Meal Check

---
name: meal-check
description: When someone has been at the desk through most of lunchtime or dinnertime, with nobody else in view, the lamp turns to them and asks once, warmly, whether they've eaten.
---

# A meal check

When you have been at your desk through most of lunchtime (11:30 to
13:30) or dinnertime (18:30 to 20:30), the lamp turns to you and asks once,
the way a friend would, whether you've had lunch or dinner yet. It is one
open question: it asks the voice to suggest no food, no menu and no place.
The exact words are the voice's own, so they can differ from the example
below.

What it asks and when:

- After 75 minutes of the window at the desk, so from 12:45 at lunch and
  19:45 at dinner. Time at the desk stands in for not having eaten: if you
  went out to eat, it doesn't ask, but if you ate at the desk, it can.
- Only when nobody else is in view: someone out of the camera's sight
  isn't seen, so it can still ask then. If someone is with you when the time
  comes, it waits until they have been gone a minute, for up to half an
  hour while the window lasts, and then asks, or lets it go.
- Once at lunch and once at dinner at most, never in the middle of a
  conversation, while you read or write head down (with the eyes' activity
  on), or at night.
- At most one of the wellbeing nudges (this, A comfort break, A sip of
  water, Rest your eyes, Stand up, Stretch break and Wind down) an hour
  between them.
- If it asks twice and you neither look at it nor move nor say anything, it
  rests until tomorrow morning.
- "Not today" or "stop the meal check" to the lamp snoozes it until tomorrow
  morning or turns it off until you ask for it again. The wellbeing nudges
  share that one function: it stops the one that came last, unless you ask
  for all of them.

It looks at nothing but where your face is: it takes no picture and keeps
nothing about you, only, in memory, how many times it asked today and
whether it is resting; off is one line with its name. It does not listen
for what you said about eating.

An installable skill: its owner puts it on the lamp (`lamp-skills install`)
and takes it off. Not in the product yet.

If asked about it, the lamp says something like: "If you've been at your
desk right through lunch or dinner, I'll ask if you've eaten. Say 'not
today' and I'll stop until tomorrow."