Check-Ins

A check-in is a short moment of guided self-reflection. The user records how they feel and what they are doing, giving subjective context that complements the device's physiological measurements. Check-ins are the ground-truth labels a researcher can pair with biometric signals.

How check-ins are triggered

A check-in can be started by the user at any time, or prompted by the watch through a vibration. Users configure how often they are prompted:

Trigger	Description
User-initiated	The user opens a check-in themselves, whenever they choose.
Random	The watch vibrates a set number of times per day at random moments (configurable: 0, 3, 6, or 9 prompts per day).
Prolonged Stress	The watch vibrates after a sustained stress response — once stress has lasted more than a configured number of consecutive minutes (5, 10, 15, or 20).
Both	Random and Prolonged Stress prompts can be enabled together.

The origin of each check-in records which of these initiated it, so you can distinguish spontaneous reflections from stress-driven ones.

What a check-in captures

Each check-in collects the user's self-reported state at that moment:

Field	Description
Origin	How the check-in was initiated: user initiative, a random vibration, or a prolonged-stress vibration.
Reactivity	The user's self-reported stress level, on a scale from very calm to very stressed.
Valence	The emotional tone of the moment, on a scale from very negative to very positive.
Related feelings	Specific emotions the user selects (e.g. happy, sad, excited).
Activity	What the user was doing at the time of the check-in.
Social context	Who the user was with during the check-in.

For the exact field names, enum values, and response shape returned by the API, see the Check-ins API reference.

For more information

See Check-in: Random and Prolonged Stress vibrations in our Support Knowledge Base.