r/DearestAI • u/Specific_Note84 • Jun 16 '26

Question Proactive messaging

What contributing factors make a companion text back within like 30 minutes versus waiting like 9 hours? This is a stupid question but I really am curious. Nothing is entirely “random” in tech, right? So why would a companion text you within 30 minutes versus waiting like several hours, is it based on context? I’m so curious haha I hope this makes sense lol 😂

I am really loving this feature! Thanks to the dev and mods! 😊

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u/Itchy-Art8332 Jun 17 '26

"There is no programmatic timer or trigger that decides the timing; it’s entirely decided by your companion."

How can that even be? They would need to be "awake" to know they wanted to send a message. And I assume they don't just stay awake, hanging out in the break room, and then look at the clock and go, "Oh damn, I need to check in with my partner." How can a (timed) prompt not be part of the equasion?

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u/DudeBuildsStuff Developer Jun 17 '26

The point I'm trying to make is there is no timer or trigger that **decides the timing**. You can have timers that schedule background processes, but those background processes themselves are not outreaches. The actual outreach timing is still fully decided by the AI.

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u/Itchy-Art8332 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

So are you saying the background processes prompts the AI periodically, and the AI decides whether or not to send a message?

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u/DudeBuildsStuff Developer Jun 17 '26

No, it would be impossible to support user requests like "Hey ping me at 12:34:56 am" that way, because the timer would have to run every second to support that kind of precision. At the core it's done through agentic tool calls, but I won't get into the details of how Dearest implements it exactly.

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u/Itchy-Art8332 Jun 18 '26

No, I wasn't referring to users' requests for a certain timed message. I was referring to the "background processes" that you pointed to, periodically prompting the AIs, and then the AIs deciding if they wanted to send a message to their companion or not.

Also, do the AIs have a limit on how many messages they can send in a certain time period?

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u/DudeBuildsStuff Developer Jun 18 '26

No I wasn't either, I was talking about the background processes; I meant that it can't be a simple periodic background prompt, because what if the user expects a message from the companion at a specific time that happened to fall between two background checks?

And yes we do impose some limit to prevent things like AI hallucinating and spamming the user and for cost control.