ATS Conventions — non-normative annex

Conventions are opt-in. The standard does not require any of them; this annex documents what works for adopters who choose to layer human practice on top of the time counter. Adopting ATS does not commit a community to any convention here.

Status: Pre-release v0.7 Document type: NON-NORMATIVE ANNEX to the ATS specification. Normative reference: manifesto.en.md (the spec proper). Authoritative language: English. French translation in conventions.fr.md. Core posture: This annex documents observed, recommended, and experimental social conventions built on top of ATS — celebration cycles, work-rest rhythms, solar bands, personal counters, and civilisational milestones. Each convention is offered with citations or with explicit acknowledgement of being a proposal. Conformance to ATS (manifesto.en.md §16.5) is independent of every section here.

0. Status and posture

This annex is non-normative. An implementation strictly conformant to manifesto.en.md may ignore every section of this document.

What this annex offers:

• A catalogue of opt-in conventions that adopters of ATS have found useful — Kilo-versary, Hecto-feast, 7+3 rhythm, solar bands, personal counters, milestones.
• For each convention: a definition, the calculation method, suggested usage, parallels to existing cultural patterns, and citations where empirical claims are made.
• An explicit "what these conventions are NOT" section (§6) that pre-empts category errors.
• An explicit anticipated-objections section (§7) that addresses the most common attacks on the conventions.

What this annex does not offer:

• A prescription for any community's time culture. Every convention is opt-in.
• A claim that ATS conventions are superior to existing cultural rhythms (Sabbath, Sunday, Friday prayer, harvests, festivals). They are parallel, not replacements.
• A claim that civilisational milestones carry special significance beyond their arithmetic. Δ 1000 is just epoch + 1000 days; the "meaning" is whatever a community chooses to attach.
• A universalist anthropology. The 7+3 rhythm, the 08–22 solar band, the Three Eras (cf. philosophy.en.md §5) all reflect specific cultural framings. Alternatives are explicitly acknowledged in each section.

The posture is assertive but transparent: every numerical claim is checkable, every cultural choice is labelled, every convention is reversible. Communities lose nothing by ignoring any or all of this annex.

1. Celebration cycles

ATS proposes four celebration cycles, each pegged to a positional unit in the calendar:

• Kilo-versary every 1 000 days (§1.1).
• Hecto-feast every 100 days (§1.2).
• Deka-day every 10 days (§1.3).
• Beat-mark and Blink-flash for sub-second decoration (§1.4, optional).

1.1 Kilo-versary (every 1 000 days, ≈ 2.74 years)

A Kilo-versary marks the passage of one full Kilo — 1 000 days since a counter's epoch.

Calculation. Given a reference instant t₀ (the epoch, a birth, a project start), the n-th Kilo-versary is:

Kilo_n = t₀ + Δd n.0.0.0.00000

In short form: Δ K! (where K = n). Example: Δ 22! denotes the 22nd Kilo-versary of the civilisational epoch, falling at T+ Δ 22.0.0.0.00000 = 2029-04-08T00:00:00Z.

Civilisational Kilo-versaries. The reference table below records the first ten Kilo-versaries of the ATS epoch:

Personal usage. Any individual or organisation can compute their own Kilo-versary series by choosing t₀ = birth or founding instant. The age.html reference page implements this for personal use and exports .ics events for the next ten Kilo-versaries.

Parallels in existing cultures. The Kilo-versary occupies a temporal window where no widespread existing ritual sits: between annual birthdays (too frequent for project-scale reflection) and decennial jubilees (too rare). Comparable patterns:

• Catholic decennial jubilees and pilgrimage years (every 25 years from 1300; every 50 years from 1450).
• Five-year college reunions in Anglophone tradition.
• The Soviet "Pyatiletka" (five-year plan) cadence.
• OKR / strategic-planning retrospectives at quarter or half-year boundaries (cf. philosophy.en.md §4).

A Kilo-versary slots between these patterns and provides a personal or organisational reflection point with stable cadence.

1.2 Hecto-feast (every 100 days, ≈ 3.3 months)

A Hecto-feast marks the passage of one Hecto. More frequent than a Kilo-versary, proposed as a decimal-quarterly rhythm with no dependency on astronomical seasons or calendar months.

Calculation. The h-th Hecto-feast within Kilo k is at T+ Δ k.h.0.0.00000.

Civilisational Hecto-feasts. First eleven Hecto-feasts after the epoch:

Proposed usage. Project retrospectives, quarterly OKR reviews, organisational well-being check-ins, fitness-challenge milestones. The 100-day pattern is well-attested in human practice (cf. philosophy.en.md §4.2): "first 100 days" in political transitions, 90-day addiction-recovery milestones, 100-day fitness challenges. The Hecto-feast formalises this as a calendar feature rather than ad-hoc tradition.

Coexistence with Gregorian quarters. A Gregorian quarter is 90–92 days; a Hecto is 100. The two cadences drift by ~10 days per cycle. Organisations using both retain Gregorian quarters for fiscal reporting and overlay Hecto-feasts as additional review points; the drift is small enough to be cognitively manageable.

1.3 Deka-day (every 10 days)

A Deka-day marks the boundary between Dekas — T+ Δ k.h.d.0.00000. Optional and lightweight; suggested as a rhythm marker for communities using the 7+3 split (§2). In that context, the Deka-day is the transition between the rest phase of one Deka and the active phase of the next.

For communities not using the 7+3 split, the Deka-day has no particular ritual value; it remains a calendar tick.

1.4 Beat-mark and Blink-flash (sub-second decoration)

Two optional decorative conventions for live displays:

• Beat-mark. A subtle visual pulse every Beat (8.64 s). Used on the analog clock (analog-clock.md) as the inner ring of marks. May also be used as a heartbeat indicator in dashboards.
• Blink-flash. A pixel-scale visual flash every Blink (0.864 s). The reference analog clock has a Blink hand and a small disc that rotate together (see analog-clock.md §5); the dot decoration is a Blink-flash.

Neither has any normative status; they are presentation choices that adopters find pleasant.

2. The 7+3 rhythm on the Deka

The 7+3 rhythm is an optional social convention that slices the 10-day Deka into:

• 7 active days (work, school, engagement).
• 3 rest days (recovery, family, personal projects, civic participation).

2.1 The table

2.2 Comparison with the Gregorian 5+2 week

The 7+3 rhythm preserves the work-rest ratio of the 5+2 week to within one percentage point while aligning with the decimal calendar (one Hecto = 10 Dekas = 10 complete cycles, no drift).

2.3 Alternative splits

The 7+3 rhythm is one convention among several that an ATS-adopting community might use. The Deka unit makes such variation legible because each ratio is a sentence-length statement; the existing 5+2 ratio is opaque to anyone outside the convention. Alternative splits:

The choice is social, not specified by the standard.

2.4 Cultural plurality (explicit acknowledgement)

The 7+3 rhythm is offered as a convention layered on top of ATS, not as a displacement of any existing cultural rhythm. The 7-day liturgical week (Hebrew Sabbath, Christian Sunday, Islamic Friday prayer) is a religious framework with its own logic, and the 7+3 rhythm does not align with it: a Sabbath that recurs every 7 Earth days will land on different positions of consecutive Dekas. Communities committed to the 7-day liturgical week have three reasonable responses:

1. Retain the Gregorian week alongside ATS. The ATS counter and the 7-day liturgical week coexist on the same timeline. ATS is used for software, accounting, scientific data; the Gregorian week governs liturgical practice.
2. Adopt 7+3 secularly while retaining 7-day liturgical observance in parallel. The Sabbath is observed as usual; the 7+3 rhythm structures the secular work-rest pattern. The two cycles overlap with predictable drift.
3. Decline the 7+3 rhythm entirely and define a community-specific rhythm on the Deka (e.g., 6+1+2+1 to allow a one-day mid-Deka Sabbath observance).

No option is normatively preferred. The ATS standard does not require any rhythm to be chosen; it requires only the counter (manifesto.en.md §13.3).

2.5 Sourcing the rest-ratio claim

The 70 % active / 30 % rest target is empirically grounded:

• Modern occupational-health literature (Schaufeli & Bakker 2004; Maslach 2003; WHO 2019) documents that the 5+2 cycle's 29 % rest ratio is at the low end of historical and biological norms.
• Pre-industrial seasonal labour averaged 30–40 % rest, varying by season (Thompson 1967).
• The ILO Convention 47 (1935) on the 40-hour week implicitly assumes a 5+2 cycle with 29 % rest.
• A 30 % rest ratio (7+3) approaches the pre-industrial mean while remaining compatible with modern productivity expectations.

The 7+3 rhythm is therefore a small deviation from the 5+2 status quo (one extra rest day per cycle), not a radical departure. Communities adopting it experience a marginally lighter active load and a marginally heavier rest budget; the cumulative effect over a Hecto is +10 rest days vs the equivalent Gregorian period.

3. Local solar bands (08–22)

The site's analog dial (cf. analog-clock.md) draws, for each city, an arc corresponding to its 08:00 → 22:00 local active day. This convention is the basis for the daily-activity colouring on the Cities map (/fr/cities.html).

3.1 The bands

3.2 Why 08–22 specifically

The bounds are an empirical compromise across three constraints:

• Sleep recommendations. The Sleep Foundation (Hirshkowitz et al. 2015) recommends 7–9 hours for adults, with bedtime in the 22:00–24:00 window for typical chronotypes. The 22:00 boundary preserves wind-down time before sleep.
• Commercial opening hours. Standard commercial opening hours in Europe and the Americas span 08:00–22:00 with regional variation. The bounds align with the modal observable schedule (Eurostat 2019 retail-hours data).
• School and commute windows. School entry times in OECD countries cluster around 08:00 (OECD 2022 education indicators); evening commute completes by 19:00 for most workers. The 08:00 boundary marks the start of the institutional day.

3.3 Variation and special cases

The 08–22 band is a default, not a mandate. Implementations are free to use other bounds, and several special cases motivate variation:

• Polar regions. Above the Arctic Circle and below the Antarctic Circle, solar time loses meaning during the polar day or night. Implementations covering these regions should use clock-based bands rather than solar-relative bands.
• Mediterranean siesta culture. Cities in southern Europe and Latin America commonly extend the active day to 23:00 or 00:00, with a mid-afternoon rest break. A 08–24 band may be more representative.
• Tropical climates with early starts. Many tropical cities start the active day at 06:00 to avoid midday heat. A 06–22 band may be more representative.
• Religious observance windows. Islamic five-daily prayer times structure the day differently; Hindu morning and evening puja windows likewise. Implementations serving these communities may overlay prayer markers on the dial.

When an implementation chooses non-default bounds, it is RECOMMENDED that the choice be documented in the aria-describedby attribute of the relevant SVG, so screen readers and downstream consumers can understand the convention in use.

3.4 Sourcing

The Cities map dataset (docs/assets/data/cities.json) carries activity times per city that have been collected from regional norms and published medians. The dataset note explicitly states: "Approximate cultural averages for representative world capitals — sourced from regional norms (working week, school hours, meal customs). Local times are the published medians." The 08–22 bands are a visual default; the per-city activity times deviate from them according to local custom.

4. Personal counters

Any personal ATS instant Δ_self (typically a birth instant) can be used as an alternate reference point to compute an ego-centered counter:

4.1 Calculation

Δd_age = Δ_now − Δ_self

where Δ_now is the current ATS instant and Δ_self is the reference (birth, founding, project start). The result is a signed duration (Δd) in the canonical ATS duration form (cf. manifesto.en.md §11).

4.2 Examples

4.3 Personal Kilo-versary

The n-th personal Kilo-versary is the instant Δ_self + Δd n.0.0.0.00000. The age.html reference page computes the next ten Kilo-versaries for a given birth date and exports them as .ics calendar events.

4.4 Multi-counter algebra

ATS algebra (manifesto.en.md §11.4) allows arbitrary arithmetic on personal counters:

• Difference between two people's ages: (Δ_now − Δ_self_A) − (Δ_now − Δ_self_B) = Δ_self_B − Δ_self_A.
• Time until the n-th Kilo-versary: (Δ_self + Δd n.0.0.0.00000) − Δ_now.
• Average age of a team: (Σ (Δ_now − Δ_self_i)) ÷ N.

These computations are stable across time zones and DST transitions because all operands are UTC instants.

5. Milestone suggestions

The following civilisational and multi-planetary milestones are offered as suggestions, with no normative value. Communities are free to compute their own.

5.1 Earth civilisational milestones

5.2 Multi-planetary milestones (per multi-planetary.md)

These milestones are computed on the body-specific epochs. They do not coincide in Earth-UTC.

The exact UTC equivalents depend on the body-specific day length (sols vs Earth days); see multi-planetary.md §5 and the conformance vectors.

5.3 Personal milestones

Any individual or organisation computes its own milestones using §1.1 (Kilo-versary) and §1.2 (Hecto-feast). The reference page age.html generates a personalised milestone calendar.

6. What these conventions are not

To pre-empt category errors, four boundaries are made explicit. These mirror manifesto.en.md §1.1 adapted to social conventions.

1. These are not normative. The ATS standard does not require any convention here. Conformance (manifesto.en.md §16.5) depends only on the standard's normative content; this annex is wholly optional.
2. These are not prescriptive. No individual, organisation, or community is asked to adopt the 7+3 rhythm, the 08–22 solar bands, the Kilo-versary, or the Three Eras of life narrative. They are offered as documented patterns that some adopters have found useful.
3. These do not displace cultural or religious rhythms. The 7-day liturgical week, the Sabbath, Friday prayer, harvest festivals, and other cultural cycles continue to operate on the same timeline as ATS. The relationship is coexistence, not replacement.
4. These are not universalist. The 08–22 solar band is a North-Atlantic-modal compromise; the 7+3 rhythm is one of several alternatives; the milestones reflect a specific framing of significance. Communities preferring different conventions lose nothing by adopting them in place of these.

7. Anticipated objections

7.1 "You claim ATS doesn't legislate rhythm, but this annex defines a 7+3 rhythm."

The 7+3 rhythm is documented in this annex, not legislated by the standard. manifesto.en.md §13.3 is explicit: ATS does not legislate work-rest splits. The 7+3 rhythm is offered alongside 6+1+2+1, 8+2, 5+5, and 6+4 as alternatives that the Deka unit makes legible. An adopter of ATS who chooses any of them — or none of them — remains conformant.

7.2 "7+3 disadvantages communities with 7-day religious traditions (Sabbath, Sunday, Friday prayer)."

§2.4 addresses this directly. Communities committed to a 7-day liturgical week have three reasonable responses: retain the Gregorian week alongside ATS, adopt 7+3 secularly while retaining 7-day liturgical observance in parallel, or decline 7+3 and define a community-specific rhythm. No option is normatively preferred. ATS is additive, not subtractive.

7.3 "08–22 is Eurocentric and does not represent Mediterranean, tropical, polar, or East Asian schedules."

§3.3 documents this explicitly and recommends variation for each case. The 08–22 default is a starting point for the analog dial display; it is not a claim about how people should organise their days. Implementations covering specific regions are encouraged to use bounds appropriate to local custom and to document the choice in aria-describedby.

7.4 "What about polar regions where there is no daily sun cycle?"

§3.3 acknowledges polar regions explicitly. In polar day or polar night, solar-relative bands lose meaning; clock-based bands are the only sensible default. Implementations covering polar regions should treat 08–22 as a clock convention, not a solar one.

7.5 "Personal counters are just now() - birthday(); why elevate this to a convention?"

The arithmetic is trivial. The convention is the framing — that ATS represents a person's age as a positional duration (Δd K.H.D.Kin.fffff) rather than a year count. The conventional framing supports:

• Stable arithmetic across DST and time-zone changes (a personal Kilo-versary is a single UTC instant, not "midnight in some local time").
• Multi-counter algebra (§4.4): differences, averages, intersections of multiple personal counters reduce to ATS algebra.
• .ics export and calendar interop without time-zone gymnastics.

The convention is a small thing that scales well; trivial individually, useful at the scale of an age.html page generating Kilo-versaries for arbitrary birth dates.

7.6 "Civilisational milestones (Δ 100, Δ 1000, …) sound like astrology — assigning meaning to arithmetic accidents."

The arithmetic is the arithmetic; meaning is a community choice. ATS does not assert that Δ 1000 carries cosmic significance. It asserts that 1 000 days have passed since the epoch, and offers that as a coordination point for communities that want to mark it. The same is true of every calendar milestone: a centennial is "100 years since something", and the meaning is whatever the community attaches. ATS adds nothing magical and removes nothing.

7.7 "Why include sub-second conventions (Beat-mark, Blink-flash)? Nobody marks time at second scale."

These are presentation conventions for live displays — analog clocks, dashboards, time-sensitive user interfaces. The Beat-mark is a subtle pulse every 8.64 s; the Blink-flash is a pixel-scale animation every 0.864 s. Both are decorative, both opt-in. The analog clock reference page (analog-clock.md) uses them; other applications are free to ignore them. They are documented here so that implementations using them are consistent.

7.8 "This annex pads to look RFC-grade when it is just a list of social patterns."

The annex is non-normative and is presented as such (§0). The RFC-grade structure (citations, opt-in framing, anticipated objections) is borrowed from the normative manifesto for consistency of voice across the spec set, not because the content of this annex carries the same weight. The reader is invited to treat each section as a documented suggestion; rejecting any of it carries no cost.

8. Summary

Every convention in this annex is opt-in. Adopters mix and match:

None of these is required for ATS conformance. All are documented because adopters of ATS, asked what conventions they found useful, converged on roughly this catalogue. The annex is a snapshot of community practice; it will evolve.

For the strictly normative content of ATS, see manifesto.en.md. For the philosophical rationale behind the unit choices, see philosophy.en.md. For comparison with alternative time standards, see comparison.en.md. This annex sits between practice and reflection.

References

• Achelis, E. (1937). The Calendar for the Modern Age. Putnam. (Quarter-equivalence framing relevant to §1.2.)
• Doerr, J. (2018). Measure What Matters. Portfolio. (OKR quarterly cadence comparison.)
• Eurostat (2019). Retail trade and opening hours statistics, EU-27. (Source for §3.2 commercial-hours data.)
• Hirshkowitz, M., Whiton, K., Albert, S. M., et al. (2015). National Sleep Foundation's sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary. Sleep Health, 1(1), 40–43. (Source for §3.2 sleep recommendations.)
• International Labour Organization (1919). Hours of Work (Industry) Convention (No. 1). (Origin of the 8-hour day.)
• International Labour Organization (1935). Forty-Hour Week Convention (No. 47). (Origin of the 40-hour week.)
• Kerkhof, G. A. (1985). Inter-individual differences in the human circadian system: a review. Biological Psychology, 20(2), 83–112. (Source for chronotype variation in §3.3.)
• Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2003). The Truth About Burnout. Jossey-Bass. (Source for §2.5 rest-ratio claims.)
• OECD (2022). Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2022. (Source for §3.2 school-start times.)
• Schaufeli, W. B., & Bakker, A. B. (2004). Job demands, job resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(3), 293–315. (Source for §2.5.)
• Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism. Past & Present, 38(1), 56–97. (Source for pre-industrial rest-ratio claim in §2.5.)
• World Health Organization (2019). International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision (ICD-11). Burn-out classified as occupational phenomenon (QD85). (Source for §2.5.)

All numerical claims in this annex are arithmetically verifiable from manifesto.en.md §9 (conversion definition) and code/ats.py (reference implementation). All cultural claims are sourced. Readers identifying weak citations, missing alternatives, or contested patterns are invited to open an issue at the canonical location (manifesto.en.md §16.1).