Getting started

The quickest way to find out what Hobbit is for is a session plan you can take to the pitch, so that is where it starts. Everything after grows on a team: sessions are generated for your team, previews read your philosophy, debriefs land in your timeline.

After you sign in, a draggable "finish setup" checklist appears in a corner of the screen. The eight steps below are its eight steps, in the same order. Complete one anywhere in the app and it ticks itself; once every step is done it disappears.

Before the checklist: sign up

Sign up with an email address, or sign in with your Google or Apple account. On the phone app, use the same account: teams, sessions and chats are all there.

Sign-up takes an optional 8-character invite code. If a friend already uses Hobbit, ask for theirs: when someone they invited subscribes to Pro, they earn a free month.

Right after, Hobbit asks for a name and a photo. The public page's "Contact the coach" shows them, and the coach signature at the foot of player certificates comes from here too.

Step 1: generate the first session

Open Session design, or just tell the chat "plan Wednesday's training". Hobbit shows a confirmation form to check age group, player count, pitch, duration and standard, then generates, usually in two to three minutes. You don't have to stay on the page while it works; it finishes the plan anyway.

No team is needed yet: the form asks for what a team would otherwise tell it. The finished plan is saved to your library. The free plan includes two session plans; see Free and Pro.

Step 2: decide on your session standard

Hobbit ships seven templates: its own DGC five blocks (warm-up, technical, skill, conditioned game, plus a free small-sided game to close), the shapes the English FA, US Soccer, the DFB and the KNVB each publish, and two kinds of session, a trial session and a private lesson. A standard is one kind of session your club runs, and its length follows each training slot. If your club runs its own structure, open Session standard under Session design and upload a plan you use today; Hobbit reads the structure out of it in 30 seconds. See Session standards.

The confirmation form in step 1 already asks you to pick one, so your first plan ticks this step as well.

Step 3: create a team

Open Team and click "Create team". Two fields deserve care:

• Age group takes one number, U8 for example, never a range. Session generation and format constraints depend on it.
• Public page address cannot be changed after creation, so the link you share with parents stays valid forever.

The free plan includes one team with its full team brain and public page. More teams is Pro.

Step 4: put the first training on the calendar

Open Calendar and add a training event; until your first team exists it shows demo data. For a team that trains every week, tick "repeat weekly" and it fills the season in one go. The venue has to be a saved venue (the first time, you create one); the public page shows the training ground with a map.

From then on, when a training is coming up with no plan attached to it, the notification bell reminds you to attach one.

Step 5: add players

Add players by hand with "Add player" on Players or beside the roster on the team's page, or use "AI import" (Pro): hand it a spreadsheet, a sign-up sheet or a list pasted from a group chat and it recognises names, numbers, birthdates, parent phone numbers and more. Review the preview and import in one go, even several teams at once.

A child who is already on another of your teams comes over with "Import from other teams", no retyping.

Step 6: fill in the team brain

On the team page, write the team's philosophy under "Team brain" and its introduction under "Material". They are not only the front of the public page: Hobbit reads them before every chat, session plan and parent preview.

The "Team brain" column also holds the "Team memo": a sentence you mention in passing, such as "Thursdays we only have half a pitch, plan for 30×20", which Hobbit keeps and follows in every chat and every session plan.

Step 7: complete your coach profile

Open Account and fill in the coach profile: coaching experience, certifications, club, city, coaching honours and how you coach overall. The AI for every team calibrates to it, and each team's public page shows it to parents.

Step 8: add a badge and team colour

Open the team and edit it to upload a badge: Hobbit picks the badge's main colour as the team colour, and the team shows in that colour on the calendar.

Then: share the public page with the parents

Every team has a public page where parents see the schedule, the preview of the next session and the recap of the last one, without an account. The link is under "Public team page" at the top right of the team page. Send it to the group once; it keeps itself current.

The page looks better once the team has faces: open the team photographer for a matching set of player cards, and the public page, lineup images and certificates pick them up by themselves.

That closes the loop of one training day. Next, read Coach workspace for what happens before, during and after a session.