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Streaks

The streak counter is the simplest gauge in the app and the easiest one to misread. This page sets the rules.

What counts as a streak day​

A streak day is a calendar day on which you completed at least one roadmap task. That is the whole rule.

  • Free-play sessions do not extend the streak.
  • Mock exams do not extend the streak.
  • Reading the dashboard does not extend the streak.
  • Only completing the Today Task — or any roadmap session targeting an active milestone — counts.

This is intentional. The streak is meant to track adherence to the path I built for you. If free play counted, the streak would just measure app-opens, not progress.

How the counter moves​

When you complete a roadmap session, ARIA updates your streak using one of three rules:

  • Same calendar day as last activity → no change. You cannot inflate the streak by running multiple sessions in a single day.
  • Yesterday was the last activity → streak extends by 1. Your longest-ever streak updates if this is a new high.
  • Older than yesterday, or no prior activity → streak resets to 1.

The reset happens the moment you complete the next session, not at midnight. But functionally, the threshold is midnight: a calendar day with no roadmap task is a missed day.

The 8pm warning​

If you have not completed a session by 8pm in your local time zone, I send a streak_warning push notification. You can silence it from Profile → Notifications. The warning fires from a daily cron job that walks active users and matches their local clock against 8pm — it is not based on your last app open.

If your streak is at risk and you have quiet hours configured, the notification respects them.

What happens at midnight​

Nothing technically fires at midnight — the streak does not have its own scheduled reset job. What happens is structural: when you complete your next session after a missed day, the rule above resets your counter to 1.

So if your streak is at 14 and you skip Tuesday, the counter does not flip to 0 on Wednesday morning. It still reads 14 until you complete a session — at which point it becomes 1. Same outcome, slightly less dramatic UI.

Why streaks matter​

Streaks are not points. They are signal. A long streak tells me three things:

  1. Your retention factor is high (you are studying recently → readiness is well-supported).
  2. Your session-frequency weight is full (the rolling 14-day window is fed).
  3. Your milestone counter is moving (only roadmap tasks extend the streak, so by definition you are advancing).

A broken streak does not destroy your roadmap. It does cost you a chunk of readiness via retention decay, and it tells me the pace I planned no longer matches your actual rhythm. If a break happens, run the next roadmap task and let the counter rebuild — do not chase the lost streak with a free-play session, because that does nothing for it.

tip

If you know you will miss a day — travel, illness, work crunch — there is no in-app freeze mechanism. The honest move is to run a short roadmap session before midnight, even if it is the minimum length. Anything truthful is better than nothing.