What is the moon on my card?
Updated September 2026
It marks how far into their milestones they have come. It fills in as they approach each one, and once it reaches full it stays full, even if the term carries on much longer afterward. A full moon with nothing new happening is normal, not stuck. Beside it, a Milestone row on the back of the card names the last one they reached in words, so the picture always has an explanation next to it.
What the sky is reporting
The band across the middle of the card is not decoration. It is the state of the arrangement, drawn.
A starlit night sky with a moon is a calm, running term. A dim, starless band means the card is on one of the attention faces, where the phone stopped confirming its blocks, protection is off, or the subscription lapsed. A dawn glow means the commitment is over: either the term completed, or an exit ran its course. The band and the status word are derived from the same state, so they cannot disagree.
Only the calm sky carries a moon, and the moon is the only part of the picture that is information rather than mood.
How the moon fills
The moon has eight phases plus a moonless sky, and which one is drawn depends on the shape of their term.
On an ongoing commitment, which has no end date at all, the moon measures the gap between the last milestone they passed and the next one ahead. It is a new crescent just after a milestone and a full moon on the day they cross the next one. The rungs the card climbs are 7, 30 and 90 days.
On a fixed term, which has a chosen end date, the moon measures the whole term instead, from its first day to its last. Full occupies the final eighth, so a full moon there means the end is close. The earned moment of a fixed term is its end, and that face is dawn rather than a moon.
When there is no progress to read at all, because the card is new and no term window has resolved yet, the sky is drawn moonless. That is deliberately not the dim sky, because nothing is wrong, and deliberately not a first crescent, because claiming day one would be a false statement.
Why it stops at full
Past the last rung there is no next milestone to measure toward, so the moon freezes at full and stays there for the rest of the term. On an ongoing commitment that can be a very long time, and it is the intended behaviour rather than a card that stopped working.
That is exactly why the back of the card carries a Milestone row in words: it names the latest milestone they reached, it steps from 7 to 30 to 90 as they climb, and then it stays. A frozen full moon with a row underneath saying they reached 90 days is a complete explanation; a frozen full moon on its own would not be.
The row is persistent rather than a window that opens and closes. A witness pulls their card at no fixed time and a windowed row would simply be missed between pulls, so the row stays put and can be found whenever the card is next opened.
Reading it
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Look at the moon for the shape of the progress
Nearly full means a milestone is close on an ongoing commitment, or the end is close on a fixed one. It is a picture of a fraction, and it is never the only carrier of the fact.
The moon beside its milestone
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Read the facts row and the back for the words
The card states the milestone in text as well as in the picture. If the image ever fails to load or refresh, the words still carry the state, which is why the moon is an enhancement rather than the only signal.
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Say something when it fills
A milestone day is one of the letters that reaches your inbox, so a full moon usually arrives with an email beside it.
If the row never appears
Milestone reporting is one of the optional alerts, and the person you hold for can turn it off in their own app. If they have, the Milestone row is suppressed on your card and no milestone email is sent. That choice is not hidden from you: a change to which alerts fire is itself reported, and the Alerts row on the back of your card names the muted category.
On a witness card the row can also arrive quietly. A witness gets no push of their own for a milestone, so the row appears or steps at the card's next natural pull, with no banner. Nothing is missing; it simply landed without announcing itself.
What this does not do
The moon reports days on a commitment, not behaviour. It fills because time passed with the blocks running, and it says nothing about what happened away from that phone.
It is also not the same ladder the app itself celebrates. The card climbs 7, 30 and 90 days; the app's own milestone surfaces carry a longer ladder, so the person you hold for may mark a day their card does not draw a new moon for.
Still stuck? Email support@foldem.app and we answer within two working days.