The trait profile uses the IPIP-NEO-120 (International Personality Item Pool; public domain), 120 questions covering five domains and thirty facets, four questions each. The state check-ins use the PHQ-8 and GAD-7 (Pfizer, released without restriction), displayed under the names Low mood and Worry, plus three questions of our own (Stress load, Life satisfaction, Connection) which are original wording and not normed. Question text and answer choices are administered verbatim; we never edit an instrument.

Trait percentiles are computed against tables we derived from Johnson's published IPIP-NEO-120 dataset (OSF; 339,876 complete adult cases), banded by sex and age group (18–24, 25–34, 35–49, 50–90). If you didn't state a sex or age, you are compared with all adults. A percentile of 81 means: higher than 81% of the adults in your comparison group. Worth saying plainly: this sample is people who chose to take a long personality test on the internet, not a random sample of all adults — the same is true of every free Big Five test. Norm data v1.0.0.

Your baseline for each number is the middle (median) of your own completed check-ins. Your typical range is that middle plus or minus your usual wobble (the median absolute deviation) — but never narrower than ±1 point on the 0–10 sliders and ±1.5 on the two bigger scales, so an ordinary answer on a steady week can't look like an event. A check-in counts as moved when it lands more than 3 points outside the range on the bigger scales, or more than 2 on the sliders. These rules were fixed before any user data existed and are versioned with the engine.

Every check-in is checked four ways: time taken (a full assessment under 8 minutes, or a short check-in under 3, is flagged), identical answers in a row (flagged at 8), a catch question that is almost never true, and pairs of questions that ask the same thing in opposite directions (flagged when they disagree by 2 or more). A flagged check-in is kept and counted, and the flag is printed in your report. Nothing is quietly dropped.

A few of the questionnaire's official facet names are words we keep out of this product on purpose. Where we renamed one, the mapping is here — the questions and scoring behind each name are unchanged.

Scoring is a fixed, versioned set of rules — no AI anywhere in the path. Engine v0.1.0. Every answer you give is stored in an append-only log, and your reports can be recomputed from it exactly. Export or delete everything from your account page.