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Phases and milestones

Phases hold milestones. Milestones hold the work. This page is the reference for what each one carries and how they progress.

Inside a phase​

Every phase has:

  • A phase number (1 through 5).
  • A title generated by ARIA — specific to the domain or domains it covers.
  • A description explaining what you will accomplish.
  • An estimated_weeks based on your daily study minutes.
  • A status — active, locked, or completed.

Phase 1 is always active when your roadmap is generated. The rest are locked until earlier phases complete.

Inside a milestone​

When you tap a milestone on the timeline, the bottom-sheet detail modal opens. It has six regions:

The phase crumb (Phase 2 · Operations & Reliability), the milestone title, and the status chip with its icon.

ARIA intro card​

A one-line message in ARIA's voice, picked by status:

  • Active: "Here's what this milestone is about. Finish all N sessions before the next one unlocks."
  • Validation ready: "You've done the sessions. Time to prove it."
  • Completed: "Validation passed — N/100. Move to the next milestone."
  • Failed: "Close, but not there yet. Here's what to fix before you retry."
  • Restructured: "I rebuilt the approach. Read the notes below, then try again."

Overview card​

  • Domain focus chip (which certification domain this targets).
  • Estimated minutes (rough total for all sessions plus the validation).
  • Sessions progress bar (3 / 5 style — completed roadmap sessions over sessions_required).

Topics list​

Bulleted list of the subjects ARIA will cover across the milestone's sessions. These are not strict — within a session, topic order can vary, but everything in this list will be touched.

Restructure notes​

Only appears if the milestone has been restructured. Shows ARIA's full rewritten approach in a yellow callout. Read it before you retry — it is not boilerplate. It contains the specific misconceptions she diagnosed from your failed attempts.

CTA row​

  • Start session — launches a roadmap session targeting this milestone.
  • Last report — opens the report from your most recent session in this milestone, if one exists.

When the milestone is in validation_ready status, the primary button changes to Validate and routes to the milestone validation test instead of a practice session.

Validation criteria​

To complete a milestone, you must:

  1. Complete every session in the sessions_required counter.
  2. Pass the validation test with a score ≥ validation_score_required.

The validation test is unlocked only after the session counter is full and your readiness score has reached at least 75, with each of your last two roadmap sessions scoring ≥ 65% accuracy. If you try to validate before that, the CTA stays disabled and the gate caption tells you exactly what is missing.

Failure and restructure​

  • First failure: the milestone goes to failed. Retry available.
  • Second failure: still failed. Retry available — but I am watching the pattern.
  • Third failure: the milestone goes to restructured. ARIA reads your full attempt history (every error, every diagnosis) and rewrites the approach: new topic order, new session count, new misconceptions to address. The result lands in restructure_notes on the milestone. The validation requirement does not change — your bar is still the same score. What changes is how you get there.

This is by design. If you have failed three times the same way, repeating the same path is not going to fix it. ARIA does not repeat — she restructures.