Streak mechanics: the day you want to skip

Somewhere in week two or three, the day arrives. You are tired, the schedule slipped, and the voice says: skip today, restart tomorrow. This day is not the exception to the program. It is the exam.

The fallback rule

The rule we ship in The Ice Code is one line: on the day you want to skip, do the minimum unit instead. Thirty seconds. Not your current week's duration — the day-one dose.

A streak is binary. The logbook does not record how impressive the session was; it records that the session happened. Thirty seconds keeps the bit set to 1. Zero flips it — and restarting from a broken streak costs more than any single session ever will.

Why the minimum works

The skip-voice negotiates in totals: "you cannot do four minutes today". It is usually right. It has no answer to thirty seconds. You are not overriding the objection — you are stepping around it.

Decide the fallback before you need it. Write it into the plan on day one, like a fire exit: you hope to never use it, and it keeps the whole building standing.