The Attention Queue
The Attention Queue is a side panel on Desktop that shows the top books currently needing focus. It’s also the filter behind the Attention lens in the manuscript register. A book shows up here when its attention score is non-zero, and the score is computed from three signals — weakness, stage, and active alerts. The panel sorts by score descending, ties break by overall completion ascending (weakest book wins a tie), and there’s no manual “dismiss” option. If a book is on the queue, the only way to get it off is to fix what put it there.
The three signals
Section titled “The three signals”A book’s attention score starts at zero and adds points for each signal that’s currently true.
Signal 1: Weak dimensions
Section titled “Signal 1: Weak dimensions”If any of the book’s enabled completion dimensions falls below the weak dimension threshold (default 60%), that’s +1. It doesn’t matter which dimension or how many are weak — any weak dimension contributes one point, not per-dimension.
This signal is the most common reason books land on the queue. Any draft with a lagging outline, short word count, or unresolved plot will almost always have at least one weak dimension.
Signal 2: Early stage
Section titled “Signal 2: Early stage”If the book is in the Foundation or Drafting stage, that’s +1. The idea is that books in early stages need attention regardless of whether any specific dimension is technically “weak” — a Foundation-stage book by definition has structural work to do.
This signal stops contributing once a book crosses into Developing stage, which is usually where authors are doing most of their active work and don’t need the Attention lens to remind them.
Signal 3: Active alerts
Section titled “Signal 3: Active alerts”Each active alert on a book contributes +2 points. Broken promises, orphan plants, unresolved lore contradictions — each one adds two, not one. Alerts are louder than weakness because a broken promise is a concrete bug in the narrative, not a general “this dimension is low” signal.
A book with three active alerts gets +6 just from signal 3, which almost always pushes it to the top of the queue no matter what its other dimensions look like.
The formula
Section titled “The formula”attention_score = (has_weak_dimension ? 1 : 0) + (stage in [Foundation, Drafting] ? 1 : 0) + (alert_count × 2)Maximum score is unbounded in theory — a book with 10 active alerts gets a score of 22. In practice, scores above 5 are rare, and the queue panel only displays the top four books at any given time.
Ties break by overall completion ascending. The reasoning: when two books have the same score, the one that’s further from done needs more attention than the one that’s closer. The sort is deliberately opposite to the Overview lens — there, completion-descending puts your strongest book first; here, completion-ascending puts your most-work-needed book first.
Why books can’t be manually dismissed
Section titled “Why books can’t be manually dismissed”The most common feature request for any attention-queue-style tool is “let me mark this book as not needing attention.” Ishvana deliberately doesn’t include that, and the reason is that a manual dismiss would silently break the whole purpose of the queue.
Here’s the failure mode. You have a book with an orphan plant in chapter 3. It lands on the queue. You see it, you think I know about that, I’ll get to it later, you dismiss the book from the queue. Six months later, you’re getting ready to submit the book, and chapter 3 still has the orphan plant. Your dismiss worked exactly as designed — it hid the problem — and because it was hidden, you never fixed it.
The only way to clear a book from the queue is to fix what’s causing it to be there. Resolve the weak dimension. Pay off the plant. Fix the broken promise. Move the book out of Drafting stage by doing drafting work. If none of that is appropriate right now, the book stays on the queue, visible, as a reminder that something here is still open.
The four-slot limit
Section titled “The four-slot limit”The panel only displays the top four books at any given time. A large project with fifteen books in attention might have ten of them on the queue, but only four fit in the visible panel. The rest are hidden and you see them by switching to the Attention lens in the manuscript register — the lens shows all books that would be in the queue, sorted the same way, with no four-slot cap.
Four is the right display number for a side panel. Five feels cluttered. Three feels like you’re missing something. Four shows enough context to decide what to work on without flooding your visual field.
Tuning what counts as “weak”
Section titled “Tuning what counts as “weak””The weak dimension threshold is the knob that decides which books even qualify for signal 1. It lives in the completion formula editor, not in a separate settings menu, because the two are conceptually linked — changing which dimensions matter and changing when a dimension counts as weak should live in the same place.
Lower the threshold if your Attention Queue is showing too many books for the stage of your project. Raise it if you want the queue to start flagging things earlier.
What the queue is for, one more time
Section titled “What the queue is for, one more time”The Attention Queue is not a task list. It’s not a todo tracker. It’s not a project manager.
It’s the answer to one specific question: if I’m going to spend the next hour on this project, which book needs my attention most?
That question only has a useful answer if the queue is honest. Manual dismissal makes the queue dishonest. The fix-to-clear policy makes the queue honest. That’s the whole design philosophy in one paragraph.