# Effort levels & pinning days

> Plan by energy, and lock the nights you want to keep.

A fifteen-minute Monday and a two-hour Sunday come from the same cook. Forkboard plans dinner by energy: every meal carries an effort level, and when a night is right, you can lock it so the rest of the week plans around it.

![Day cards tagged Quick, Standard, and Project, with a pin holding one in place.](https://forkboard.app/docs/effort-pins.svg)

*A quick Monday, a project Sunday — locked when you like them.*

## Three levels of effort

Each dinner is sized against two time budgets you set in Preferences — one for weeknights, one for weekends. The board fits every night inside its budget and never goes over, so a project cook lands on the weekend you have the time for it, not a Tuesday you don't.

- Quick — a fast night, in and out of the kitchen.
- Standard — a normal weeknight cook.
- Project — a bigger, more involved meal, kept inside your weekend budget.

Every day card shows its effort badge next to the cook time, so you can read the whole week's rhythm at a glance.

## Pin a night to keep it

Pinning locks a day. When you regenerate the week, a pinned night is kept exactly as it is and the rest of the week is redrawn around it — the board varies the cuisine against your pins and can carry their leftovers into other nights. Pinning is free on every plan, including Free.

1. Open the day card you want to keep. On web, click the pin icon on the card; on the iPhone app, tap the pin control on the day.
2. The pin editor opens, prefilled from that meal's effort and cuisine.
3. Optionally set an Effort (Any, Quick, Standard, or Project) and a Cuisine (Any or a named cuisine) for future swaps to honor — or leave both on Any to simply lock the meal as it is.
4. Choose Pin day. The card shows a filled pin badge, kept when you regenerate.
5. Regenerate the week — only the unlocked nights are redrawn; your pinned night stays put.

> Note: You can only pin a day that already has a meal, on the current week. Past weeks are read-only, and a meal still streaming in can't be pinned until it's settled.

## Changing or clearing a pin

A pinned night only changes through a swap you ask for and confirm — a whole-week regenerate never touches it. When you swap a pinned day, the replacement matches the effort and cuisine you locked, and the pin stays. To adjust the lock, open the badge and update the effort or cuisine; to release it, choose Unpin, which clears the lock and both constraints in one step.

There's no separate effort control apart from pinning — effort is set as part of the pin, or assigned by the board when it plans the week.

Related: [Planning your week](https://forkboard.app/docs/planning-your-week.md) · [Plan meals by energy](https://forkboard.app/how-it-works.md)

Canonical page: https://forkboard.app/docs/effort-and-pinning