Plateau detector — the six rules

The plateau detector is a Pro+ feature: six deterministic rules that watch for structural patterns in your training, sleep, and weight data — the kind of patterns you'd never spot from inside a busy week, but that show up clearly when an algorithm reads four weeks of data at once. When a rule fires, the dashboard surfaces a banner with the rule's narrative + one specific action you can take. Coach writes the narrative; the rule logic is transparent.

• Weekly cron, Sundays 10:10 UTC. Coach evaluates all six rules against the past 28 days. Each rule fires independently; you can get one alert, multiple, or none.
• Per-rule cooldown.A rule that fired in the last 14 days won't re-fire — so you don't get the same alert two Sundays running for a stall that hasn't resolved yet.
• Severity tag. Each alert is info, warn, or high. High-severity (sleep debt + rising load) gets the strongest banner treatment; info just sits in your history.
• Dismissable.Each alert has Acknowledge and Dismiss buttons. Acknowledging marks “I saw this and intend to act”; dismissing buries it. Either way it stops surfacing on the dashboard.

• Weight has stalled

  Your 21-day weight trend has moved less than 0.3% while your goal is to lose or gain. That's two solid weeks of friction with the scale. Most often it's an unmeasured intake creep (Pro tip: weigh oil and nut butters) or a TDEE that's drifted — let Adaptive TDEE refit if you haven't applied a recent fit.

• Possible overreaching

  Training volume is up 20%+ week-over-week AND HRV trend is down 10%+ for the same window. The body is telling you the load isn't being absorbed. Coach proposes a deload week or a planned light-volume cycle before continuing the progression.

• Sleep debt + rising load

  7-day average sleep is under 6.5 hours AND training volume is rising. High-severity alert — this combo predicts injury better than either factor alone. Coach recommends either pulling back load or front-loading recovery (sleep window, deload).

• Training on low-readiness days

  Three or more workouts in the past week landed on days when your readiness score was below 50. You're pushing intensity into days your body is signalling "recover." Coach proposes shifting heavy sessions to recovery-green days.

• Long cut without a refeed

  You've been in a calorie deficit for 42+ days without a refeed or maintenance break. Metabolic adaptation accelerates past this window — Coach recommends a 3-7 day maintenance refeed before continuing the cut, both for performance and to keep the cut productive.

• Luteal phase + load + short sleep

  For users with cycle tracking opted in: you're in the luteal phase AND training volume is up AND sleep is short. This combo amplifies fatigue more than the sum of its parts. Coach recommends adjusting expectations + pulling back intensity until follicular.

Every alert (acknowledged, dismissed, or pending) is kept at /coach/plateaus with the date it fired, its narrative, and the action you took. Useful both to see patterns over months (do you get sleep-debt alerts every January?) and to give next year's you a record of what Coach noticed.

Plateau detection is on by default for Pro+ users. To silence the cron + banner entirely, go to Profile → Goals and flip Plateau detection off. To silence just the proactive push (without losing the dashboard banner), disable the Plateau trigger in Profile → Notifications.