How we test our gift suggestions so they're never generic
October 21, 2026 · 2 min read
A gift suggestion engine has an obvious failure mode: it’s easy to build one that technically works and generates nothing but safe, forgettable filler, a candle, a mug, a gift card, over and over. Avoiding that wasn’t an afterthought bolted onto Morrowyn after launch. It was the first thing we tested, before a single line of the actual app got built.
The rule every suggestion has to pass
Two rules do most of the work. First, every rationale has to cite a specific, named fact from that person’s actual profile: an interest, something they mentioned recently, a reaction to a past gift. An idea that can’t be tied to a real fact about that specific person doesn’t get suggested at all. Second, a hard-coded list of the most common generic filler, candles, mugs, gift cards, spa vouchers, is banned outright unless a specific profile fact genuinely justifies breaking the rule.
What happens when the profile is thin
A new person with barely any notes attached is exactly where a lesser system would pad with generic ideas to fill out a list. Morrowyn does the opposite: a thin profile gets fewer suggestions, sometimes only two or three, plus one specific question whose answer would actually improve the next round. Fewer, honest ideas beat a full list of guesses.
How we validated it before launch
Before the suggestion engine became part of the live app, we ran it against a set of real profiles, including one deliberately built to be thin, and scored every suggestion on specificity, budget fit, and whether it repeated something from the person’s gift history. The bar to move forward: the large majority of ideas on a rich profile had to earn full marks for specificity, zero banned-generic ideas were allowed to slip into a top result, and the thin profile had to trigger the clarifying question instead of filler. Freshness, the no-repeat rule, was part of that same bar from day one.
The bar doesn’t relax after launch
None of this is a one-time check we ran and moved on from. The same rules that were scored before launch are enforced on every suggestion Morrowyn generates today, for every person, every time, not just the ones in the original test set.