What your suggestions depend on
The suggested technique and the suggested length aren't fixed. Your intake answers, your past sessions, the time of day, and the places where these intersect.
7 min read
Two people opening the app don't see the same screen. Both the order of the techniques and the length range marked on the slider are built for the person. Here is what gets looked at.
The suggested length is a range, not a number
The lit band above the slider means "for this session, your range is here". The middle of the range starts from a base length and shifts with seven separate factors.
The base length. Usually the length you gave in the intake. But in some techniques it comes not from your answer but from the length applied in the studies — twenty-seven cycles in Left and Right Nostril Breathing, for instance. The reason: in these techniques, going below the dose isn't "doing a bit less", it is not doing the thing that was measured.
Experience. For a beginner the range shortens; for an experienced person it lengthens.
Overall and recent performance. If your recent sessions went well the range lengthens; if you struggled it shortens. Your overall average and the average of your last five sessions are worked out separately and weighed together. The recent ones count for more.
Performance in the same technique. Overall performance and performance in that technique are kept apart. The same person can finish coherent comfortably and abandon 4-7-8.
Completion rate. Sessions you abandon shorten the range. A short session finished beats a long one abandoned.
Time of day. Late in the day the range shortens: a ten-minute session at midnight isn't realistic.
Streak. For someone on a running streak the range lengthens a little.
If a program is running, none of this applies: the length becomes the program's daily length and is locked.
The order of the techniques
The order of the cards isn't fixed either.
Your goal is the main determinant: calm, focus, sleep, energy or "just trying it". The time of day sits on top of that — the energizing breath moves up in the morning and down at night.
Then what you have already done today comes in. A technique done today drops back, and something else is suggested instead. A technique you have done often in the last two weeks moves down a little, and one you have neglected moves up a little.
The technique's difficulty against your experience, your score in it and your completion rate all feed into the order too. If you have a program running and haven't done that day's session, the program's technique goes to the top.
None of these is strong enough to jump a level. A technique your health notes steer you away from always stays at the bottom; no contribution can lift it.
Where your answers change each other
This is the most interesting part. The intake answers don't work one by one — they intersect.
Age × experience. The first session of a technique comes softened: in 4-7-8 the hold is four seconds instead of seven; in Kapalabhati a single slow round. Anyone who says "I'm experienced" doesn't get this, and the technique comes in full the first time. But age takes that exemption back: someone over sixty-five starts with a soft first session even if experienced.
Age × interface. Over sixty-five, the suggested interface level is Simple. That is why the age question comes before the interface question — coming after, it couldn't have affected the suggestion.
Age × goal. For someone over sixty-five who says "for energy", the technique that unlocks isn't the Energizing Breath but Right Nostril. The goal stays the same; the technique that serves it changes.
Health × goal. The same logic runs for health notes. If someone marks a heart condition and says "for energy", unlocking the Energizing Breath and putting a warning next to it would have the app contradicting itself. There is an ordered list for each goal, and the first technique not steered against is the one that opens.
Your experience level sets how many sessions the locks ask for, and the score of your introductory exercise raises or lowers that. So the answers you gave on the first day are still affecting which technique opens when, months later.
All of it on the device
None of the intake answers is sent anywhere. Age, health notes, goal, experience — all of it stays on the device and is used only to feed these calculations. You can change them in Settings whenever you like.