How coaching works

keel's coaching is the intelligence between your financial data and the advice you see. It decides what you're told, when, in what form — and it tracks whether the advice actually helped. This is what makes keel a financial coach rather than a budget tracker.

Under the hood, coaching works in stages: keel spots patterns in your data, decides which ones deserve your attention and where to show them, turns them into plain coaching language, and then watches whether things improved.

How it works

Spotting patterns

keel continuously looks for specific patterns in your finances. Among the things it watches for:

What keel watches	What it means
Imports due or overdue	Accounts that haven't been updated recently
Review queue	Transactions waiting for your input
Month ready to close	Months current enough for closing
Debt payments	Expected loan or credit card payments
Debt balance stuck	Credit cards where spending is matching repayments, so the balance isn't coming down
Merchant dominance	One merchant taking over a third of a category — e.g. Amazon driving 47% of your Shopping spend
Recurring charges	New or changed subscriptions
Category overspend	Spending above your 3-month average
Savings rate	Changes in how much you're putting away
Budget adherence	How well you're sticking to budgets
Cashflow crunch	Whether upcoming charges will strain your balance
Lifestyle inflation	Income growing while savings stay flat
Quiet wins	Categories where spending dropped without you trying
Windfall	Unusually large income (twice your average)
Score context	Score drops (with empathy) and plateaus (with suggestions)

Operational checks (imports, reviews, debt payments) run daily. Coaching checks (spending patterns, savings, score) run weekly on Mondays.

Deciding what to show

keel ranks everything it finds by a mix of severity, financial impact, urgency, how actionable it is, and how well it matches your stated goals. Then it applies a few rules:

• Conflicts resolve to the more specific story. If "your card balance isn't coming down" fires for an account, other warnings about the same card are quietened so you see one clear story. Likewise, when one merchant dominates a category, you get the merchant insight rather than a generic category overspend — it's the same story told more usefully.
• keel limits how many insights it shows at once. The dashboard shows at most one Next Move, one score context line, and three coach cards. The inbox holds everything.
• Coaching adapts to who you are. If your income naturally fluctuates (freelancers, for example), income warnings are toned down. If you have business income, tax-related insights get a boost. If you haven't set budgets, budget nags stay low-key. And if several serious issues hit at once, keel collapses them into a single "let's focus on one thing" card rather than piling on.

Turning data into coaching language

Every insight starts as plain template text ("You've spent 30% more on dining this month"). keel uses AI to upgrade that into proper coaching language — a short headline, a clear action, the reasoning behind it, and a button label — written in your chosen coaching style. If the AI is unavailable, the template text appears instead, so coaching always works. The AI runs in the background; you never wait for it.

Learning what works

keel logs when an insight was shown, whether you acted on it, and whether the underlying situation improved. Over time this tells keel which kinds of coaching lead to real behaviour change — and which get dismissed without action, so it can ease up on those.

Your coaching read

Above the individual insights, keel writes a single coaching read — a short, plain-English analysis of your whole picture, not a one-line nudge. It leads with the one thing that matters most, connects it across your finances (what it's costing you, what would free it up), names real accounts and figures, and ends on a concrete next step. Your dashboard shows the one-line headline plus a button; the Coach page shows the full read.

It's written to be trustworthy:

• Only real numbers. keel works out the figures first, and the read may only quote those — every number is checked afterwards, so it can't invent one. It never names a specific product, provider, or rate to switch to (it describes the mechanism, like "a balance transfer could cut the interest", and leaves the choice to you).
• Your settled picture, not a half-finished month. The figures are based on your recent fully-imported months, so a part-way-through month can't make it look like you earned nothing or overspent. The current month shows separately as "so far".
• It tells you when it's unsure. A short note appears when the read is based on limited data, or when some accounts aren't fully connected yet.
• It refreshes when something changes — weekly, or sooner when something meaningful moves — not on every transaction.
• There's always something there. If it can't be written for any reason, keel shows a simpler version instead.

The Coach page

The Coach page (Menu > Coach) is where keel slows down and explains its reasoning, not just its conclusions. When your coaching read is ready it sits at the top as the full analysis. Below it (or in its place, before the read has been generated) are the explainer sections, in fixed order:

Section	What it shows
Your Next Move	The primary coaching action, with full reasoning
Why This	Why this action was chosen over alternatives
What's Going Well	Genuine positives worth celebrating
On The Horizon	Time-sensitive events approaching

When nothing needs attention, the page confirms you're on track rather than forcing a low-quality action, and "Why This" becomes "What we checked". The dashboard shows the headline; the Coach page shows the explanation. Both draw from the same coaching engine.

The Coach page is also where you can ask keel questions directly — an "Ask keel" section sits at the bottom of the page. See Chatting with your coach.

Coaching style

Your coaching style shapes how keel talks to you — and, slightly, what it chooses to surface. Set it in Settings > Profile (full guide: Coaching styles):

• Supportive (the default): celebrates progress, softens bad news, suggests rather than directs. Very small negatives (under £30 impact) may be skipped entirely, and positives surface higher.
• Analytical: leads with data and comparisons. Neutral, precise, numbers-first. Nothing is suppressed or promoted.
• Direct: action-first, minimal words. States problems plainly and tells you what to do. Borderline issues with significant financial impact get escalated, and you see fewer coaching cards (two instead of three) — only the highest impact.

All three styles see the same underlying data. The difference is thresholds, ordering, density and framing.

Gentle mode

Separate from coaching style. When a household is financially stressed (savings rate below 5% and score below 300), coaching automatically switches to gentle mode — same information, softer framing. Coach, not critic. Gentle mode works alongside any coaching style.

Escalation and snooze

If you dismiss an insight but the underlying situation persists, keel raises it again — first with standard framing, then adding the annual financial impact, then reframed as a question ("Have you considered...?"), then one final time before it goes quiet for good.

If you'd rather defer something deliberately, snooze it (7 days, 30 days, or permanently). Snoozing doesn't count as a dismissal, so it won't trigger escalation.

Why it works this way

• Specific over vague. "Cut dining by £280 to gain 6 points", not "your dining is high".
• One inbox, not scattered notifications. The dashboard shows the top items; the inbox is the persistent home for everything.
• Things resolve themselves. Import a statement and the "import due" reminder clears on its own. No manual ticking off.

FAQ

How often does coaching update? Operational checks (imports, reviews) run daily. Coaching checks (spending patterns, savings, score) update weekly on Mondays.

Why did an insight come back after I dismissed it? If the underlying situation persists, keel raises it a few more times with changing framing before giving up. Use snooze instead of dismiss if you want to defer it for a specific period.

Can I turn off certain types of coaching? Not yet. Notification preferences will ship alongside push notifications in a future update. In the meantime, keel automatically reduces insights you've repeatedly dismissed.

What if I don't set a coaching style? It defaults to supportive. Change it any time in Settings > Profile; the new style takes effect on the next coaching update.

Does coaching style just change the wording? No — it also slightly influences which insights surface and how urgently. Supportive mode may skip a small overspend entirely; direct mode may escalate a borderline one into a clear action. The underlying data is always the same.

What's "merchant dominance" coaching? When one merchant accounts for over a third of your spending in a category, keel points it out — for example, "One merchant is driving over a third of your Shopping spend: Amazon at £476 this month." The point isn't that you should stop shopping there. The point is to make the concentration visible; you decide whether it matches what you intended.

Why don't I get merchant insights about my pharmacy, therapist, or solicitor? keel deliberately excludes sensitive merchants — pharmacies, therapists, solicitors, funeral providers, and gambling merchants — from merchant-level coaching, regardless of how much you spend with them. One-off doctor or hospital visits are also skipped; those aren't behaviour patterns worth coaching on.

Will keel start telling me to swap to cheaper merchants? Not currently. keel only surfaces concentration ("one merchant is driving over a third of this category"), not comparisons between merchants — comparison claims are hard to make honestly without implying things keel can't actually know.