Match Metrics Explained

DateIQ tags every match with a handful of scores so you can sort, filter, and decide who to focus on without reading every thread. You'll see these in the People tab filters, on match cards, and behind the Next Action stack ordering.

The quickest way to keep them straight:

• Affinity — about her. Stable. Updates when you train.
• Priority — about the moment. Volatile. The composite.
• Temperature / Tension / Stage / Closing Readiness — the diagnostic axes Priority is built from, but each independently useful as a filter.

Affinity (0–100)

How well this match fits your taste. It blends your preferences, your past ratings, and what DateIQ has learned from training. It's about the person, not the conversation — a brand-new match and a three-week-old thread with the same person have the same Affinity.

Filter by it when: you want to triage who's worth your energy at all — "show me my top matches," "hide anyone under 60," "find the high-Affinity matches I've been ignoring." Affinity also gates auto-swipe and orders the Next Action stack.

The way to raise the average is to keep training. See Training the Wingman.

Priority (0–100)

Who to message next. This one is the composite: it asks "given where this thread is right now, how urgent is the next move?" Priority synthesizes Affinity, Stage, Temperature, Closing Readiness, and how long it's been since the last message into a single act-now number.

Filter by it when: you have ten minutes and want the highest-leverage moves first. The Next Action stack is sorted by this by default.

If you only ever filter by one metric, this is the one.

Temperature (Cold / Warm / Hot / Going Cold)

The current emotional weather of the thread. Read from her recent behavior: reply length, who's initiating, response times, energy.

• Hot — she's initiating, double-texting, putting in effort.
• Warm — steady back-and-forth, normal engagement.
• Cold — short replies, long gaps, low effort.
• Going Cold — it was warm and is cooling off. The most important one to watch.

Filter by it when: you want to catch threads slipping before they die ("show me everyone going cold") or focus only on the ones with momentum ("show me hot threads I can close"). Pair Going Cold with Going-Cold Recovery.

Tension (0–100)

How much charge the conversation has. Low tension is a polite interview — taking turns, no edge, no push-pull. High tension is sharp banter, callbacks, playful disagreement, the kind of exchange that actually builds attraction.

Filter by it when: you suspect a thread is "going well" in the boring sense — she replies, you reply, but nothing's happening. A high Affinity + Warm Temperature + low Tension match is the classic stuck thread. Time for a Push-Pull or a Takeaway.

Stage

Which of the four texting stages the thread is in: Silence, Testing, Conversation, or Attraction. This is a read of what kind of move the thread needs, not how far along it is — stages shuffle.

Filter by it when: you want to batch the same type of work. "Show me everyone in Testing" so you can do five Confidence Smackdowns in a row. "Show me everyone in Conversation" when you're ready to start steering toward Assumption Closes.

Full breakdown in The Four Stages of Texting.

Closing Readiness (0–100)

How close this thread is to a viable date ask. Distinct from Affinity — a 95-Affinity match you matched with this morning has near-zero Closing Readiness because there's no foundation yet. A 70-Affinity match you've had two great exchanges with might be at 80.

Filter by it when: you're in closing mode. "Show me anyone above 70" and go through them with the Assumption Close.

How to combine them

The point of having several axes instead of one is that combinations tell you things a single score can't:

• High Affinity + Going Cold — the ones to rescue first. Your best matches are slipping.
• High Affinity + low Tension + Warm — pleasant but dead-end. Inject some push-pull before it fizzles.
• High Closing Readiness + Hot Temperature — ask her out. Today.
• Low Affinity + high anything — be honest about whether this is worth your time at all.

What if a metric looks wrong?

Affinity updates as you train and rate. Temperature, Tension, Stage, Closing Readiness, and Priority all update after new messages flow in — the assessment runs in the background after each sync. If something looks stale, run a sync from the People tab's Sync menu. See Syncing Matches.

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