The Streak Now Runs on What You Learn, Not on Showing Up
TL;DR: Phayan's streak counts a day once you have earned 20 XP, and it no longer cares which activity earned it. A lesson round pays 40, so one round clears the day on its own. A review session pays 2 an item up to 40, so ten cards clear it too. A listening lesson pays 20. The two silent reserve days that used to repair a missed day behind your back are gone — a day you miss ends the run. Today is the exception: it never breaks anything while it is still open.
The old streak punished the best thing you could do
The streak used to be built from completed lesson rounds. Nothing else counted. Which meant a learner who spent an evening clearing a backlog of review cards — going back over the letters that had started to slip, which is the single highest-value hour in learning a script — earned nothing for it and watched their run end at midnight.
That is not a small unfairness. It is the app rewarding the opposite of what it exists to encourage. And it got worse the further you went: once a learner had worked through the authored rounds, there was no longer anything at all that could keep a run alive. The people with the longest streaks were structurally the ones most likely to lose them.
What a day has to carry now
XP is the unit. A day extends the run the moment it carries 20 XP, and it does not matter where that XP came from. Three routes get you there:
| What you did | What it pays | Clears the day? |
|---|---|---|
| One lesson round | 40 XP | Yes, on its own |
| A review session | 2 XP an item, capped at 40 | Yes, from ten items |
| A listening lesson | 20 XP | Yes, exactly |
The cap on review is deliberate and it cuts both ways. Paying per item means a two-card queue is not worth a whole lesson, so you cannot farm the streak off a trivial session. Capping it at one round's worth means a hundred-card backlog is not worth three rounds either — a long session is its own reward, not a way to bank days in advance.
Phayan is an app for learning to read Thai script, and it works letter by letter from zero rather than dropping you into phrases. Progress is kept without an account — it lives in your browser first — and every word carries audio you can play. That last point is why the listening lesson pays at all: it is a real activity with real recall in it, not a screen you tap through, so it had no business being invisible to the streak.
The two reserve days are gone
The old system quietly held two grace days. Miss a Tuesday and the streak repaired itself without telling you. That sounds generous and it is corrosive, because it teaches, silently, that missing a day costs nothing — right up until the reserve runs out and a run you thought was safe disappears for reasons you never saw.
So there is no grace now. The first day that falls short of 20 XP ends the run, and it says so. There is nothing to buy your way back with at the moment either: a streak repair is something Phayan intends to offer, but it does not exist in the app today, and a post saying otherwise would be selling you something that is not there.
Whether you like this depends on what you want a streak for. Duolingo's streak freezes exist to keep the number alive, because the number is the product. If what you want is an honest read on whether you have actually been practising, a run that breaks when you stop is the more useful instrument. If you have been away for a while, the reading-practice routine is a better place to restart than the level you left off at.
Today never breaks a run
One piece of mercy is built in, and it matters more than the reserve days did. The walk that counts your streak steps past today rather than counting it, while today is still open. So an unfinished Tuesday afternoon does not show you a broken run at two o'clock and then repair it at nine in the evening. Your streak only ever reflects days you have actually had the chance to lose.
The days are your own calendar days, in your own timezone, not UTC — which sounds obvious and is the thing streak implementations get wrong most often.
If you are rebuilding one
- Ten review cards is the cheapest honest day. It is also, on most days, the most useful one.
- A listening lesson lands exactly on the threshold, so it clears a day with nothing to spare — do it early rather than at 23:50.
- Nothing carries over. Forty XP today does not bank half of tomorrow, which is the point of a streak rather than a points total.
- If you are starting from nothing, the beginner's route through the script gets you to a round a day faster than picking levels at random.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best daily target for learning Thai script?
One lesson round or one review session a day, which is the 20 XP the streak asks for and takes a few minutes. Phayan pays 40 XP for a round and 2 an item for review, so either clears the day. Anki users will recognise the shape — the difference is that the target here is a floor to hit, not a queue that grows while you are away.
How do I keep my streak if I have run out of new lessons?
Review. That is the change: a review session now pays toward the streak where it previously paid nothing, so a learner past the end of the authored rounds can still hold a run. Ten items is enough to clear a day.
Is it safe to skip a day?
Your progress is safe; the run is not. Phayan keeps everything you have learned whether or not you show up, and it stores that progress without requiring an account. But the streak itself has no reserve days, so one missed day ends it and there is currently no way to repair it.
What is the difference between a streak and a daily goal?
They use the same unit and answer different questions. The daily goal is how much you meant to do today; the streak is how many days in a row you cleared the 20 XP threshold. Raising your goal does not make the streak harder to hold, because the streak threshold is fixed.
So does the streak still count if I only do the easy stuff?
Yes, and on purpose. A ten-card review on a bad day is a real day of practice and the streak should say so. The cap is what stops it being gamed — review pays per item and stops at one round's worth, so no session can buy you more than a single day.