The Brim guide

Your first five minutes

1. Confirm you're 18 or over. Brim never asks for your date of birth, only this one tick.
2. Add an AI key. The setup guide walks you through a free Groq key: tap Set up with Groq, then Open Groq console, create a key, come back and tap Paste from clipboard and Check and save key. You can also Choose another provider, or Set up later.
3. Allow sharing. A key on its own does nothing. Brim shows you exactly what it will send, and only switches AI on after you tick the consent box and tap Allow sharing.
4. Tell Brim about you. In Profile, add your weight and height, choose a protein target, and under Medication pick On a GLP-1 medicine or None, just tracking food.
5. Photograph something. Tap the orange camera in the middle of the bottom bar and point it at whatever you're about to eat.

Not on a GLP-1? Choose "None, just tracking food" and Brim works as a calm, protein-first calorie counter. Nothing else changes.

Logging a meal

The orange camera opens Capture. You can use any mix of these, and Brim combines them:

• Photo. Tap the shutter, or pick an earlier picture with Choose from gallery.
• Voice. Tap Describe and say what's on the plate, for example "two eggs scrambled with butter, one slice of sourdough". Tap Stop when you're done.
• Text. Type into the box: "half a tuna sandwich and an apple" is plenty.
• Barcode. Tap Scan a barcode on anything packaged. Brim looks it up on Open Food Facts.

No photo? Tap Estimate without a photo. Your words count for more than the picture anyway, especially for portions and hidden things like oil, sauce and milk.

Checking the estimate

After a few seconds you'll see the plate broken into items, each with its own portion. Calories appear as a range ("estimate · ±15%") because nobody can weigh food from a photo, and Brim would rather be honest than precise.

• Wrong portion? Drag that item's slider, type the grams, or tap ¼, ½, ¾ or All.
• Wrong food? Tap Not right? Tell me, type the correction ("the rice was brown, and there was no sauce"), then Re-estimate.
• Eaten earlier? Tap Change next to the time.
• Happy with it? Save meal.

Catching up on the past few days? Choose several photos from your gallery at once. Brim reads the date each one was taken and steps through them, so each meal lands on the right day.

Shortcuts you'll come to love

• Repeat a meal. Same breakfast every day? Quick log → Repeat a meal, search, tap. Done. Full
• Combine. Logged a starter and a main separately? Open either in the Diary and tap Combine to merge them into one meal.
• Pictures for text-only meals. With an OpenAI, xAI or Gemini key, Brim can paint a picture for meals you only described, so your diary stays visual. Switch it on in Settings → AI setup.

Medicines and symptoms

Injections. In Profile → Medication, add your medicine, dose, start date and usual Injection day. Tap Log today's injection when you take it. Injection days appear on Today, in the Diary and on your calorie charts, so you can see how your appetite moves through the week.

Pills, vitamins and supplements. Under Daily pills, add each one. For twice-daily doses, use Add again (second dose). They appear as a checklist on Today: tick them off as you go and the tile shows "all taken" when you're done.

Symptoms. Tap Constipation, Nausea, Vomiting, Low appetite, Reflux or Fatigue in Quick log. They're lined up against your food, so you can spot what sets things off.

Bathroom. Tap Bathroom to log a visit on the Bristol scale (types 1 to 7), with size and optional notes. It stays on your phone, and it's the kind of detail a GP finds genuinely useful.

Conditions and foods to avoid. Add any conditions (for example type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure) and foods you don't eat in Profile. Brim's suggestions take both into account.

Water

Tap 250 ml water in Quick log each time you finish a glass. GLP-1 medicines can dull thirst, so on Android Brim can remind you: Settings → Drink reminders. The first nudge arrives when your morning alarm goes off (or at 08:00 if you don't set one), then every two hours. Logging a glass restarts the two hours, and reminders stop once you hit your target or after 16 hours. Tap Drank 250 ml on the notification to log it without opening Brim.

Exercise and energy

Tap Exercise in Quick log and type or say what you did: "40 minutes brisk walk, 50 sit-ups". Tap Estimate, check it, then Log all. Free accounts use a standard activity table; with Full, your AI estimates from your own description and body.

To make Energy balance meaningful, set your maintenance calories in Profile → Maintenance calories. Calculate works it out from your weight, height, age and activity, or choose Enter my own if your watch or clinician has given you a number.

If your watch writes workouts to Health Connect, they come in automatically.

Meal plans

The Plans tab is for the days you'd rather not think. Pick a style (Balanced, Vegetarian, Vegan, Omni low GI or Carnivore), slide your calories for the day, and you get a protein-led day of meals you can log with Log this. There's a Rough day option for when appetite is low, a weekly shopping list, and the simple rules that make it work. Plans are free for everyone.

AI setup

Brim has no server of its own. When you log a meal, it talks directly to the AI provider you've chosen, using your key. You pay them directly, usually a few pence a day.

In Settings → AI setup you'll find Groq, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, Anthropic Claude and OpenAI. For each one you can paste a key, allow or stop sharing, and tap Prefer to make it your first choice. If your preferred provider is busy, Brim quietly tries the next allowed one; the Order line shows the sequence.

• Groq is free and quick for text and voice, but can't see photos.
• OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and xAI read photos well. Gemini needs a Google Cloud project with billing switched on.
• Voice is transcribed by Groq or OpenAI if you've allowed one, otherwise by your phone's own speech recognition.

Changed your mind? Stop all AI sharing switches everything off at once. Your diary keeps working; new meals just won't be estimated until you allow a provider again.

Backup

Your diary lives on your phone, so keep a copy. Settings → Backup and restore → Save backup writes a single file you can keep in Google Drive or anywhere else. Restore backup merges it back in without deleting anything you already have.

Backups include your meals and photos but not your API keys, purchase or AI permissions, and they aren't encrypted, so store them somewhere private.

Free and Full

For your first 14 days everything is open. After that, logging, Today, the last 7 days of your diary, exercise, meal plans and backup stay free for good.

Brim Full is a single payment (£14.69 in the UK) that keeps everything else: 7 and 30 day Insights, protein suggestions, AI exercise estimates, Repeat a meal, your whole history, Health Connect, doctor reports and body photos. Find it in Settings → Brim Full. Changed phones? Tap Restore purchase.

When something goes wrong

Still stuck, or have an idea? Email eurobuddha@gmail.com. A real person reads every message.