September 28, 2026

A signal that watches a number says which way is forward

Admin

Signals that watch a tier or a number had one direction baked in: up was progress. A milestone fired when the number went up, and a monitor opened an episode when it went down. That is right for seats and projects and wrong for everything you want less of, so the case people asked for first was not expressible at all:

Open tickets on this account are up 50% and have stayed up.

Now the editor asks which way is forward — the direction that counts as reaching it — whenever you pick A number on the move or A step along an ordered list. Up for a value you want to grow, down for one you want to shrink. Both doors get it:

• A monitor opens an episode when the value moves the other way from forward, and resolves only when it gets back to where it started. With forward set to down on open tickets, the episode opens when tickets climb, deepens if they climb further, and closes when the count comes back down. Must hold for works here too — "went up and stayed up for two days".
• A milestone fires on a move towards forward. With forward set to down, "the error rate finally fell below one in a hundred" is a milestone, and "seats dropped below ten" is a milestone you would mark as a problem.

A tier list could already do this by writing the rungs in the other order. It no longer has to: the direction is its own answer on both shapes.

Three settings, one sentence

Admin

A signal that watches a number now carries three independent answers — the kind of thing you came in for, which way is forward, and whether firing is good news — and they were only ever readable one field at a time.

The editor now ends the shape section with an In words box that composes them:

Opens an episode when Open tickets moves up, and resolves when it comes back down to where it was — not merely when it stops rising. Counted as a problem: left out of the stage's progress rate, and shown on the profile's problems card while it is open.

If that sentence is not what you meant, one of the three answers above it is wrong. The shape labels stopped naming a direction for the same reason — the list reads "A number on the move" rather than "A number falling back", because which way it falls is now yours to say.

Also

Admin

• Timeline entries for a tier or number move read Moved forward and Moved back rather than Expanded and Contracted. Which way the number itself went is shown beside them, as the two values it moved between.
• Existing signals are unchanged. Anything authored before today reads as forward-is-up, which is exactly what it was doing. Changing the direction on an existing signal re-baselines it, like any other change to what it detects — the counts either side of the flip would otherwise be measuring two different things.

Milestones and monitors moved to a Signals tab

Admin

Every stage page now has a fourth tab: Signals. Its Milestones and Monitors lists are the two that used to sit on the stage's Overview, between the stat row and the stage's own charts.

They are different kinds of thing, which is why they are no longer on the same page. The lists are where a stage is defined — you open a signal, edit it, pause it, promote it out of observe — and the Overview is where a stage is read. Two long editable lists above the answer meant scrolling past the answer to reach the settings.

Nothing about either list changed: the same rows, the same numbers, the same window control, the same editor. The Overview now leads with its stat row and goes straight into whatever that stage has its own answer for.

One less step to create a signal

Admin

The New signal button in the stage page header is gone, and with it the sheet that asked whether you meant a milestone or a monitor before opening the form.

With both lists on one page, the question answers itself: click Add a milestone at the foot of the Milestones list, or Add a monitor at the foot of the Monitors list, and the editor opens on the door you picked. That was always the faster of the two routes; it is now the only one.