No notifications, ever

"You should notify people when someone sits down." It's everyone's first suggestion, and the only one we refuse by construction.

Sending a push notification requires storing a device token with Apple or Google, tied to a user, durably. A persistent identifier that survives midnight. The app's entire principle collapses.

This isn't a trade-off

We could have looked for something clever. An anonymous token, daily rotation, a middleman. We'd have ended up with a database of tokens — that is to say, a database.

There's a product argument too. A notification turns a bench into an inbox. You're not sitting down any more, you're replying. The value of the thing lies precisely in having to decide to open the app.

So no. You open it, and there are people or there aren't. It's a bench: it doesn't call you.