Earn experience and level up (optional)

Experience is a small, optional way to see yourself getting better at the program. It's off until you switch it on in Settings, General. Once it's on, it keeps count of what you really do (a mark made, a tool tried, a walk-through finished) and shows a little level at the right-hand end of the status bar. That's all. There are no reminders, no sounds and no leaderboards.

Where the points come from

Some tools take a minute to learn and some take real care. A rectangle is the first kind; setting the scale, putting in a dimension or redacting is the second, and that's where people most often go wrong. So the points follow the tool. Each one is Everyday, Skilled, Advanced or Expert, and the harder it is, the more it pays.

1. Trying a tool for the first time pays the most: 15 points for an everyday tool such as a rectangle, 25 for a skilled one such as a length, 40 for an advanced one such as a dimension, 60 for redaction. Exploring should be worth it.
2. Using it again pays a little each time (1 to 4 points, by how hard the tool is), for the first ten uses of that tool in a day. After that it stops for the day, so clicking the same thing all afternoon gets you nowhere.
3. Getting to know a tool takes time, and that's built in. Reaching Comfortable, Confident and then Expert needs enough uses and enough different days: 2, 4 and 7. A hundred rectangles in one evening is still only Tried; a rectangle you come back to over a week is one you know. Harder tools need fewer uses, but the same number of days.
4. Finishing a walk-through is worth 50 points the first time and 5 for doing it again, once a day.
5. The first thing you do each day is worth 10. If you miss a day your run simply starts again; nothing is ever taken away.

Medals

Medals are for the bigger moments, and each is earned once. Bronze is a first step, silver is getting properly into something, gold is real commitment, and platinum is kept for the hard things: getting to Expert with a tool that takes care, a hundred different days, or two hundred hours. One that isn't yours yet shows as a padlock.

There are medals for time as well. The program counts the minutes you're actually working in it (pressing, typing, scrolling), not the minutes a tab is left open. A pause of more than a minute and a half doesn't count.

What you'll see

A small +25 floats up from the level when something earns points. A level-up puts a card at the top of the screen for a few seconds, above everything else, even in full screen, and it goes away by itself. A new medal slides in at the bottom right. Choose Calm in Settings if you'd like plain words with no movement (that's used automatically if your computer is set to reduce motion), or switch the announcements off altogether.

Click the level in the status bar, or run My progress from the command palette, to see your level and title, what to try next, every tool with a ring showing how far it’s to the next step, and your medals.

Where it's kept

In this browser, on this computer. If you clear the browser's data it goes with it, and another browser starts from nothing. Copy my progress code gives you a single line of text you can keep in a note and paste into another browser, in the same panel. It's merged with what's already there, so nothing is counted twice.