Planning a night out in London: what SOVA does and what it sees

Planning a night out by hand

You do not need an app to plan a route between bars. Four checks do most of the work:

• One area. Pick a part of town where the venues sit close together, so each move is a short walk. Our guides to King's Cross, Brixton and Shoreditch cover three of MYSOVA's zones.
• Closing times. London has no single closing time: each venue's licence sets its hours. What time do pubs close in London? shows how to check one.
• Order. Put the stops that close earliest first.
• The way home. Work it out before you set off. The Night Tube runs on six lines on Friday and Saturday nights only, and night buses run on all seven nights [4]. Our Soho guide sets out the options.

What SOVA does

You open SOVA from the SOVA button in the search bar of the app's map, and ask in your own words [5]. If the request is too vague to plan from, it asks one question back, with two to four answers to tap. That question does not count toward your daily limit [1][6].

When it suggests venues, the reply is a route [1][7]:

• the stops in the order to visit them, with times after midnight counted as later the same night;
• a time and a one-line reason for each stop;
• the walk between stops, estimated from the straight-line distance at 80 metres a minute, so the real walk is usually a little longer;
• a button to trace the route on the map, where a "Start your night at …" button opens the clock-in for the first stop.

Tap a stop, and the map moves to that venue [5][7]. Four hours after SOVA made it, the route card shows as stale and asks you to ask again [7].

Ask it how XP, ranks, clock-ins or Boosts work, and it answers in text [1]. It declines questions that are not about London nights or the app [1].

What it sees

When you ask, the app sends SOVA [2][8]:

• your level, rank, plan, number of clock-ins and the interests on your profile, with the London time;
• the 20 nearest venues within 3 kilometres of your phone, each with its category, its straight-line distance and walking time, and whether the app lists it as open now;
• up to 20 events the app lists for the next seven days, with their venues and dates.

SOVA is told to prefer venues that the app lists as open now, that are a short walk away and that match your interests [1]. Venues the app features with a larger pin on the map come first in the list it receives, and it is told to favour them too [1][2]. It is also told to name only venues and events from that list, and never to invent a venue, an event, a date or a price [1]. Before a route reaches you, MYSOVA's server checks each stop against the app's list of active venues and drops any it cannot find [6].

What it does not see

• Anywhere beyond 3 kilometres. It plans from where your phone is. Asked about Soho from Peckham, it can only name venues within 3 kilometres of you, so ask from where the night starts [2].
• Your location, if the app cannot read it. Then it has no nearby venues to work from [2].
• Your friends. Friends' activity is not sent to it [2][8].
• Crowds. It has no data on how busy any venue is [1][2].
• Your identity. SOVA runs on Anthropic's Claude Haiku model. MYSOVA sends Anthropic your recent SOVA messages and the details listed above, but not your name, email address, phone number or exact coordinates [6][8]. Our privacy notice sets out how long Anthropic keeps them.

The app's sense of what is open comes from the hours it holds for each venue, and those can be out of date. Check with the venue before you set off.

How many questions you get

Each plan has a daily number of questions [3][6]:

The count resets at midnight UTC, which is midnight in London in winter and 01:00 in summer [6]. A clarifying question does not use one [6].

A route and your XP

MYSOVA is a London social passport: clock in at bars, pubs and clubs, earn XP and meet people where you go. A route is a set of stops to clock in at, and each new venue in a night adds combo XP: 15 at the 2nd venue, 30 at the 3rd and 50 at the 4th, before multipliers [9]. From the 5th venue, the venue line pays less [9]. How clocking in and XP work sets out the sum, and the London nightlife map shows the zones where a clock-in earns a multiplier.

Your first clock-in starts your passport.

Free · UK App Store and Google Play · 18+

Sources

All read on 26 October 2026.

1. The MYSOVA app's source at origin/main (585ae04cc): the assistant's instructions and route rules in its server function (scope, refusals, grounding, the clarifying question, routes of 1 to 5 stops in visiting order) and the server's re-ordering of stops by time of night.
2. The same source: the database function that builds what the assistant receives (migration 20260721093000, 21 July 2026: the 20 nearest active venues within 3,000 metres, walking time at 80 metres a minute, the open-now flag, featured venues listed first, up to 20 events in the next 7 days, no friends' activity), and the app code that sends your phone's location with each question.
3. MYSOVA plan constants: the app's lib/constants.ts (3, 10 and 30 questions a day) and the shared tier prices (Explorer £7.99, Icon £14.99 a month), as published on /facts.
4. Transport for London, "The Night Tube": https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/tube/night-tube; TfL Unified API, Line/Mode/tube,overground,elizabeth-line/Route?serviceTypes=Night; Transport for London, "Safer travel at night": https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/your-safety-and-security/safer-travel-at-night. Fetched 26 October 2026.
5. The same app source: the map screen, app/(tabs)/index.tsx (the SOVA entry, a tapped stop moving the map, "Start your night at …" opening the clock-in), and components/map/MapSearchBar.tsx (the SOVA button in the map search bar, re-read on 27 October 2026 at e57b7fad2).
6. The same app source: the assistant's server function (the daily quota by plan, reset at midnight UTC; clarifying questions left out of the count; each stop checked against active venues; the Claude Haiku model).
7. The same app source: the chat's route timeline, SovaPathTimeline.tsx ("Trace it on the map"), and the route card on the map, SovaPathDiscoveryBanner.tsx (the walking estimate between stops and the four-hour stale rule).
8. MYSOVA privacy notice, the Anthropic paragraph: https://mysova.co.uk/privacy.
9. How clocking in and XP work, and the combo lines in secure_checkin_v2_core_streak (supabase/migrations/20260729180000_event_bonus_display_tier.sql): 15, 30 and 50 XP at the 2nd, 3rd and 4th venue of a night.