YMN-1002 - Interaction Cadence and FIFO Decay

Living Document Notice
Published 2026-09-17. The evolving architecture, revisions, and connected notes for this dispatch live in the Stax Digital Garden.

Interaction Cadence and FIFO Decay

Summary

Maintaining authentic human relationships across large networks requires structured follow-up cadences without intrusive push notifications. Yeoman models interpersonal communication intervals as deterministic decay curves and priority FIFO buffers that surface overdue connections during deliberate review sessions.

The Cognitive Overload of Relationship Maintenance

As professional and personal networks expand beyond Dunbar’s number, individuals rely on either fragile memory or high-stress calendar reminders to stay in touch. Notification-driven reminders produce alert fatigue, causing users to dismiss tasks without taking meaningful action.

Yeoman solves this by replacing intrusive alerts with passive cadence decay scoring. Every contact dossier defines an expected connection interval (cadence_days). When an interaction is recorded, the contact’s decay counter resets to zero, gradually increasing over time according to a deterministic decay function.

Cadence Urgency Curve:
Urgency
  ^
1.0 |                           * OVERDUE (Cadence Exceeded)
    |                       *
0.5 |               *
    |       *
0.0 +---+-------+-------+-------+---> Time (Days Since Last Contact)
    0  0.25c   0.5c   0.75c   1.0c

Mathematical Decay Model

The elapsed connection score ( U(t) ) is computed as a ratio of elapsed time ( \Delta t ) since last_contact_date to the defined cadence_days ( C ):

pub fn calculate_urgency(last_contact: chrono::NaiveDate, cadence_days: u32, current_date: chrono::NaiveDate) -> f64 {
    let elapsed = (current_date - last_contact).num_days();
    if elapsed <= 0 {
        return 0.0;
    }
    (elapsed as f64) / (cadence_days as f64)
}

When ( U(t) \ge 1.0 ), the contact enters the overdue buffer. Contacts with smaller cadences (e.g., immediate collaborators at 7 days) escalate more rapidly than quarterly check-ins (90 days), creating a natural prioritization gradient.

The FIFO Cadence Queue

During weekly or monthly reviews, Yeoman constructs an ordered FIFO review queue by querying all contact dossiers whose urgency exceeds unity:

SELECT 
    id, 
    title, 
    cadence_days, 
    last_contact_date,
    CAST((julianday('now') - julianday(last_contact_date)) AS INTEGER) AS days_elapsed,
    CAST((julianday('now') - julianday(last_contact_date)) / cadence_days AS REAL) AS urgency
FROM contacts
WHERE (julianday('now') - julianday(last_contact_date)) >= cadence_days
ORDER BY urgency DESC;

This passive queue is inspected deliberately by the operator, ensuring that outreach occurs when the user has mental bandwidth rather than when an automated background timer fires.

Edge Case Handling and Sabbatical Pauses

Life events and project deadlines often necessitate pausing communication cadences for specific clusters. Yeoman supports temporary snooze attributes and global sabbatical flags:

State	Frontmatter Flag	Behavior
Active	cadence_status: active	Standard decay evaluation
Snoozed	cadence_snooze_until: 2026-12-01	Urgency suppressed until expiration date
Dormant	cadence_status: dormant	Excluded from cadence queues permanently
Archival	cadence_status: memorial	Immutable historic record; zero cadence

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• Directus Target: yeoman
• Garden Source Reference: MOC - Bosun PKM Tools, MOC - Fleet Operations
• Garden Source Reference: [YMN-1002 - Interaction Cadence and FIFO Decay](YMN-1002 - Interaction Cadence and FIFO Decay)