Visitor identities

A nurse who comes by twice a week. A handyman who has fixed the sink three times this month. The cameras see them, but until now they were nobody: just another unlabeled face in a log. This page explains what the system does about that, and what you can do about it.

What gets remembered about a stranger

When someone the system does not recognize walks past a camera, it keeps a close-up of their face and a mathematical summary of what that face looks like (not a name, not a video, just a number that can be compared to other numbers). It does this the same way it recognizes household members, just without a name attached yet.

If the same face shows up on three different days within a month, the system notices the pattern and puts it in front of a caregiver for review. A single one-off visit, a delivery driver who never comes back, is never kept around long enough to matter: anything that has not been named is deleted automatically after 60 days of not being seen again.

Naming someone

When a caregiver recognizes a recurring face ("that's Nurse Priya"), they can name it from the Visitors screen. Naming does two things at once:

• it turns the pattern into a real household member, the same kind of entry a spouse or adult child has;
• it lets the system recognize that person on future visits and track their presence like anyone else in the house.

Nobody is named automatically. A recurring visitor stays anonymous, sitting in the review list, until a caregiver makes that call by hand.

Dismissing someone

If a pattern is not worth naming, a caregiver can dismiss it. Dismissing does not delete the history right away: it just takes the entry out of the review list so it stops asking for a decision. If that same face keeps showing up, it will not resurface for review a second time, so the same person is not asked about over and over.

Turning it off

Recognizing recurring visitors is on by default, but it can be turned off entirely by an administrator. Turning it off does not erase anyone already reviewed; it only stops the system from noticing new patterns going forward.

What this is not

This feature never runs on its own initiative. It does not name anyone, alert anyone, or change how the household is tracked until a caregiver reviews a pattern and makes a decision. A face that is never named never becomes part of anyone's history.