Letters and recaps

The Monday letter

After a week with sessions in it, Shade writes a short numbered letter on Monday. Read it in Letters, which keeps them all; email is optional.

What a letter holds

Each Monday after a week with sessions, Shade, the penguin who looks after the shelves, writes you a short letter about that week: how many sessions and how much time, the best moment, what led, who you were with, what you finished (a long list shows five, and its “and 2 more” opens to the rest) and what came onto your shelf.

It is numbered and dated (with its year once it is older than this one), and it never weighs the week against the one before: it ends on something worth keeping from it instead, someone you played with for the first time or your longest session. An item the letter names opens its page, and the best moment and the longest session open that session on the item's page; something no longer on your shelf is only named.

Under the signature, a postscript remembers the same week a year before, with the way to its letter, and Share this week opens the Share sheet with the week drawn as a card: Save as image keeps it, and on a phone Share to an app sends it to a chat.

A letter's “new items” leave out expansions filed under a game, as the shelf does.

Which weeks get a letter

A week with nothing in it gets no letter, so the numbers never have gaps to explain.

The letters start from your first week, even if you joined long after it.

Before your first letter, the Letters page shows what one would read like: this week so far, written from your own sessions, or, with none yet, a sample week from the guide's collection, marked Sample.

The Letters page, year by year

Two and a half years in, the Letters page is a ledger of Mondays, a block for each year: every week Robin did something, one line each: the week in a few words (Saga Vol. 5 carried the week), its dates, its count and its time, the newest one not yet opened.

On a phone the few words get a line of their own, under the number and the dates.

This year is open; each earlier year is folded under its heading, a tap away. On a wide screen a Filters card sits beside the list: pick a year to open it there, or a month to see only that month's letters, and Clear all puts the list back as it opens. Each heading also draws the year's shape, a thin bar for each week's time, so a folded year still shows its busy spring or quiet summer.

What a year's heading counts

Each year's heading on the Letters page counts the sessions dated in that year, as Stats does, so the two agree.

A week that crosses New Year is one letter, listed once, under the year most of its days are in; its row says how many of its sessions fell in the other year, and that year's list says its total counts them.

This year's heading ends at last Sunday, this week's sessions go in next Monday's letter.

On Home and by email

The letter also greets you on Home on a Monday until you have read it.

If you want it by email too, say so once, under the letter or on Home's card, or in Settings > Notifications and email under The weekly letter: it then comes on Monday morning, in your time zone, for any week that has one. On Stats, Your weekly letters, beside the seasons on Over the years, opens Letters.

Your year

Your year as a set of cards to step through and share, with every year before it one tap away and a late start counted fairly.

What the cards cover

Your year is a set of cards: hours and sessions, then what took the most time and what you came back to most side by side on one card (on a phone one under the other; shared, it is Most time), the year month by month, what was worth the time (its lines quote each title and count the sessions, 2 of 4 sessions), what recharged you, your nights with your Circles, what you finished, the lines you wrote about your best evenings, the shelf of shame you finally started, and the trophies you earned, the rarest and the latest first, with a set you climbed several times on one line (“Hours at it · 6 new tiers”). The ranked cards and Finished show each item's cover. Month by month draws a bar for each month with the busiest one marked, and Show numbers puts the same months in a table. Most cards save as an image or share as a link; Month by month and the Circle card are for your screen only, and say so. The link and the image of the lines card hold only lines you wrote, and none from a session you keep out of feeds, while the slide on your screen keeps every line, and says so in one line under Share. The Circle card names your Circles, never a person.

Earlier years, side by side

A recap is a page, not a season. Last year's is there whenever you want it, and every year you log adds another. On Stats, Over the years opens on a bar for each year, so the years sit side by side before you open any one of them.

A late start

Late joiners are counted fairly. Robin started in April, so that first year is "since April" and compares on its own terms, and this year's recap ends "so far, to be continued".

A year with few sessions

A year with fewer than about ten sessions has no recap yet; its page shows a punch card of ten holes, one punched for each session logged.

The recap is never behind the Supporter plan.

On this day

On this day is what you were doing on this date in earlier years: one session a year, the richest one, with who was there and what you wrote.

It is the one part of ShelfChronicles that gets better every year you stay, and it needs nothing from you.

What it leaves out, and 29 February

It leaves out evenings you gave one of the two lowest feelings, and anything with someone you have blocked. A session logged on 29 February comes back on 1 March in the years between.

On a wider screen

On a wider screen the card lies flat across the row with both of its sides in view. With two or more years, each is listed with what it was, how long and with whom: beside the card on a wide screen, under it on a narrow one. Past five years, the five newest are listed and a line after them, such as 3 earlier years, opens the rest.

Tree rings

An item you come back to for years grows rings beside its name, one for each calendar year with a session, the newest in colour, with the span in words (Logged Dec 2024 to Sep 2026). From five sessions, its Sessions card draws its life month by month: cells shaded by hours, each year's hours beside, and Show numbers.

History marks the years too: far enough back, each new year is divided off with a ring and the year, so two and a half years read as chapters.

More on History.

For the year-by-year figures, with a bar for each year, see

Over the years, in Stats.

Trophies

Trophies are things that happened, not targets: each is earned once, dated and linked to its session. They live in Stats, under Trophies.

How trophies are earned

Trophies are things that happened, not targets. Ten sessions with one game, a hundred hours of board games, a series finished, a year on the shelf: each is earned once, dated, and links to the session that earned it. A few take years, the kind a long-time collector can still earn: the same game on the same date three years running, a Circle's fiftieth night. They live in Stats, as its Trophies tab.

There is no list of locked trophies, and deleting a session later never takes one back. Undo straight after logging does, because that session never happened.

The ladders, bronze to the emerald seal

Each family is a ladder, bronze, silver, gold, the amethyst gem and the emerald seal, filled left to right. Only families you have started show how close the next rung is, and only here, never where you decide what to do tonight.