few touches are what give the later score something real to reflect.

What Actually Moves a Score

Warmth is not a mystery metric, and it is not a personality test. It responds to a small set of inputs that you control.

• Time passing. A connection with no logged contact will shift over time. That is the core mechanic, and it is why the score changes even during weeks when you do nothing.
• Logged touches. Each time you record contact, you note the channel and the purpose. A phone call, a text, a coffee, a note sent after a hard week: all of it counts as evidence that the relationship is alive.
• Whether the relationship is new. A person added last week has very little history, so the score starts from a different place than a friend you have known for a decade.

What does not feed the score matters just as much. NurtureNet works from what you choose to log, not from quietly reading your messages or building a profile of you to sell. There are no trackers and no ads in the product. Private notes you write about a person stay private and exist for your own context, so that the next conversation starts with something better than a blank page.

From Score to Next Step: the Today List

A rating with no action attached is just trivia. NurtureNet converts the warmth read into a short, ranked daily nudge called the Today list. It shows at most five people, ordered by who most deserves a moment of your attention. You can log a touch directly from there, or snooze someone if the timing is wrong.

The list is deliberately capped and deliberately quiet. Nothing nags. A quiet week stays quiet, and there is no streak to protect or guilt meter climbing in the background. A weekly tally gives you a gentle sense of what you actually did, without turning your friendships into a performance review. If a week goes by and you reach nobody, the app will not punish you for it.

What a Warmth Score Is Not

NurtureNet is explicitly not a CRM, and the warmth score is where that distinction shows most clearly. A sales pipeline measures the odds of closing a deal. A warmth score measures whether a real relationship is being tended.

• It is not a measure of how much someone loves you. It reflects elapsed time and logged contact, nothing more.
• It is not a public rating. Other people never see their score, and there is no leaderboard.
• It is not a productivity target. A Dormant connection is information, not a failing grade.
• It is not a replacement for your judgment. If someone is Warm but the friendship needs space, you get to decide that.

Privacy and Control

Your data is scoped to your account. You can export everything as JSON whenever you want, and you can delete permanently rather than leaving an archive behind. The optional weekly email digest is off by default, and if you turn it on you choose the day and the time zone. These are small design decisions, but they reflect the posture behind the product: your relationships are yours, and the app should be a tool you hold rather than a service holding you.

Setting It Up Without Making It a Chore

You add people manually, group and filter them however makes sense to you, and restore anyone you accidentally moved to the trash. The free tier covers your first five people, and a subscription lifts that limit if you want to track more. NurtureNet runs on iPhone, Android and the web with one synced account, so a touch logged from your phone on the train shows up on your laptop later.

There is also a scheduling shortcut called Set a time, which writes a slot to your own calendar without sending an invite to the other person. It is a way to commit to reaching out without making a formal appointment out of a friendship. Start with the handful of people you would genuinely be sad to lose touch with, and let the score do the remembering.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a low warmth score mean someone is upset with me?

No. The score reflects time passing and the contact you have logged, not anyone's feelings. A Cooling or Dormant label usually means life got busy in both directions rather than that a rift has opened. It is a prompt to reach out, not evidence of a problem you need to repair.

Can I pause nudges for a specific person?

Yes. The Today list includes a snooze option, so you can move someone out of the daily nudge when the timing is wrong or when you already have a plan to reconnect. The relationship stays in your network and the score keeps updating. Nothing about snoozing is permanent.

Does NurtureNet send messages or calendar invites for me?

No. NurtureNet never contacts anyone on your behalf. The Set a time feature writes a slot to your own calendar so you can commit to reaching out, but it does not send an invite or notify the other person. Every actual message, call or meeting is something you send yourself.

Can I export or delete my data?

Yes to both. You can export your data as JSON at any time, which gives you a portable copy of what you have logged. Deletion is permanent rather than a soft archive, and the app carries no third-party trackers or advertising. Your account data stays scoped to your account throughout.

Is my warmth score shared with anyone else?

No. Scores, logged touches and private notes are visible only to you. The other person in a connection never sees a rating, never receives a notification and has no way to look up where they stand. The whole point is to help you notice drift, not to give anyone else a way to audit your friendships.