studysprint/notes/work-report-timer-2026-05-05.md

Session Reliability and Break-Cycle Work Report

#Overview

Today's work continued from the updated vision-gap plan, with the focus narrowed to the remaining timer and session-state gaps rather than broader feature expansion.

The first goal was to finish the last missing part of the focus-and-break loop by making the app distinguish between a short break and a long break in a way that matches an actual study cycle instead of using total historical session count.

After that, the scope shifted into reliability work because the remaining highest-risk issue was not missing UI, but the possibility that local active-session state and recorded session history could drift apart. That led to a review of how the dashboard, setup flow, task details screen, and timer screen each handled expired, cancelled, or replaced sessions.

Later in the same work session, the focus narrowed again into wording and flow polish on the timer screen. The break and sprint descriptions were rewritten so they better reflect the app's goal of supporting structured study behavior, and two runtime regressions reported after testing were fixed in the timer flow itself.

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#ImplementedFeatures

#LongBreakCycleCompletion

Finished the missing long-break part of the focus-and-break loop:

• extended the shared session defaults in lib/sessionDefaults.ts
• added:
  • DEFAULT_LONG_BREAK_DURATION_MINUTES
  • FOCUS_SESSIONS_PER_LONG_BREAK
  • STUDY_CYCLE_IDLE_RESET_MINUTES
• updated the timer flow so the next break is chosen from a local study-cycle model instead of total historical session count

The long-break rule now follows a small continuous-cycle interpretation of study flow rather than incorrectly counting unrelated sessions from earlier in the day or from previous days.

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#StudyCycleState

Added a small local study-cycle state to support the new break behavior:

• extended lib/asyncStorage.ts
• added StudyCycle
• added:
  • SaveStudyCycle
  • GetStudyCycle
  • RemoveStudyCycle
• tracked:
  • the task tied to the current cycle
  • how many focus sessions have been completed in that cycle
  • the last completed session type
  • the last completion timestamp

This keeps the long-break offer tied to the current study run instead of to the user's entire database history.

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#DynamicBreakPrompt

Updated the timer completion overlay so post-focus actions are based on the actual cycle state:

• expanded the post-session prompt model to include the next break type
• replaced the hardcoded short-break action with a dynamic break action
• updated the overlay text and button label so the user now sees:
  • Start short break
  • or Start long break depending on the current cycle

This completes the missing loop from the plan where break behavior should feel intentional rather than unfinished.

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#SessionLifecycleConsistency

Introduced a shared finalization path for active sessions:

• added lib/sessionLifecycle.ts
• introduced finalizeStoredSession(...)
• moved repeated session-finalization behavior into one place:
  • remove local active-session state
  • clear study-cycle state when the final status is not completed
  • finalize the same sessionId in Supabase with:
    • completed
    • cancelled
    • expired

This reduced the risk that one screen would only clear local storage while another screen properly finalized the database record.

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#CrossScreenReliabilityFixes

Applied the shared finalization path across the screens that handle active-session recovery or replacement:

• app/task/timer.tsx
• app/(tabs)/index.tsx
• app/task/viewDetailsTask.tsx
• app/setup.tsx

The updated paths now explicitly finalize sessions when they are:

• expired on reopen
• expired while being observed from the dashboard
• cancelled because the user replaces one active sprint with another

This closes a real reliability gap where the app could previously lose the active local session while leaving the recorded session in the database unfinalized.

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#TimerAndBreakCopyPolish

Rewrote the timer and break descriptions so they better match the product's intended tone:

• updated the pre-start sprint description
• updated the pre-start break description
• updated the focus fallback description on the running timer
• updated the post-focus and post-break explanation copy

The new wording emphasizes that structured focus and intentional breaks matter for studying, instead of sounding like placeholder or utility-only text.

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#ReportedRegressionFixes

Fixed two runtime issues discovered during manual testing after the earlier session-cycle changes:

• after cancelling a focus session, the sprint-duration view could appear visually blank until the user manually dragged the picker
• after completing a long break, Continue with same task could route the user back to the dashboard instead of returning to the correct task flow

The fixes were:

• reinitializing the picker-offset path when the timer returns to a non-running state
• preserving returnTaskId inside the stored active-session shape so break sessions keep the correct task context all the way through completion

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#ProblemsAndSetbacks

#SessionTruthDivergence

The main reliability issue uncovered today was not in the timer animation itself, but in how different screens treated expired or replaced sessions.

Several screens could detect that a stored session was no longer valid, but some of them only removed the local active-session entry instead of also finalizing the matching sprint_sessions row in Supabase. That created a risk where the UI and the database could tell different stories about the same session.

The fix was to stop duplicating that logic screen by screen and route those paths through a shared finalization helper instead.

#PostChangeRuntimeRegressions

After the cycle and reliability changes landed, manual testing surfaced two smaller regressions in the timer screen:

• the duration screen could look empty after cancelling a focus session
• the break-return flow lost its task target after a long break

These were not architectural problems, but they were both important because they affected the user's immediate understanding of the timer flow after interacting with it.

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#CurrentState

The timer and session model are now closer to the final intended behavior in the vision-gap plan.

The app now supports:

• a simple long-break rule tied to the current study cycle
• a local cycle model that avoids counting unrelated older sessions
• a post-focus overlay that correctly offers either a short break or a long break
• a shared session-finalization path used across timer, dashboard, setup, and task-details flows
• better consistency between active local session state and recorded session history
• more intentional sprint and break wording on the timer screen
• preserved task-return context across long-break completion
• corrected timer-screen recovery after cancelling a focus session

At this point, the biggest remaining work in this area is no longer basic feature completion. It is verifying the edge cases that depend on real runtime behavior, such as backgrounding, reopen timing, and cross-screen recovery under actual app usage.

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#Verification

Static checks were run after the main implementation work and again after the regression fixes:

npx tsc --noEmit
exited successfully

npm run lint
exited successfully

npx tsc --noEmit
exited successfully

npm run lint
exited successfully

Manual testing also confirmed most of the intended behavior from today's scope. Two regressions were found during that testing, both inside the timer flow, and both were fixed in the same work session:

• blank sprint-duration state after cancelling a focus session
• incorrect dashboard return after pressing Continue with same task following a long break