The twelve houses
Planets are the actors, signs are how they act, houses are the rooms they act in.
The wheel starts at your Ascendant
The 1st house begins at the rising sign and the houses count anticlockwise. Because the Ascendant depends on your birth time and place, so does every house. The 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th are the angles, the strongest positions in the chart.
Rooms, not personality
The 1st is you and your body; the 2nd what you own; the 3rd siblings, errands and messages; the 4th home; the 5th romance, play and children; the 6th work and health; the 7th partners; the 8th what you share, including sex, debt and loss; the 9th travel and belief; the 10th career; the 11th friends and hopes; the 12th solitude and secrets.
Empty houses are normal
With ten planets and twelve houses, some rooms are always empty. An empty house is not a missing part of your life; it is run by the planet that rules the sign on its cusp. Hover any house on your wheel and the app names that ruler for you.
House systems
There is more than one way to divide the sky into twelve. We use Placidus by default because it is the most common in modern practice; you can switch to Koch, Whole Sign, Equal or others in settings. Near the poles some systems break down, and we fall back to Porphyry and tell you.