Why we took streaks out of Logbook

For most of this year, Logbook had a streak counter. Log something today, and the number went up by one. Miss a day, and it went back to zero.

In August we removed it, along with everything we had built around it. This is why.

How streaks got into Logbook

Logbook is a daily log. You write down what needs doing, one day at a time, and tick things off as you go. A streak seemed like a natural fit: the product is about showing up every day, so why not count the days?

Streak tracking was one of the first things we shipped. Over the following months we kept adding to it:

• A job that reset stale streaks at 1 AM in each person's own timezone, so the count was always accurate.
• Emails when a streak was at risk, and emails to celebrate milestones.
• A grace system: four uses a month, each giving you a 48-hour window to recover a missed day without losing your run.

Each addition made sense on its own. Together, they told us something we should have noticed sooner.

What the grace system was really telling us

We built grace because people were upset when a long streak broke over something ordinary: a sick day, a flight, a weekend away. The fix was to soften the loss.

But if a feature needs a recovery system, warning emails and a monthly allowance of exceptions, the feature itself is the problem. We were spending more and more effort protecting a number instead of helping people with their day.

When a long streak did break, the effect was the opposite of what we wanted. Losing the run became a reason to stop coming back, not a reason to return. People who had used Logbook every day for weeks would miss one day, see a zero, and quietly drift away.

A streak only rewards you for not missing. It says nothing about whether the day went well.

What we removed

In version 0.9.0 we took out:

• The streak counter.
• The grace system.
• The streak-at-risk and milestone emails.

We also changed how repeat tasks handle missed days. They used to pause after three days away. Now they pause after three missed rounds, so a weekly task survives a week off instead of breaking.

What we kept

The part of Logbook that brings people back was never the counter. It is the log itself: an honest record of what you meant to do and what you did.

So the weekly digest stayed, and it now leads with what you logged and completed that week. No number to protect. Just a look back at the work.

What we took from it

Engagement features are easy to add and hard to question, because they usually move a metric in the short term. The better test is to ask what the feature does on a bad day. A good tool is still useful after you miss a day. A streak is not.

We will keep working on reasons to return, through better reminders, the digest and the product itself. But they have to be reasons that still hold when life gets in the way.