The calendar

The calendar is your writing across time. It pairs each day with what you wrote, shows your streaks on the grid, and lets you open or start a day's work from a single place. It also surfaces memories — what you made on this date in earlier years.

Opening the calendar

In the left rail, click the Calendar icon. It opens as a full view. Click it again (or the back chevron in the header) to return to the editor.

At the top you'll find two modes:

• Calendar — the month grid (below).
• Pages — a deliberate, browsable list of every morning page, newest first, with a search box. This is the place to revisit pages if you choose to; they open in reading mode.

The writing heatmap

Above the month grid, a heatmap shows the past year of writing as a grid of small squares — one per day, like a contribution graph. The more you wrote on a day, the deeper its tint. It's a companion to the month grid: the grid handles one month up close, the heatmap shows the long rhythm at a glance.

• Today carries a warm outline, the selected day is enlarged, and the month you're viewing in the grid below is gently outlined — so the two views stay in step.
• The heatmap shows a whole year at a time. As you move the calendar to older months it pages back a year, keeping complete months in view; when you're browsing an earlier year its date range is labeled and a Back to today link returns you to the present. It never shows days in the future.
• Click any square to open that day.

Three figures sit above the heatmap and follow the month you're viewing:

• Total words — every word you've written in this vault, all time. It only ever grows.
• This month — words written in the month on screen.
• Writing days this week — how many of the last seven days you wrote, shown against your weekly rhythm goal if you've set one.

The heatmap and the grid both begin the week on the day you choose in Settings (⌘,) → Appearance → Week starts on (Monday or Sunday).

The month grid

Move between months with the chevrons, and jump back with Today. Each cell is a day, and its marks tell you what happened.

What the marks mean

• Writing flame — a flame appears on any day you met your daily word minimum. Days that are part of your current streak run burn brighter and the cells are tied together, so you can see the unbroken stretch ending today (or yesterday, within the one-day grace). See Journal & morning pages for the streak rules. The flame follows your streak-display choice (see The streak, and how it shows below) — in Quiet it's calmer, and in Off it's hidden entirely.
• Sunrise — that day has morning pages.
• Notebook-and-pen — that day has a journal entry.
• Book — a collection was started that day.
• Count chip — a small number showing how many items the day holds (journal entries, morning pages, collections, and any documents created, edited, or referencing that date).
• Clock — a memory marker, meaning something was created on that date in an earlier year (see below).

The two streaks also appear as chips in the header when they're running: a flame for your overall writing streak, and a sunrise for your morning-pages streak. These show in the Motivational streak display; in Quiet or Off the calendar leans on the heatmap and summary figures instead.

The streak, and how it shows

φ can present your writing streak in three ways. Choose per writer profile in Settings (⌘,) → Profiles → Streak display:

• Motivational — the flame. Your current run shows as 🔥 N in the status bar and on the calendar grid, with your weekly rhythm beside it ("4 / 5 this week") when you've set a goal.
• Quiet — no streak, no pressure. The status bar shows your total words (all time) instead — a number that only ever goes up.
• Off — nothing is surfaced. The heatmap is still there as a record, framed as rhythm rather than a scoreboard.

Weekly rhythm is a gentler target than a daily chain: aim to write N days a week, measured over a rolling seven-day window, so a single missed day never resets it. Set it in the same Profiles panel. Total words counts your manuscripts and notes — Morning Pages and Journal entries don't add to it, since they're daily practice rather than output.

Selecting a day

Click a day to select it. The panel beside the grid lists everything tied to that day:

• Collections started that day.
• Journal entries and documents, each badged by how they relate to the day — created, edited, or linked (a date chip points at it).
• Morning pages, badged as such.

Click any item to open it. Documents and journal entries open to edit; morning pages open in reading mode, read-only.

Starting a day's work

If a day has nothing yet, the panel invites you to begin. Use the calendar to start a journal entry on a chosen day — work you create here is dated to the day you picked, not just to today. You can backfill today or a past day, but not a day in the future: φ won't create an entry dated ahead of today. (You can still reference a future date in your writing with a date chip — that's different from dating an entry there.)

Memories — on this day

When the day you've selected holds content from earlier years, an On this day reveal appears above the day's list, with a count from previous years. Click it to expand the list. Each memory shows its title and how long ago it was — for example 3y ago — and opens with a click, just like any other item. It's a quiet way to meet your past writing as the year comes back around.