The longer two people text before meeting, the more of the relationship happens in a medium that filters out almost everything that matters in person — tone, timing, chemistry, the small physical cues that decide whether two people actually click. A long text runway builds a version of someone that the real person then has to compete with.
Our position: meet sooner than feels comfortable, ideally within the first week, for a short and public first date. The compatibility read already told you whether the fundamentals are promising — endless texting doesn't add new information, it just delays finding out what actually matters.
The caveats, stated properly and not as a footnote: always meet in public, tell a friend where you're going and when you expect to be back, arrange your own way home, and trust any hesitation enough to reschedule or leave. "Sooner" is about not over-investing in a text version of a stranger — it is never an argument for skipping the basics that keep a first meeting safe.