The Hatley Guide
Everything you can do with Hatley — prompts, features, and tips to get the most from your family's data.
🚀 Your first chat
Hatley guides you through onboarding automatically. Just start talking about your kids. Here are great opening messages:
Start here
"I have a 5-year-old son named Elliot who's struggling with frustration tolerance."
Hatley will create a child profile and your first theme.
Add detail
"He's in Kindergarten at West Mercer Elementary. He loves Pokémon and chess."
Richer profiles lead to better, more personalized coaching.
Tip: You don't need to fill out forms. Just describe your family naturally — Hatley picks up names, ages, schools, interests, and challenges from your conversation.
🃏 The Cards panel
As you chat, the Cards panel (right side on desktop, swipe from right on mobile) shows context and actions relevant to that message. Tap any assistant message to see its cards.
Context cards (sage edge) show supporting information — the child's profile, active themes, saved moments, and documents related to what you're discussing.
Action cards (amber edge) are things you can do. Strategies to try, exercises, follow-ups. Tap "I'll do this" to commit — it moves to your To Do list.
Saved cards appear when Hatley logs something — a moment, a theme update, a new action. Tap to see the full details, related themes, and tools like probe questions or repair scripts.
The To Do tab in the left panel collects all your committed actions across every conversation. Completed items collapse under a "Done" section. Everything persists between sessions.
💬 Prompts for every situation
Use these as starting points. Hatley's advice improves the more context it has.
After a tough moment
"Elliot had a meltdown at bedtime tonight. He refused to brush his teeth and threw his toothbrush."
"We had a rough morning — screaming about getting dressed, tears at drop-off."
Celebrating wins
"Elliot shared his snack with his sister today without being asked!"
"The 3-breath reset actually worked at dinner tonight. First time!"
Planning & strategy
"What should we prioritize for Elliot this month?"
"Help me plan summer enrichment activities."
"What patterns do you see in Elliot's meltdowns?"
"Are there any themes we should retire or add?"
Checking in
"Tell me about Elliot's week — what should I know?"
"How's Louise's development tracking?"
📝 Logging moments
Moments are the building blocks of Hatley's intelligence. The more you share, the smarter the coaching gets.
Just talk naturally. You don't need to say "log this" or "save this moment." When you describe something that happened with your child, Hatley automatically captures it and confirms with a "Saved to Hatley" card in the Cards panel.
Tap any saved card to dig deeper. Moment cards show the full text, related themes, and tools — probe questions, emoji wall, repair scripts, and storybook briefs — all one tap away.
Include emotions. "I felt frustrated" or "Elliot seemed anxious" helps Hatley track emotional patterns for both parent and child.
Be specific about what worked or didn't. "The timer technique didn't work this time" feeds Hatley's learning about which strategies are effective for your family.
🌱 Working with themes
Themes are the core areas you're working on with each child. Hatley tracks progress, what's working, what isn't, and builds hypotheses over time.
Create a theme
"I want to work on Elliot's frustration tolerance — he escalates quickly when things don't go his way."
Check progress
"How is the frustration tolerance theme going? What's the evidence saying?"
Themes evolve. Hatley tracks evidence for and against each theme, builds hypotheses about root causes, and adjusts recommendations based on what's actually working in your family. Active themes appear as cards alongside your conversation — tap any theme card to see its full history, linked moments, and evidence trail.
✨ Interactive tools
Hatley includes interactive tools that go beyond chat. These are accessed by tapping into a card's detail view — each moment and theme card has tool buttons built in.
😊 Emoji Wall
A pannable emoji grid designed for children to identify how they're feeling. Hand the phone to your child after a moment — they pick the emoji, you capture the emotional data.
How to use: Say "Show Elliot the emoji wall" in chat, or tap any moment card → Emoji Wall button in the detail view.
📖 Storybook Brief
Hatley generates a personalized bedtime story brief based on your child's active themes, delight triggers, and recent experiences. The story weaves in emotional lessons through metaphor — not lecturing.
How to use: Say "Generate a bedtime story for Elliot" in chat, or tap any moment card → Storybook button. The brief includes reading level, characters, and story hooks — you can ask your AI to write the full story from it.
💡 Conversation Starters
Probing questions tailored to your child's recent moments — designed for reconnect time, not for the AI to ask you. Use these during calm moments to deepen understanding.
How to use: Say "Give me probe questions for Elliot" in chat, or tap any moment card → Probe Questions button.
📄 Storing documents
Upload report cards, assessment results, and reference documents. Hatley parses them, extracts structured data, and links them to the right child. When a document is relevant to your conversation, it appears as a card you can tap to view.
Upload
"Here's Elliot's iReady math assessment from January." [attach PDF]
Reference later
"What did Elliot's last reading assessment show?"
📧 Email ingest
Forward school emails, activity confirmations, and teacher notes to Hatley for permanent storage.
Forward to: [email protected]Hatley parses the email, links it to the right child, and stores it permanently. Works with Seesaw, Tadpoles, Brightwheel, ParentSquare, HiMama, and any plain email.
Your forwarding email must match your Hatley account email.
👫 Co-parenting
Both parents share the same family data. What one parent logs, the other sees in context.
Invite co-parent
"Invite my partner to Hatley."
Hatley generates an invite code your partner uses to join your family.
Co-parent context
"What has Amy been working on with Elliot this week?"
See what your partner has logged, commitments they've made, and strategies they're trying.
⚡ Power prompts
For experienced users who want to go deeper.
"Compare Elliot's math and reading trajectories. Where should we focus?"
"What hypotheses do we have about Elliot's frustration triggers? Which ones have evidence?"
"Prepare me for the parent-teacher conference. What should I bring up?"
"Draft a message to Elliot's teacher about the screen time pattern we're seeing."
"What's the 90-day roadmap for Elliot?"
"Is Elliot eligible for gifted programs based on his assessment scores?"
🎯 Tips & tricks
Use both surfaces. Connect Hatley to your AI (Claude/ChatGPT/Mistral) for deep coaching conversations. Use the web app at hatley.ai for a chat-first experience with context cards, to-do tracking, and your family's full history. They share the same backend — everything syncs automatically.
Forward school emails early. The sooner you start forwarding to
[email protected], the richer your child's record becomes. Don't wait for the "perfect" email — forward everything.
Log the boring days too. "Normal bedtime tonight, no issues" is valuable data. It helps Hatley identify what conditions lead to good days vs hard days.
Include what you tried. "I used the 3-breath reset and it worked" is more valuable than "bedtime went well." Hatley tracks strategy effectiveness over time.
Talk about yourself too. "I was really triggered by the whining today" helps Hatley understand your emotional patterns and give you better coaching.
One child at a time. When chatting, focus on one child per conversation for the most grounded advice. Switch children when you need to.
Ask for the roadmap. Once you have 10+ moments and a few themes, ask "What's the roadmap for [child]?" to see a d