A Milestone is an editable narrative designation on a regular step
inside an ongoing journey — a small
win that changed the journey. Mutually exclusive with First / Final Step. It never
changes Companion arithmetic, feed ranking, step-with value, or notifications; it grants
no badge and no collectible. What it does: mark a chapter, remember who was there, and
make Companion reveals more meaningful — never easier. Every surface below lives
here except the journey timeline, which is journey-milestones.html —
a trail that now reads as large chapter cards (newest first, never elided) per the
“Chapter cards” ruling (journey.html +
journey-milestones.html). One surface of that redesign lives on
this board: the date scrubber for long journeys (below).
A quiet row in the create-step composer, below the caption.
Ink icon, ink switch, no accent — the marking act carries no orange because it
disburses no recognition. It sits where the final-step toggle would; turning one on
disables the other.
The toggle documents the step as a landmark and nothing more. Publishing a marked step follows the exact same notification and feed path as any regular step — its ordinary push may read “reached a milestone,” but no extra push fires.
The same designation from a step's overflow sheet, added long after the fact or removed. Because marking disburses no value, it is always reversible and always silent — the story stays the author's to edit.
Nobody was awarded anything when the step was marked, so nothing is revoked when it is unmarked. There is no “declare before publish” gate — that would tax the story and kill retrospective marking.
A live step that is also a milestone. It stays a normal tangerine live card — countdown ring, lit actions, badge-at-action prompt — and carries one quiet ink-outline “Milestone” chip by the journey kicker. The chip is information; the live window is still the loudest read.
Live
Jules and 7 others stepped with MayaInk outline, one line up by the kicker: it tells you this step is a landmark and then gets out of the way. It buys no ranking boost — the card sorts by the same window rules as any live step.
When you step with a milestone while it is live, a brief in-the-moment confirmation names what just happened. It is a quiet ink toast, shown once — not saved to any inventory. The lasting record is the memory line on the step itself.
This is the whole reward: a sentence that says your presence landed on a step the author called a turning point. It is deliberately not a seal you collect and never a surface you can revisit — so it can't become missable FOMO on unbounded, author-controlled supply.
In the badge-reveal moment, the Companion tier (tangerine — the
live/Companion role) cites the milestones you witnessed by name. The milestone name
is set in serif italic because it is an authored title. This is display language only
— it adds meaning, never arithmetic. Where the "name" comes from (ruled): there is no
milestone-title field — a citation is an authored excerpt, the step note's first
non-empty sentence clipped at a word boundary; if the note is empty, fall back to
"the [Month D] milestone". A required title input would tax retro-marking.
Companion is still “you walked enough of the road.” Naming a milestone you were present for makes the reveal richer without weighting the road — no step is worth more step-with credit for having been marked.
The one surface of the chapter-card redesign that lives on this board. On a long journey the untruncated cards make for a tall scroll, so dragging summons a slim rail on the right edge for fast navigation. It is a position tool, never a meter — it moves you through the story, it does not measure how far along you are.
The rail only appears while you drag — normal scrolling is the default and nothing overlays the cards until you reach for it. The handle names where you are in the story (month + step number), and landmark ticks give the thumb something to catch on so you can jump straight to a chapter.
What a milestone is allowed to do, and the hard NOs that keep it a landmark instead of a reward economy. Every rejected item was a proposed guardrail's reason to exist — remove the economy and the guardrails become unnecessary.
Roles attach to relationships, memories attach to moments; nothing the author marks may disburse value.
journey-milestones.html — now a large chapter-card trail (feed step
card minus its journey/author chrome, newest first, never elided) with the timeline spine
surviving at the cards' left edge: filled ink milestone node, uppercase “Milestone”
kicker, the permanent “Reached with …” memory line. Its date scrubber (panel 06
above) is the only piece documented here. Canonical numbers
reused unchanged: Chau ↔ Priya is the deepest bond in the cast, and the Companion
reveal here is Priya's view of Chau's ongoing trail journey — display language verbatim
from the 2026-07-13 ruling, contradicting no step-with totals on badges.html
or supporters.html.