Commitments — meteors, asteroids & fixed stars

A commitment is anything on your calendar — an event or a thing to do. Its form says how it comes back, and the sky — the whole calendar screen — draws each form its own way.

#The three forms

• ☄ a meteor — a commitment that happens once. Its page reads "☄ a meteor — passes once".
• ↻ an asteroid — a commitment that repeats: weekly, every other week, monthly, or by any fuller rule you set. Its page reads, for example, "↻ an asteroid — returns every week".
• ✦ a fixed star — a commitment that comes back every year. Its page reads "✦ a fixed star — every year".

On the year view, a fixed star has spikes, a meteor has a short tail, and an asteroid sits inside a thin ring. In the day's list they show as ☄, ↻ and ✦.

#What a commitment holds

Each commitment keeps:

• its almanac — the calendar it belongs to, a named, coloured layer of commitments;
• a title, its form and its day;
• a time or "all day", and a length;
• a place, notes and a colour;
• its own mark — a small symbol or picture — its own colour and its own sound, or its almanac's when it has none;
• the time zone it starts in and the one it ends in;
• for a monthly one on the 29th to the 31st, or a yearly one on 29 February, what it does in a shorter month.

#Repeats ask first

Anything but a meteor repeats. So when you change one, the calendar asks whether you mean one day or all of them. A day you take off is remembered as a day the pattern skips.

#Sky entries

A full moon, an eclipse or a planet changing sign is a moment shown on the day it falls. Its page gives the exact time. It never rings.

#Weight

When your finger scrubs across the sky, you feel each commitment under it. A bare commitment is light. Notes, a place, material — files attached to its almanac, shared by its commitments — a section to fill in, links and its own mark each make it a little heavier.

#Flights and fades

Some changes of view fly: the camera dives into the body you touched, and the next view opens out of it. The rest are a quick fade.

• What flies. Year to day through today's earth, year to week through the moon, day to week through the day's moon, and the same routes back. Going back, the globe shrinks into its earth and the week into its moon.
• During a flight, the old view clears, only the sun, earth and moon travel, and the new view comes in at the end. On a phone held sideways, the sky's frame moves smoothly between the two, so nothing jumps.
• Everything else fades — month to and from week, month to day, the years, and any "view in" jump.
• While flying, taps are ignored and back does nothing, so a flight is never restarted halfway.
• Plain changes. Turn "view transitions" off, or "reduce motion" on, in Settings › ease, and every change is instant. "view transitions" starts on; "reduce motion" starts off.

#Archive or drop an almanac

You can take an almanac off the calendar two ways.

Archive is reversible. On the almanac's page, tap "archive". It asks "archive “‹name›”? it keeps everything — its name, its colour, its place — and comes off the calendar and the legend." Tap "archive it", or "undo". The almanac then waits in the binder — the page where all your almanacs live — under "archived · N ›". It has no chip in the legend — the row of almanac chips you tap to show or hide them. Its page's button now reads "restore" — "bring it back to the calendar" — and acts at once. An archived almanac cannot be the default; restore it first.

Drop deletes an almanac and everything in it, for good. On its page, tap "drop" — "let go of it entirely". It tells you how many commitments go with it and that "this cannot be undone." If the almanac is fed from somewhere else, it adds that nothing is removed from that source. Tap "drop it", or "undo". The page closes. The drop takes the commitments, the almanac's material, its details and any pictures nothing else uses. In the "edit this almanac" dialog, the same act is "burn", and it needs a second tap to confirm.

• Stock almanacs — holiday, celestial and astrology — ship locked. Once unlocked, they drop like any other.
• Locked almanacs refuse both. The lock — a locked almanac refuses every change until unlocked — says "“‹name›” is locked — unlock it first".
• The last almanac can never be dropped.
• By asking. Ask the sky — the calendar's built-in AI assistant — can archive, restore and burn. It burns only while "allow destructive actions" is on in Settings › ask the sky, and even then it asks "allow it?" first.

See also. Add a commitment · Times & repeats · Almanacs & the legend · The lock · Moving between the views · Safety, consent & destructive actions