Decay markers

As you scroll a file you’ll sometimes see a small decay marker beside a cell — an icon or coloured chip in the cell’s gutter. It’s one of Aquilla’s most useful signals, and also one of the most misunderstood, so it’s worth understanding clearly.

What a decay marker means

A decay marker means: this cell still needs validation attention.

It is action-framed — it points to work still to do. It is never a “this cell is healthy/done” badge. Crucially:

The absence of a marker is silence, not approval. No marker simply means decay hasn’t crossed the warning threshold — it doesn’t mean a human has confirmed the cell.

The marker only appears once a cell’s decay rises above the warning threshold (two-thirds, or 0.66), so the workspace stays calm and only flags cells that genuinely warrant a look.

What “decay” actually measures

Decay measures how far a cell is from being fully validated — not whether the translation is correct.

Here’s the mechanism, in plain terms:

1. Each validation a cell receives counts as an endorsement.
2. A project sets how many endorsements a cell needs (its required-validation count). Decay is simply how short of that target the cell is: decay = 1 − (endorsements ÷ required).
3. A cell that has reached its target has zero decay. A cell no one has validated has full decay — and, once it crosses the threshold, shows a marker.

So decay is really asking: “has a human confirmed this cell yet, or is it still an unreviewed corner of the project?”

How to clear a decay marker

You reduce a cell’s decay by getting it validated. As reviewers work through the reviewer queue and validate cells, those cells reach their endorsement target, decay falls, and markers disappear.

Planned: endorsement spreading

Today each endorsement applies only to the cell that was validated. A planned improvement will let a validation also lend partial endorsement to other cells with similar source text, so confidence spreads through a passage. It isn’t live yet — for now, a cell’s decay reflects validations on that cell alone.

Don’t read too much into a missing marker

A cell with no decay marker has not necessarily been checked by anyone. Use the Health Ring and the reviewer queue to see real validation coverage — the decay marker only flags the cells most in need of attention.

Decay vs. violations

Decay is separate from built-in checks. A check violation (like an empty target cell) is its own kind of flag and does not count toward decay. The two answer different questions:

• Decay / health — “has this been reviewed?”
• Violations — “does this cell look like it has a problem?”