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The end of the work day, and of the day

Two moments close a day. Close the work day ends work and admin, early or at the usual hour: "Done for today" opens it. Close the whole day, before sleep, looks back over the whole day: work, admin and leisure. Each asks how the day felt, in a few taps, every answer optional, and remembers how the day began: the morning's weather. The plan learns from the answers (the day's outcome, research/capacity-budget.md criteria 13–14, research/wellbeing-gain.md G7). Nothing is counted, scored or compared.

Code: crates/sioul-core/src/reviews.rs (the records, the outcome, what the status line offers, the words), crates/sioul-app/src/reviews.rs (the sheet's view, the notice, the Health page's line), qml/DayReview.qml (the sheet), qml/DayReviewLine.qml (under a day on the Health page).

What is kept

One table per date, in $XDG_DATA_HOME/sioul/reviews/YYYY-MM.toml, readable and editable by hand:

[2026-10-06]
weather = "haze"
weather_at = "2026-10-06T08:40:00+02:00"

[2026-10-06.work]
at = "2026-10-06T17:04:12+02:00"
felt = "heavy"
mix = "about_right"
memo = """
The bank called back.
"""

[2026-10-06.night]
at = "2026-10-06T22:10:00+02:00"
felt = "usual"
  • The morning's weather (weather): copied when you say it on the Tasks page or with sioul tasks weather, the first said that day; said again within half an hour, a correction. A different weather said later is later. Never said, none: the plan's default "clear" is not something you said.
  • Each review (work, night): when it was given, how the day felt (light, usual, heavy, gave_back), its mix (too_much, about_right, too_empty), a note in Markdown. Each answer is optional; a review with none says the work day was closed without a word.
  • The day lived: a night review given after midnight belongs to the evening before (the night's own rule, as on the Health page); without a night set, before 05:00 is the day before.
  • Read leniently: a time written as Unix seconds or as a TOML date-time, a word a newer Sioul knows: read, never an error. Writing changes one date's table and keeps the rest of the file as written, comments and unknown fields included; a file that does not read is never written over.

The outcome (Day::outcome): the night's mix if given, else the work's. For the cost budgets, too_much is a bad day, about_right and too_empty went fine; for the gain's minimum, only about_right is a good day. A day without a mix counts for nothing. The day's balance (crate::capacity::day_balance) is the capacity's.

Shared with the sharing's "time" part (data/reviews/), beside the plan's other files: the weather (today.toml), "Done for today" (quiet.toml), the sessions. The outcome belongs with the plan it judges, so every device that plans learns the same. Each review travels whole: two devices answering the same one keep the later answer, never a mix of both (database.md).

At any hour, from the places

  • Two buttons at the bottom of the places (qml/Places.qml; on a phone, in their drawer), one under the other: Close the work day (a ticked list) and Close the whole day (a moon). Each opens its review at any hour, a day closed early as well as late; its tip says what closing does. The status line offers each only at its time (below).

Closing the work day

  • "Done for today" (the Tasks page, the focus window) opens the sheet. Close the work day keeps the answers and closes the day as "Done for today" always did: today's room goes, the plan flows on, a session running stops and counts, "Undo" waits in the status line (tasks.md, rule 11). The screen after it says where everything went; its first line is now "Work is put away until tomorrow at 09:00. The rest of the day is yours." Not now changes nothing, and the answers begun stay in the sheet for later that day.
  • At the end of the day's last work or admin hours, the status line offers Close the work day, with "Work hours are over for today." when there is room for it, and one quiet notice comes, "Work hours are over", with the same button: once, within ten minutes of the hours' end, from the device you are at (the one that keeps notices, sioul_sync::lease). Never during sleep or a meeting, never once the day was closed or its review given, never repeated.
  • A day that ends without the button closes as usual. The status line offers the review until the evening; from the evening on, closing the day covers it.
  • The sheet, made the first time it is asked for: what was said of the morning and what the plan did with it ("This morning: haze. The plan kept a lighter day."; "This morning: clear; later, fog. The plan lightened the rest of the day."); "The day felt:" Light, Usual, Heavy, Gave back; "The mix:" Too much, About right, Too empty; a note, with a preview as Notes shows Markdown; the notes of the last fourteen days, folded. Nothing about what was not done: planned and done are never compared.

Closing the day

  • When: the night's own notice, as the wind-down begins, has Close the whole day beside Options… while that night's review is not given (Linux; elsewhere the notice has no buttons). In the evening, from three hours before the wind-down, the status line offers it ("Before sleep, the day can be closed."); without a night set, from 20:00 to 02:00. On the Health page, under the day: Close the whole day in the evening and during the night, and the words said for each day before. During sleep, from the wind-down, the status line offers nothing.
  • The sheet is the same, over the whole day: the morning's weather, the end of work as said then ("At the end of work: heavy; the mix: too much."), tomorrow's first step when one was named ("Tomorrow starts with: open the form (15 min)"), then what the day asked and gave, in words only: "Thinking: heavy for you.", "Some time gave back.", and the plan's own line when the day changes tomorrow's. A scale with nothing known that day says nothing. Then the same three questions. Close the whole day keeps them; the status line says "The day is closed."

Why, and what is guessed

  • One outcome a day, cheap to give (CB14; G7's "too much duty / about right / too empty"): without it the plan learns habit, not capacity (CB13). "The day felt" reuses a task's own words, so a heavy day and a heavy task mean the same.
  • Closing work is a boundary to mark. Detachment in the evening goes with less exhaustion, and the exhausted detach least (Sonnentag & Fritz 2007, 2015; Wendsche & Lohmann-Haislah 2017); a plan for what remains raises evening detachment (Smit 2016) and helps sleep come (Scullin et al. 2018), hence the first step named on both sheets; an end-of-day dialogue helped people without a ritual of their own (Williams et al. 2018, small). That the ritual itself calms is unproven: the flagship study was retracted (research/done-for-the-day.md, section 7).
  • The sheet comes before the closing, by choice: the few words are the ritual. The research on the button said "one click, no question" (done-for-the-day.md, recommendation 2). What keeps it close: Close the work day is the default and needs no answer, so a bad day costs one tap more; nothing asks whether to stop; the questions are about the day, not about you; Not now goes without a word. Emotional check-ins before committing were disliked by adults with ADHD (Chen, Meng & Nie 2026); this one comes after, and asks nothing.
  • Words only (CB45–49, G20): no score, percentage, gauge, red or fuel tank; the reading back is a few days in their own words, no streak, count or calendar of moods (Silverman & Barasch 2023; Ancker et al. 2015).
  • The notices: once, quiet, never during sleep or a meeting, as the meal notices; gain blocks will be free of notifications (G18b).
  • Guesses: the half hour that makes a second weather a correction; the evening's three hours before the wind-down, and 20:00 to 02:00 without a night; 05:00 as the turn of the day without a night; ten minutes for the notice; fourteen days read back.

Tested

cargo test -p sioul-core reviews (a review kept and read back, both reviews of one day, older and hand-written files, a day with only its weather, what the status line offers when, the words in English and French); cargo test -p sioul-sync share::tests::the_days_reviews_travel_whole; cargo test -p sioul-app reviews (the balance in words, never a number). Seen on the demo profile at desktop and phone sizes, in English and French (SIOUL_GRAB_STEPS=review).

Not built

  • A next-morning "rested / not" (CB14's second signal).
  • Answering by the command line or the AI agent.
  • The notices on a phone: Android shows Sioul's doses and time running only (android.md).