How ClaySquad Works

Choosing a club

The club picker starts with clubs you follow and up to five suggestions from your saved region or country. If you do not follow any clubs, it explains where followed clubs will appear. Enter at least two characters to search active clubs by name or city. After you choose a club, the picker shows its full location until you select Change.

Status

Every request has a status that shows where it is in its lifecycle:

• Open — actively looking for shooters
• Filled — no longer accepting join requests
• Cancelled — the shoot is off
• Completed — the scheduled squad formed and the reply window has closed
• Expired — no other confirmed shooter remained when the shoot started

Before the shoot, the organiser can edit the club, time, capacity, preference, tags, notes, and badge style. The shoot date may be today or later in the club's timezone, even when the chosen start time has passed. Accepted and pending shooters are notified and must confirm schedule changes; the organiser sees New time confirmed or Confirmation needed beside each one. The request becomes read-only when it is cancelled, completed, or expired.

Replying

Use the reply box on the squad detail page to coordinate. Your reply is public to all logged-in users. Replies stay open until 48 hours after the shoot ends, although the organiser can finish the request sooner once the shoot is over. Use the separate join request to ask for a place on the roster.

While you have a squad page open, new replies, status changes, and private roster check-ins appear on their own. You do not need to reload the page.

When a member joins, leaves, or is removed, the squad page shows a private roster update. The organiser and current accepted members can see it, and the member named in an update can still see and delete their own update after leaving. Join and leave notes appear only there. A removal looks like a neutral leave to the remaining squad, while the affected member receives a direct private notice.

Finding the right squad

On mobile, keep Search visible and open Filters for location, preference, dates, times, Gauge, Discipline, and Targets. On desktop, dates and times stay with the primary filters, while More filters contains the searchable tag choices. Date from and Date to are optional and inclusive, and each date means the date at the squad's club.

Morning means 7am–noon and Afternoon means noon–6pm. You can select either or both. Flexible and older Any time requests match either period. An exact-time request matches when any part of its stored time range overlaps a selected period.

Selected tag values appear as removable pills. Several choices in one group match any of them; choices in different groups require a squad to match each group.

Squad cards show whether you organise the squad, requested to join it, or already joined it.

Arrival check-ins

On the shoot date in the club timezone, the organiser and accepted members use Check in on their own roster row. The modal accepts an optional location note. Other roster members can see the status and receive email and in-app notifications when someone checks in, changes their note, or undoes a check-in.

Update note opens the modal with your current note. Saving keeps the original check-in time. Undo check-in removes the current status, and you can check in again later that day. Check-in closes at 11:59:59pm club time. Afterward, the final status and activity stay visible only to that squad roster.

Check-ins are self-reported. ClaySquad does not collect your browser location or treat a check-in as proof that you attended.

Private member notebook

Another member's profile contains your private notebook for that person. You can keep a general note, ratings, and encounter records for squads you shared after the shoot started. Only you can see them. Notebook icons on a squad roster link back to your record without showing its contents.

Notes and ratings are encrypted with ClaySquad's application key. You may add a personal passphrase lock for another encryption layer. ClaySquad cannot recover a lost passphrase, but you can delete a locked record without it. Account deletion removes live notebook data authored by or about you; deleted data remains only in encrypted backups until normal backup expiry.

“Remind me before joining” is a separate personal setting. Before your join request is sent, ClaySquad lists any organiser or accepted member you asked to be reminded about. The warning describes only your setting and does not stop you from continuing.

When someone joins a squad you already accepted, you always receive an in-app notification. You can turn the email copy off in Profile. A notification may say that you have a private record or reminder, but never includes note or rating contents.

Squad preferences (gender)

Organisers can create Mixed, Females Only, or Males Only squads. The platform shows a warning if your gender setting does not match the squad preference, but does not block you from replying. Your choice to proceed is recorded for the organiser to see.

What a listing means

An administrator reviews listings for completeness and appropriate content before approved details become public. ClaySquad does not verify identity, NSCA credentials, teaching quality, safety, prices, or club affiliation. Clubs and NSCA details are self-reported, and a listed club does not endorse the instructor. ClaySquad is not a party to lessons or payments.

Public profiles show approved professional details and contact information. They do not show the member's account name, member avatar, students, student count, private classifications, or relationships. Signed-in members may open the separate member profile for instructor–student relationship actions.

Creating and managing a listing

After registration, choose Create instructor listing on Profile. Supply a public name, person photo, description, teaching focus, public contact method, at least one active teaching club, and public-data consent. Business details, rates, availability, and paired NSCA number and designation are optional.

A submitted revision is locked during review. Withdraw it before editing. Rejection includes an administrator reason and makes it editable. Approved content remains public while later changes are reviewed. Teaching-club changes apply immediately, but a published listing cannot remove its final active club.

Unpublish hides the listing and keeps its approved data and instructor role so it can be republished when eligible. Stop being an instructor is permanent: it removes the listing, photos, old URLs, and instructor–student relationships after a detailed confirmation.

Reporting a listing

Signed-in members may report misrepresentation, a false credential or club affiliation, spam, inappropriate content, a safety concern, or another issue. A pending report does not hide the listing. An administrator reviews it, and both the reporter and instructor receive the decision.

Finding and sharing profiles

The member search on Connections searches usernames after you enter at least three characters. It shows exact matches first, then usernames that start with your search. The search is available only to signed-in members and does not change who can connect or confirm an instructor–student relationship.

Selecting a member name in squads, replies, Connections, or instructor and student lists opens a quick view without leaving the current page. Use Open full profile when you need the complete signed-in member page.

To share your own profile in person, choose Share profile on Profile. The QR code and displayed link open your ClaySquad member profile after the other person signs in. They contain no email address or private account information.

Who can you connect with?

You can send a connection request only to someone you were both accepted onto the same squad with, once that squad's time window has started. Until then Connect remains visible but disabled and explains what is needed.

Replying to a squad, visiting a profile, or a pending or declined join request do not make a connection possible.

You can turn off incoming connection requests in Profile. This does not affect instructor–student requests.

Request lifecycle

• A pending request expires after 14 days with no response
• Each request is a single attempt. The recipient can accept it or quietly ignore it. The ignore confirmation shows the exact expiry date and explains that the sender is not told
• You can send again only if you later share a new squad whose window has started
• Either party can withdraw a pending request or disconnect an existing connection at any time. Ending a connection does not notify anyone

Visible students in an instructor's list are labelled Public or Instructor network. Hidden relationships are never listed.

Connection count

Your profile shows how many connections you have, but never who they are. You can hide this count from others in Profile; you can always see your own. The count is not a score and is not used to rank or filter anyone.

Connection groups

From the Connections page you can create named private groups (e.g. "Thursday Regulars") and assign your connections to them. Groups are only visible to you, and let you notify a set of connections at once when you post a squad request.

Instructor–student relationships

An instructor and a student can confirm their relationship. Either person sends the request and the other accepts it. The person named as the instructor must have created an instructor listing, which enables the instructor role. The listing may be unpublished.

When you send the request you choose who can see the relationship:

• Hidden — only the two of you
• Instructor network — the instructor's other students whose relationships are also Instructor network or Public
• Public — shown on both profiles and in the instructor's student list

This confirms only that you both acknowledge the relationship. It is not a vouch and does not imply competence, safety or endorsement. It is separate from a personal connection and does not count towards your connection total. Either party can end it at any time, and the other person receives an in-app notification. Manage these from the Connections page.

Following a club

Click the follow button on any club's detail page. You will receive an email with the new squad's date and time window, formatted with your saved preferences (subject to your email notification settings in Profile).

Following a squad request

Replying to a squad request automatically adds you as a follower. You can also follow any squad manually from its detail page. Followers receive an in-app notification (and optional email) when a new reply is posted to that thread.

On desktop, the Notifications destination and relevant sidebar badges update as soon as something arrives. On mobile, the bell in the header shows the unread notification count and opens the same Notifications page.

Your own active squad requests are always followed. Replies from members you blocked do not add an unread marker or notification. If you reveal a collapsed blocked reply, Hide collapses it again without unblocking its author.

Managing Following

Visit Following from the sidebar to see all your followed clubs and squad requests with unfollow controls. Active requests you organise are labelled Automatically followed.