GUIDE

How dates are decided

Where the next date comes from and why it moves afterwards: how the intervals widen, what confidence and importance change, and how to read “Why this date”.

Intervals widen by steps

Repetition intervals move along a fixed ladder: same day, 1, 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, 120 and 240 days.

The rating you choose is what moves a record along it.

Rating	Movement
Again	Back to the 1-day step.
Hard	Down one step.
Good	Up one step.
Easy	Up two steps.

Again returns to the 1-day step rather than to the very beginning, because something learned once is rarely forgotten completely. Instead of starting over, you meet it again soon. That holds however long the gap was: failing to recall something is evidence it is slipping, whatever the reason for the delay.

The reverse also applies. Recall something after a gap longer than it was scheduled for and it advances by however many steps that gap covered. If you remembered it after 60 days, it survived a 60-day interval, and there is no reason to ask for it again in 16. It moves up to the step the gap covered, then the rating's own step is applied on top.

The first date

The confidence you set when adding a record decides which step it starts on.

Confidence when added	First repetition
Hard / Unsure	Same day
Okay / Got it	The next day
Confident	Three days later

There is no need to see something confident again the same day, and no sense leaving something shaky for three.

What importance and focus items change

Importance is how sure you want to be of remembering. Dates are computed to hold roughly an 80% chance of recall at the lowest setting, up to 95% at Critical.

Setting importance to High or above pulls the interval back by one step. A focus item pulls back by one as well, and something that is both comes back two steps sooner.

So importance does more than win priority on a crowded day — it raises how often you meet the record at all. Marking everything Critical grows the daily load, so it pays to reserve it for what you truly cannot afford to lose.

How far a date can move

A computed date is not pinned to one day; it carries a little room either side — 15% of the interval earlier (up to 3 days) and 8% later (up to 2 days).

Breaks are avoided and crowded days are spread within that room, never beyond it. Too early and you repeat before forgetting has begun; too late and you repeat after it is gone.

When a day would run past your daily target, the overdue records go down first, then the important ones, then the ones you have lapsed on most. Whatever still does not fit stays on the day, marked over capacity.

Overdue records are the exception. Their room lies entirely in the past, which offers no day you could actually use, so they are re-anchored on today with up to 14 days of room opened ahead. The most overdue take today first, and the rest spread to stay within your daily target.

Reading “Why this date”

After saving a repetition, or from a day's breakdown on the calendar, you can open the reasoning. Each rule that applied is listed, one line each.

Line	What it means
The date comes from memory stability and target retention.	The base calculation, and the starting point for everything below.
The repetition moved before / after the break.	It fell inside a break you had set.
The repetition moved within its allowed window to balance the agenda.	That day was crowded, so it was spread within the room it had.
The repetition remains on this date even though it exceeds the daily capacity.	There was nowhere left to move it, so it stayed, over capacity.
The same repetition was already saved, so its authoritative result was returned.	The same round arrived twice, usually a resend. It is not recorded twice.
This round was overdue, so it was placed from today onward instead of on a date already gone.	Its intended date had passed, so it was re-anchored on today.
You recalled this after a longer gap than it was scheduled for, so the repetition advanced to match what the gap proved.	It moved up to the step the gap covered, and the next interval is longer for it.
You deferred this record, so it sits on the date you chose.	The date you set by deferring is the one in use.

AI does not decide dates

No AI and no randomness touches any of this. The same history and the same settings produce the same date, whenever it is computed.

AI drafts a capture from what you type and writes the weekly review. It has no hand in the schedule.

Recording a round Setting a break

Updated July 28, 2026Back to the guide