Prioritization & Sorting

Mastering the Queue: Prioritization & Sorting

To get the most out of Incremental Everything, it's essential to understand how to manage your review queue effectively. This guide breaks down the advanced prioritization and sorting tools at your disposal, allowing you to tailor your learning sessions to your exact needs.

Table of Contents

• The Priority System Explained
  • Priority Value (Absolute Priority)
  • Relative Priority
• Priority Inheritance System
  • Use Cases
• Setting Priorities
  • Main Priority Popup
    • What the Priority dialog displays:
  • Light Priority Popup
  • Quick Priority Shortcuts
  • Priority Editor Widget
  • Batch Priority Change (IncRems & Flashcards)
  • Batch Card Priority (Flashcards)
  • Other Methods
• Sorting Criteria
  • 1) Incremental Rem Randomness
  • 2) Flashcard Randomness
  • 3) Flashcard Ratio
• Priority Shield
  • What it Measures
  • How to Interpret It
  • Weighted Shield
  • Priority Shield History
• How the Plugin Prioritizes Due Items

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The Priority System Explained

With incremental reading, you can quickly accumulate thousands of articles, notes, and videos. Without a system to manage this volume, the learning process can become chaotic. This is where the priority system comes in.

By assigning a priority to each item, you tell the plugin what is most important to you. The plugin then uses this information to intelligently sort your queue, ensuring that you review the most critical material first. So, priorities are there to manage information overflow. This concept is central to methodologies like the one used in SuperMemo. For a deeper dive into the theory, see SuperMemo's article on the Priority queue.

Setting priorities helps you manage the balance of Volume vs. retention in learning effectively. It prevents your queue from being overloaded with low-value items, which could prevent you from reviewing your high-value investments.

If you want to ensure that you keep a high retention of previously added material, you cannot overload the learning process with new material (new topics[= passive reading Incremental Rem]) because you will not have enough time left to do your daily item review.

Priority Value (Absolute Priority)

• A numerical value from 0 to 100.
• This is the number that is stored in the "Priority" property of the Incremental Rem or Card Rem.
• Lower numbers mean higher priority. 0 is for your most critical material, while 100 is for the least important.

💡 Pro-Tip for an Efficient Workflow:

For faster and more effective prioritization, we recommend using a smaller range of values, such as 1-10.

• Why? It helps reduce decision fatigue. Spending mental energy deciding if an item is a 53 or a 58 has a negligible practical effect on your queue.
• Benefits: Sticking to a smaller scale makes prioritizing quicker and more intuitive. You still get the full benefit of the Relative Priority percentile, which automatically ranks the item against everything else.

The full 0-100 range is included for maximum flexibility and to align with the well stablished standard of SuperMemo, but a simpler scale is often more powerful in practice.

Relative Priority

• A percentile rank from 0% to 100%.
• Positions the current Rem relative to all other incremental items OR Card Rems in your entire knowledge base. Setting it to 10% means this item is more important than 90% of your other items.

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Priority Inheritance System

To streamline workflow and make priority management more intuitive, new items automatically inherit their priority from their closest parent or ancestor that is also prioritized.

• How it works (True Priorities): When you tag a new Rem as Incremental (or generate flashcards), the plugin searches up through the Rem's parents looking for a "true" origin priority to inherit. A priority is considered "true" if it's an Incremental Rem priority, or a Flashcard priority whose source is "manual" or "incremental" (that is, one originated from a processed Incremental Rem when "Dismiss" was pressed). Purely inherited Flashcard priorities are skipped, acting as transparent pass-throughs so the plugin can find the real source higher up the tree.
• Smart Category Matching: Proximity is the strongest factor. If the direct parent has a true priority (even of a different type), the new child inherits it immediately. However, if the closest true ancestor possesses both an Incremental Rem priority and a Flashcard priority, the child will smartly inherit the priority from the matching category space (e.g., a new Incremental Rem will inherit the ancestor's Incremental Rem priority, while a new flashcard will inherit the ancestor's Flashcard priority).
• Fallback: If no true prioritized ancestor is found, the new item will receive the default priority value you have set in the plugin settings.

This system is particularly useful for hierarchically organized notes. For example, if you have an important book summary with a high priority (e.g., 5), any new extracts or notes you create within that summary will automatically inherit the same priority, saving you from setting it manually each time.

The "Set Priority" and "Reschedule" popups also display the ancestor's priority, giving you immediate context when you decide to manually override the inherited value.

Use Cases

• Use Case 1: Deconstructing a High-Priority Document

Imagine you have a PDF of a crucial research paper with a priority of 10. As you read and create highlights (extracts) from it, each new highlight will automatically be assigned a priority of 10. This ensures that all the core concepts from that paper are reviewed together and with the urgency they deserve, without any manual adjustments.

• Use Case 2: Hierarchical Note-Taking

If you have a parent rem for a broad topic like "Quantum Mechanics" with a set priority, any new child rems you create under it (e.g., "Wave-Particle Duality," "Superposition") will inherit that priority. This keeps your knowledge hierarchy organized and ensures that foundational topics and their sub-topics are treated with the same level of importance in your reviews.

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Setting Priorities

There are several ways to set priorities in Incremental Everything, each designed for a different context.

• Main Priority Popup (Opt+P): The comprehensive tool. Best for deep analysis, seeing relative priorities, ancestors, and using the "Shield" logic.
• Light Priority Popup (Ctrl+Opt+P): A streamlined, instant-opening version. Best for quick, friction-free adjustments during study sessions.
• Quick Priority Shortcuts (Ctrl+Shift+↑/↓): The fastest method. Adjusts absolute priority instantly without any UI popping up.
• Priority Editor Widget: An always-on visual control in the editor or queue.
• Batch Tools: Advanced tables for managing priorities en masse for documents or tags.

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Main Priority Popup

Shortcut: Opt+P (or /Prioritize)

This is the fully-featured priority interface. Access it by pressing Opt+P or clicking the "Change Priority" button in the queue.

It displays detailed context, including:

1. Absolute Priority Value: The number (0-100) stored in the Rem.
2. Relative Priority: Where this item stands compared to the rest of your knowledge base (as a percentile).
3. Visual Slider: A slider for absolute value, giving you both precise control and intuitive visual ranking. The color of the slider indicates the absolute priority, while the color of the selector circle indicates the relative priority.
4. Ancestor Context: Shows the priority of the closest parent prioritized Rem, helping you check inheritance.
5. Scope Analysis: Lets you see how this item ranks within specific documents vs. the entire knowledge base.

When to use: When you need full context or want to analyze your priority distribution.

What the Priority dialog displays:

• (1) [Absolute] Priority input field (selected when the dialog opens, so that you can just type the priority and press Enter to save)
• (2) Priority Badge: the number shows the absolute priority; the color code provides visual indication of the relative priority (shown in 4)
• (3) You can slide this button to select the priority. Pay attention that the position on the slider indicates absolute priority, but the color of the button indicates the relative priority (shown in 4)
• (4) Relative priority of the IncRem (or flashcard), in the scope shown on 6, as well as the number of items that form this scope
• (5) The priority of the closest ancestor, for reference. Shows the name of the closest ancestor, its relationship with the current rem (e.g. parent, grandparent), and if it is an IncRem or a flashcard.
• (6) The scope to be used for the calculation of the Relative Priority. May be "All KB" or a Document. If you select the Document tab, it will display a document scope. You can then use the arrows to go up and down on the hierarchy, and see how the current rem is proportionally positioned in relation to each of these scopes.

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Light Priority Popup

Shortcut: Ctrl+Opt+P

Designed for speed. This popup opens instantly and provides just the essentials:

• A slider for the Incremental Rem priority or/and
• A slider for the Flashcard priority.

It works exactly like the main popup but skips the heavy calculations (like checking ancestor trees or calculating precise universe percentiles) to ensure zero lag.

Note: If you are on Windows instead of Mac, you may need to disable the default keybindings for "Add All Properties" in the settings to avoid conflicts with this plugin. Go to Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts, search for "Add All Properties" and disable it.

When to use: For routine day-to-day adjustments when speed is paramount.

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Quick Priority Shortcuts

Shortcuts:

• Ctrl+Opt+Up Arrow: Increase priority number (make less important). E.g., 10 → 20.
• Ctrl+Opt+Down Arrow: Decrease priority number (make more important). E.g., 20 → 10.

Note: In this system, lower numbers mean higher importance (1 is top priority, 100 is low).

These shortcuts allow you to adjust priorities on the fly without breaking your flow. You can use them on the current item in the queue or any focused Rem in the editor. A small toast notification will confirm the change.

The step in which priorities will increase or decrease can be configured in the settings.

When to use: During review sessions when you want to adjust an item's priority up or down in a predefined step without stopping.

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Priority Editor Widget

Location: Right side of the editor (when a Incremental Rem or a Card is focused) or potentially inline.

This widget provides a persistent visual indicator of the item's priority.

• Clicking it opens the full priority popup.
• Expanding it reveals quick + / - buttons to adjust priority by 1 or 10 points directly.

When to use: When editing a document and you want to manage priorities without using keyboard shortcuts.

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Batch Priority Change (IncRems & Flashcards)

Access: Document Menu (top right 3 dots) → "Batch Priority Change"

A powerful table view for unified priority management across an entire document tree.

• View: Displays a hierarchical list of all Prioritized items (both Incremental Rems and Flashcards) in the document.
• Bulk Operations:
  • Increase/Decrease: Adjust all selected priorities by a percentage.
  • Spread: Distribute priorities evenly across a range (e.g., set selected items from 10 to 50).
  • Set Fixed: Set all selected items to a specific value.
• Sorting/Filtering: Sort by name, priority, next repetition date, etc. Filter by search text, type, or priority range.
• Multi-Select Type Filter: Hold Cmd/Ctrl while clicking in the "All Types" dropdown to instantly filter by multiple categories at once (e.g. showing only "Extracts" and items that "Has Cards").
• Filter-Aware Bulk Actions: When any filter is active (search, type, or priority range), bulk action buttons automatically adapt:
  • Check All Filtered / Uncheck All Filtered — only toggles items matching the current filters; out-of-scope items remain unchanged.
  • Preview Filtered — calculates new priorities only for the filtered subset, preserving existing calculations for items outside the filter.
  • Apply to Filtered — applies changes exclusively to the filtered items.
  • When no filters are active, buttons revert to their standard labels and affect all items as before.

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Batch Card Priority (Flashcards)

Access: Focus on a Tag Rem → Document Menu → "Batch Assign Card Priority for tagged Rems"

Designed specifically for Flashcards. You can now assign CardPriority to hundreds of rems at once, based on a tag.

Use Cases:

• Topic Prioritization: When you have a specific topic or exam tag (e.g., #Exam1) and want to ensure all related flashcards are prioritized highly.
• System Migration: If you used to use tags to prioritize your cards (like #important!, #P1, #P2), you can convert your old manual system to the new one in bulk.

Features:

• Smart Randomization: Assigns random priorities within a specific range (e.g., 20-40). This distributes the load so important cards don't all pile up on the same day.
• Intelligent Handling: Capable of checking if the item is also an Incremental Rem, allowing you to use its existing IncRem priority as the Card Priority.
• Safety: Safely updates rems that already have manual priorities by requiring explicit "Overwrite" confirmation.

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Other Methods

• Reschedule Command (Ctrl+J): The reschedule popup also includes a priority slider, allowing you to change both the due date and the priority in one go.

• Extract with Priority (Opt+Shift+X): When focused on a Rem or having a text selection, you can immediately create an extract and open the priority popup for the new item.

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Sorting Criteria

Accessed via the three-dot menu in the top-right of the queue, the "Sorting Criteria" popup lets you control the mix and order of cards in your review session.

1) Incremental Rem Randomness

• This slider adjusts how strictly the queue follows your priority settings.
• 0% (Default): The queue is sorted strictly by priority. Your highest-priority (lowest number) items will always appear first.
• 100% (Max): Priority is completely ignored, and all due incremental items are presented in a random order.
• Increasing randomness can be useful for discovering older, lower-priority items you might otherwise not see.

💡 Pro-Tip for an Efficient Learning:

The default is set to "0" (strict priority ordering) only to avoid confusion to new users. As soon as you get used to Incremental Reading, set a degree of randomness to ensure you will dedicate a small amount of your study time to dive into material that can bring you valuable insights and "golden nuggets"!

2) Flashcard Randomness

• Similar purposes of the Incremental Rem Randomness, but this setting is used solely to the creation of Priority Review Documents. It does not affect the regular RemNote flashcard queue (it cannot be managed by a plugin). If you want review your high priority flashcards first, you MUST create a Priority Review Document and enter the queue in that document.

3) Flashcard Ratio

The core idea is to strike a balance between learning new things and retaining what you've already learned. As the SuperMemo guide states:

Only a small proportion of time-consuming topics [= passive reading Incremental Rem] is allowed in the learning queue. This proportion is chosen to maximize the fun and efficiency of learning: sufficient inflow of new material combined with the necessary review of your previous investment.

• This slider controls the balance between regular RemNote flashcards (= active recall) and Incremental Rems (= passive reading).
• Slide Left: Decreases the number of regular flashcards shown between incremental rems. All the way to the left (Only Incremental Rem) will hide flashcards completely.
• Slide Right: Increases the number of flashcards. All the way to the right (Only Flashcards) will hide Incremental Rems.
• The default is a balanced mix, showing a set number of flashcards for every one incremental rem.

💡 Pro-Tip: Finding Your Ideal Balance

Use the Flashcard Ratio slider to tailor each study session to your goals.

• To manage a large flashcard backlog: Set the slider to a higher ratio, like 8-10 cards per incremental rem. This dedicates more time to your existing reviews, ensuring you don't fall behind while still introducing new material to keep sessions engaging, while at the same time avoids boredom for not seeing new material.

• To focus on new content: If your flashcard queue is manageable, set the slider to a lower ratio, like 4-6 cards per incremental rem. This prioritizes your incremental reading and learning, allowing you to make faster progress through your articles, books, and videos, while ensures your review material will not be forgotten.

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Priority Shield

Inspired by advanced metrics in SuperMemo (Priority Protection), the Priority Shield is a real-time diagnostic tool that helps you understand and manage your learning load. It gives you a clear, numerical value for your "Priority Protection" — your capacity to process high-priority material.

You can find it displayed below the answer buttons in the queue (this can be toggled in settings) on IncRems, and above the answer buttons on Flashcards.

What it Measures

The shield displays the priority of the most important due Incremental Rem / Flashcard that you have not yet reviewed. It provides separate metrics for your entire Knowledge Base (KB) and the current Document (if you are studying a specific document).

The Shield metric for Incremental Rems is separate of that for Flashcards; each one consider exclusively its own scope (IncRems or Flashcards).

Note

Card Shield only: The card shield uses a "start of today" boundary — only cards with a nextRepetitionTime on or before midnight of the current day (user's local timezone) are counted. Cards that become due during the session (e.g. from an Again rating) are excluded until the next day. This keeps the shield stable throughout the day and aligns with the SuperMemo principle that the Outstanding Queue is formed once per day. See Priorities for Flashcards for full details.

How to Interpret It

• A HIGH shield value (e.g., Absolute: 30, Percentile: 32%) is GOOD. It means you have successfully reviewed all your high-priority items, and the most important one remaining is of relatively lower importance. Your critical material is "shielded" and protected.
• A LOW shield value (e.g., Absolute: 5, Percentile: 4%) is a WARNING. It indicates that you are falling behind on highly important material.
• A shield reading 100% means you have no overdue items in that scope—the ideal state!
• 🛡️ Active Shield Animation: When the absolute priority of the item you are currently reviewing perfectly matches the active shield value, the "🛡️" indicator and corresponding text will subtly pulse and glow in blue. This provides rewarding visual feedback that you are directly attacking the absolute most important pending material in your queue!

The core purpose of the Priority Shield is to move beyond guessing and provide you with concrete data to build a sustainable and effective study strategy. By knowing the exact priority of the most important Incremental Rem you have yet to review, you can answer critical questions about your learning habits:

• Am I creating new material faster than I can review it? If you consistently see a low Priority Shield value (e.g., your Relative Priority Shield is only protecting 4% of your top priority Incremental Rems), it's a strong indicator that the inflow of new Incremental Rems is too high, and your most important knowledge is at risk of being forgotten.
• Is my "Sorting Criteria" Randomness setting right for me? The Priority Shield gives you direct feedback on your randomness setting. If your shield value is too low, you might want to decrease the randomness to focus more strictly on high-priority items. Conversely, if you feel your reviews are too rigid, you can increase randomness and watch how it affects your shield value over time.
• Am I at risk of burnout? The history graph allows you to see trends. If you notice your Priority Shield value steadily declining over days or weeks, it may be a sign that your workload is becoming unmanageable, allowing you to adjust your strategy before you feel overwhelmed.

Weighted Shield

While the standard Priority Shield identifies the single most important item you’ve missed, the Weighted Shield (represented by the ⚖️ icon) provides a macro-level diagnostic of your entire workload. It measures the fraction of your total priority-weighted queue that has been processed.

How it works:

• Each item is weighted exponentially by its priority percentile. High-priority items carry significantly more weight than low-priority items (a top-priority item carries approximately 10× the weight of a bottom-priority item).
• As you process items, your shield percentage increases.
• Processing high-priority items gives a much larger boost to your shield than processing low-priority items.
• 100% means everything due in your queue is successfully processed!
• A low percentage means a significant portion of your highly-weighted material remains unreviewed.

Weighted Shield Breakdown Popup: Clicking on the Weighted Shield metric in the queue toolbar will open a detailed breakdown popup. This popup divides your knowledge base into ten percentile buckets (e.g., 0-10%, 10-20%, etc.) and shows you exactly how much of the weighted volume within each bucket is currently due versus processed. This allows you to pinpoint exactly where in your priority hierarchy your backlog is accumulating.

The popup table contains two columns that may need explanation:

• Avg W (Average Weight): The mean exponential weight of all items within that percentile bucket. Each individual item's weight is computed using the formula $W = e^{-2.3026 \cdot \dfrac{p}{100}}$, where $p$ is the item's relative priority percentile (0–100%). This means an item at the very top (p ≈ 0%) gets a weight near 1.0, while an item at the very bottom (p = 100%) gets a weight of exactly $e^{-2.3026} \approx 0.1$ — i.e., approximately 10× less influential. The "Avg W" column shows the average of these individual weights across all items in the bucket, giving you a sense of how heavy-weighted that bucket is.

• W Share (Weight Share): The percentage of the total priority weight that belongs to this bucket. It is calculated as:

  W Share = (sum of weights in bucket) / (total weight across all buckets) × 100

  This tells you what fraction of your overall weighted workload lives in each priority tier. For example, a "W Share" of 22% in the 0–10% bucket means that the top 10% of your items — even if they are few in number — collectively account for 22% of your entire priority-weighted workload. This is the core reason why processing high-priority items moves the Weighted Shield so much more than processing low-priority ones.

Why "Weight processed" differs from "Processed %":

The popup header shows two separate figures that often diverge significantly, and understanding the difference is the key to reading this metric correctly:

Example: Processed: 7,706 (22.3%) — but Weight processed: 36.6% of total weight

• Processed (22.3%) is a plain item count: 22.3% of all your Rems with cards have their cards non-due. Every Rem counts equally, regardless of its priority.
• Weight processed (36.6%) is the priority-weighted fraction: it sums up the exponential weights of processed items and divides by the total weight of all items. Because high-priority items weigh so much more, even a relatively small number of processed high-priority items can push this figure well above the raw count percentage.

In this example, the 22.3% of items you've processed happen to be disproportionately high-priority ones — so they contribute 36.6% of the total weight. This gap is actually good news: it means your study habits are prioritizing the right material. Conversely, if the weight percentage were lower than the raw count percentage, it would signal that you've been processing mostly low-priority items while your most valuable material sits unreviewed.

The Weighted Shield value (⚖️ %) shown in the shield header is precisely this "Weight processed" figure — making it a far more meaningful measure of your learning efficiency than a simple count of items reviewed.

Important Note on Cards vs. Rems: When viewing the Weighted Shield metrics for Flashcards, you will see a count of "Rems with Cards". It is critical to understand that this metric tracks Rems, not individual flashcards! Since a single Rem can generate multiple individual flashcards, the number of "Rems with cards" will always be smaller than the total flashcard count displayed in RemNote's native UI. A "due/unprocessed" Rem in this context means a prioritized Rem that currently possesses at least one active, due flashcard in the queue.

Note

Both Shields can be toggled on and off the queue toolbar in the plugins Settings.

Priority Shield History

You can track your performance over time by accessing the "Priority Shield History" graph from the queue menu (the three-dot icon). This graph plots your daily shield values, helping you identify trends and adjust your workload or priorities accordingly.

Interactivity & Features:

• Dismissed Rems Tracking: The IncRem shield graph track your process progression with a stacked area chart:
  • The green line plots your active Incremental Rems universe.
  • The black dashed line on top plots your Total Universe (IncRems + those marked with the dismissed powerup).
  • The yellow shaded area visually represents your volume of dismissed material.
• Detailed Tooltips: Hover over any IncRem graph to see a breakdown of your Incremental Rems, Dismissed Rems, Total Universe, and an calculated Processing Percentage metric showing exactly how much of your total universe has been successfully dismissed.
• Drag-to-Zoom: Click and drag your mouse horizontally over any chart to zoom into a specific time period. This is helpful for examining detailed progress over short durations.
• Optimize Priorities Zoom: A button automatically scales the absolute and relative priority Y-Axes to perfectly frame the visible data in your current zoom window. Highly beneficial for viewing subtle metric changes over time!
• Reset Data Range: A button appears when zoomed in, allowing you to quickly return to the full historical view.
• Scope Organization: Charts are organized into Document-level progress (for your current study context) and Knowledge Base-wide progress, separated by a visual divider.
• Automatic Y-Scaling: As you zoom or pan, the Universe Size axis adapts to the peak values in your visible range, providing maximum visual resolution.

Understanding the Metrics:

• Priority Shield: This metric represents your processing capacity for high-priority items. A higher shield value (closer to 100) means you are successfully reviewing your most important material on time.
• Document Shield: Shows your priority protection within the current document/folder scope (or original scope for Priority Review Documents). This helps you track how well you're keeping up with the most important items in specific contexts.
• Weighted Shield (⚖️): Plots the historical trajectory of your Weighted Shield parameter over time. A rising line indicates you are actively clearing out high-priority debt, while a dropping line means high-priority material is accumulating faster than you can review it. Toggle this line on and off using the global "Show Weighted Shield" checkbox at the top of the history widget.
• Universe Size: This metric is represented differently depending on the graph type:
  • For Incremental Rems: This chart tracks your entire processing lifecycle using three layered components:
    • Total Universe (Black dashed line): Represents the absolute maximum volume of material you have interacted with in this scope (Active IncRems + Dismissed Rems). It illustrates your global learning footprint.
    • Active Universe (Green line): Represents the actual volume of IncRems currently sitting in your queue to be processed.
    • Dismissed Area (Yellow shading): Represents the physical volume of material you have permanently processed and marked with the dismissed powerup. The wider this area gets, the more material you have successfully cleared out of your queue.
  • For Cards: It simply shows the Universe Size (Dashed line) representing the total number of active Rems with Cards. Note that the Universe shown in the Card Shield is the number of Rems with Cards, which is different from the total number of flashcards shown in other RemNote UI (since a single Rem can generate several flashcards). The cardPriority powerup is assigned per rem, not per flashcard.
• Absolute Priority: Refers to the hard number set in the Incremental Rem or Flashcard priority property.
• Relative Priority (%) is the Rem's relative percentile rank within the scope (% of the scope or KB). This gives you a clearer metric for managing your learning load.
  • The higher the percentile of your Relative Priority shield, the more your top priority material is safeguarded and processed.
  • If your graph oscillates around a priority of 4%, you know that only the top 4% of your learning material is guaranteed a timely repetition.
  • You can increase that number by doing more work, reducing the inflow of new material, deprioritizing less important items, or reducing the randomization degree in your Sorting Criteria.

Understanding Universe Size Changes:

• For Incremental Rems, observing your layers change over time paints a clear picture of your workflow:
  • If your Active Universe (Green) drops but your Total Universe (Black) remains steady and your Dismissed Area (Yellow) expands, you are successfully processing and dismissing items faster than you are adding them! You are burning through your backlog!
  • If your Active Universe (Green) increases while the Dismissed Area (Yellow) stays flat, you are actively adding new IncRems to your queue without clearing out old ones. This influx expands your active workload, and will likely drop your priority percentiles because each remaining item becomes a smaller percentage of the larger expanding whole.
  • If your Total Universe (Black) drops, it means you have physically deleted IncRems from your Knowledge Base entirely, or completely stripped their Incremental tag rather than using the Dismissed powerup.
• For Flashcards, this number will usually only increase (unless you delete cards). The evolution will show you the total size of your knowledge base over time.

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How the Plugin Prioritizes Due Items

Here is a complete breakdown of how the plugin decides which incremental item to show you next. The process balances strict priority with controlled variability.

1. Sorts All Items by Priority First The plugin begins by gathering all of your incremental rems—both due and not yet due—and sorts them into a master list. This initial sort is based purely on the Priority value you have set. Items with a lower number are considered higher priority and are moved to the front of the line. The due date is completely ignored during this step.

2. Filters for Due Items Next, the plugin takes this priority-sorted list and filters it down, keeping only the items that are currently ready for review. It does this by checking if an item's nextRepDate is today or any day in the past. The result is a perfectly ordered list of all your due items, with the highest-priority ones at the top.

3. Applies Controlled Randomness (The "Shuffle") This is where the "Sorting Randomness" setting comes into play. After creating the perfectly sorted list of due items, the plugin applies a degree of "shuffling".

   • At 0% randomness (the default): No shuffling occurs. The list remains perfectly sorted by priority, and the plugin will deterministically show you the highest-priority due item.
   • At >0% randomness: The plugin performs a series of random swaps on the items in the sorted list. A higher randomness setting results in more shuffling. This introduces a controlled chance for a lower-priority (but still due) item to appear before a higher-priority one, achieving the aim of preservation of strict priorities with a tiny bit of serendipity. Note: The randomness slider is built on an exponential curve—reserving the first 50% of the slider dial specifically for safely fine-tuning low amounts of randomness.

   Finally, the plugin picks the item at the very top of this final, potentially shuffled list and presents it to you in the queue.

The system is built to surface your highest-priority due material first, regardless of how long it has been overdue. The Sorting Randomness setting is a tool that allows you to introduce variability, preventing the queue from becoming too rigid and ensuring that even lower-priority items get a chance to surface over time.