Small accountability groups for habits that matter.

When you create a squad, you set the maximum member count between three and six. The squad starts in a forming stage until at least three members have joined. Once formed, the squad moves through an active lifecycle with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Research on social facilitation shows that the presence of others can improve performance, but only when the group is small enough to feel personal. Dunbar's layers of friendship suggest that meaningful cooperation degrades beyond five to seven people. The six-person cap is not arbitrary - it is the boundary where witness turns into audience.

Each week, squad members share what they completed and where they struggled. The squad feed shows proof of work - habit completions, streaks, and progress - in a quiet timeline. There is no real-time activity feed, no push notifications for every check-in, and no way to compare yourself to the group at a glance.

Real-time social feeds create two problems: performative posting (sharing only the wins) and surveillance anxiety (feeling watched at every moment). A weekly cadence gives each person space to have a bad day without the group noticing immediately, while ensuring that patterns of drift are caught within a week.

Thrivid offers three privacy levels: Open squads can be found and joined directly. Closed squads are discoverable but require approval. Secret squads are invite-only and invisible to search. All three share the same private-by-default feed - the difference is only in how new members find the squad.

Most platforms treat privacy as a setting you have to find and configure. Thrivid treats it as the default state. The reason is simple: people are more honest when they know the room is small and the door is closed. The moment activity becomes public, the incentive shifts from truth to performance.

Each squad has a focus statement, a set of shared rules, and optional consequences for breaking them. When you join, you write your own commitments alongside the squad's shared agreement. The contract is visible to every member and can be updated during the squad's lifecycle.

Behavioral research on implementation intentions shows that specific, written commitments produce better adherence than vague goals. A commitment contract is not a legal document - it is a shared understanding that makes the implicit explicit. When expectations are clear, accountability feels like structure instead of judgment.