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What is Planet4?
Planet4 is a group hangout planner that lives inside a group chat. Instead of bouncing between a messaging app, a poll site, a maps app and a calendar, your crew does all of it in one thread: talk, vote, pick a place, and watch the plan write itself.
It runs in the browser at planet4.us on phones, tablets and desktops, and can be added to your Home Screen like an app. It's free to use.
The three parts
The chat. Ordinary realtime group messaging — bubbles, reactions, the works. Everything else hangs off it.
Widgets. Small decision tools you drop into the chat: a date survey, a calendar, a time survey, food and activity spot votes backed by real map data, a vibe check, quick yes/no questions, and a ready check. Votes show live, and the widgets stay reachable from a rail beside the thread. See Widgets.
Nova. An AI assistant that reads the conversation and the votes and keeps a draft itinerary current: when, what, where, budget, vibe, each with the reasoning behind it. Nova is deliberately quiet: it edits the plan in the background and only speaks in the chat when someone addresses it by name. See Nova.
The guiding rule
The app suggests; your crew decides.
Nova never makes a decision final. The organizer reviews the draft and is the only person who can lock the plan in. Members signal they're happy with a Ready up tap. Locking turns the hangout from Planning into Confirmed and gives everyone a clean summary screen.
Who's who in a hangout
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Organizer | The person who started the hangout. Invites people, can remove members, manages the to-do list, can regenerate the plan on demand, and locks the plan. Can delete the hangout for everyone. |
| Invitee (everyone else) | Chats, drops widgets, votes, adds venue options, sets the venue search area, invites friends they've added, readies up, and can leave the hangout. |
Everyone, organizer included, is a full participant in the chat and the votes.
A hangout's life
- Planning — the default. The chat is open, widgets are collecting answers, Nova keeps the draft current.
- Confirmed — the organizer locked the plan. Everyone gets a push notification (if they've turned them on), the confirmed screen shows the final details, and the chat stays open. Nova stops editing the plan.
- Gone — the organizer can delete a hangout at any time, and hangouts that go quiet are cleaned up automatically after a while. See Privacy → How long things are kept.
What it's for
Small, informal groups — the "we keep saying we should get dinner" crowd. A birthday night out, a Sunday hike, a weekend away. It is not an event-ticketing or corporate-events tool.