How it's made

Everything we compute, everything we write, and what we will never claim.

1. The sky is real

At 6:00 AM in your time zone we compute the geocentric, tropical positions of the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn using an astronomical engine (the open-source astronomy-engine library, accurate to well under a degree). We also compute the Moon's phase and illumination, when it next changes sign, and, if you've told us your city, your sunrise. Those numbers are shown at the top of every dose. Anyone with a planetarium app can check them.

2. The chart is yours

Your birth date gives your Sun sign, computed from the Sun's actual position that day rather than a cusp table. We read the day's planets against your Sun sign using whole-sign solar houses, the method newspaper astrologers have used since the 1930s: your Sun sign is the first house, the next sign the second (money and values), and so on around the wheel. Numerology uses the standard Pythagorean personal-day calculation, and we show the arithmetic.

3. The words are written by AI, and we say so

Each morning's paragraph is written by a language model from the computed facts above, under rules we wrote: use the real placements, give one concrete suggestion and one thing to notice, stay under 110 words, and never predict events, health, money outcomes or other people's behavior. Every reading passes a check for length and voice; if the model misses twice, a plain computed paragraph goes out instead, so a morning is never skipped. The model name is in the footer of every dose.

4. The tradition we draw on

Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos (2nd century), Vettius Valens' Anthologies, William Lilly's Christian Astrology (1647), and the public-domain almanacs that followed. The daily newspaper horoscope began in August 1930 with R.H. Naylor in the Sunday Express. We like the form. We just thought it should look up.

5. What we never claim

• That the stars cause anything. The readings are for reflection and entertainment.
• That we can predict your day, your health, your money or anyone's behavior.
• That you should quit, leave, confront or spend because of a paragraph.

6. Your data

We keep your email, birth date, time zone, optional first name and city, and the doses we sent you. We never sell or share any of it. The “Delete my account and data” button on your manage page removes everything, cancels billing, and works immediately.

Dose of Dawn is a product of Metatron Mothership LLC, which also builds deeper readings. Members may occasionally hear about those, once, and only in response to something they have shown interest in.