Regulars
You met someone good and pressed Skip, or they did, and that was that. You do not want a dating app, and you do not want a friend-finder with profiles and photos. You want the bus stop: the same faces, no names, no obligation.
A regular is someone you have both waved at. You stay anonymous to each other.
Nothing on Lumi connects two people unless both chose it. There are no suggestions, no directory, and no search by name. A regular is just a nickname in a short list, and a small light that comes on when they are in a room you can walk into.
How it works
- Wave at the end of a chat. When a one-to-one ends, a Wave control appears for a few seconds next to the searching status.
- Nothing happens unless the other person waves too, within 7 days, and nobody is told about a one-sided wave. A wave is accepted only for the chat that just ended.
- When both have waved, you are regulars. Each of you sees the other's nickname under Your regulars, and "in The Quiet Room" with a Join button when they are in a public room in your band, or a community you are both in. That is computed live and never stored; there is no "last seen".
What regulars can do
- Around now. A regular's name lights up only when they are in a room you can join, never as a per-person online status. Everyone has an Invisible switch.
- Message requests. Text only, screened like any chat, with no read receipts and no typing indicators, and deleted after 30 days. You can open at most 5 new conversations a day. Before your first message: "They see your nickname, not your name. Block or report from any message." A message can also be sent as a letter, delivered twelve hours later.
- Calls. When a regular is around, you can call them. They have sixty seconds to accept; the call starts with the cameras off and works exactly like any one-to-one chat, screening included.
- A community. An adult with an account can open one small community, by invitation and acceptance only. A community holds 8 people; with Room Pro, 50. Nobody is told about a declined invitation or a refused request. A community can set a session, once or weekly, and members who are connected are reminded ten minutes before.
- A bell. While you are on the site, a bell and a short tone tell you a regular has entered a room you can join or a session is about to start. Nothing arrives for a person with no regulars, and nothing is ever promotional.
The safety facts
- Every regular is an age-checked adult (18 and over). Regulars, message requests, calls, and communities are for adults for now; they come to the 13-to-17 lane, if at all, only after a separate privacy assessment.
- Blocking is total and silent. It removes the regular, both waves, every message between you, and any shared community, and the other person is told nothing. A ban does the same.
- Messages are screened by the same automated checks as any chat, and a blocked message is refused. Report from any message files the thread with a person.
- What a wave stores: the two people, the band, the chat it came from, the nickname you used, and when. It expires in 7 days if it stays one-sided.
- No profiles, no photos, no usernames crossing, no data sale, and no ads. Your IP address is never shown to anyone you meet.
What Lumi is not
Lumi is not a dating app and not a friend-finder. There are no profiles to browse, nobody is suggested to you, and there is no way to look someone up.
The familiar stranger
The person you see at the bus stop every morning and nod to has a name in the literature: the familiar stranger (Milgram 1972). Repeated low-key encounters with people you do not really know turn out to be part of what makes a place feel like home (Paulos and Goodman 2004; Zahnow and Corcoran 2025), and days with more of these weak-tie interactions are days people feel they belong more (Sandstrom and Dunn 2014). Regulars are that, on purpose.
Sources: Milgram, 1972; Paulos and Goodman, 2004; Zahnow and Corcoran, 2025; Sandstrom and Dunn, 2014.