Difficulty Tiers¶

Every chore carries a difficulty tier. The points a chore awards are its base points multiplied by the tier's multiplier, so harder chores can be worth more without re-entering point values by hand.

Chore difficulty in the Chores tab

Tiers and Default Multipliers¶

Tier	Default Multiplier	Effect on a 10-point chore
`easy`	×0.5	5 points
`medium`	×1.0	10 points
`hard`	×2.0	20 points

Medium is the neutral baseline (×1.0) and is the default. Chores created before difficulty tiers existed default to medium, so they keep their exact award value — nothing changes unless you set a chore to easy or hard.

The awarded total is rounded to the nearest whole number and never goes below zero.

Setting a Chore's Difficulty¶

Set difficulty in the Difficulty selector in the chore dialog (add and edit) of the Admin Panel, or pass difficulty to the taskmate.add_chore service. Valid values are easy, medium, hard; anything else falls back to medium.

The child card shows the effective (post-multiplier) points, so a hard 10-point chore reads as 20.

Difficulty Badge on the Child Card¶

Since v4.0.1, children also see the difficulty tier directly on each chore as a small badge:

Tier	Badge
`easy`	Easy badge
`medium`	no badge (it is the baseline)
`hard`	Hard badge

Medium shows no badge, so a chore card stays uncluttered for the common case. Previously the tier was only visible indirectly through the (post-multiplier) points value.

Editing the Multipliers¶

The per-tier multipliers are configurable in the Admin Panel under Settings → Difficulty multipliers. There are three inputs:

Setting	Default	Range
`difficulty_multiplier_easy`	0.5	0.0–10.0
`difficulty_multiplier_medium`	1.0	0.0–10.0
`difficulty_multiplier_hard`	2.0	0.0–10.0

Changing a multiplier affects all chores at that tier going forward. Multipliers are global, not per-chore.

Note: Keeping medium at ×1.0 is recommended — it is the baseline that preserves existing chore values. You can change it, but every medium chore (including legacy ones) will then be rescaled.

Interaction with Other Features¶

Base points are what you enter on the chore; the multiplier scales them at award time on both completion and approval.
Early bonus / late penalty (see Chores) are applied after the difficulty multiplier — the tier scales the base, then the time adjustment is added or subtracted.
Timed chores earn by rate window, not base points, so the difficulty multiplier does not apply to them.

Sensor Attributes¶

Each chore in sensor.taskmate_overview → chores emits difficulty fields only when they are non-default, to keep the payload compact:

Attribute	When emitted	Description
`difficulty`	Only when not `medium`	The chore's tier (`easy` / `hard`)
`effective_points`	Only when it differs from base `points`	The post-multiplier award value

A plain medium chore emits neither field, so cards can assume base points unless effective_points is present.

The chore completion event (taskmate_chore_completed) reports the effective points plus a difficulty field.

Chores — chore configuration and the difficulty field
Admin Panel — where the selector and multiplier inputs live