Stop hinting features the user already uses
Aliases: mastery suppression · suppress known tips · skill closure
What it is
Once someone has independently completed a feature, that feature is mastered. After mastery, the same teaching hint must not auto-fire. Mastery is unassisted successful use, not “once saw the intro”—seeing does not imply skill; skill makes another hint an interruption of a closed skill. This rule changes hints from “the feature still exists, so it remains teachable” to “the skill is closed, so be quiet.”
Why it happens
After skill closure, the entry is part of the action, not a new object that needs explaining. Inserting “you can export” now pulls working memory out of a fluent move to read known information: zero gain, paid as an interruption. Worse, hints on mastered features are efficient training data for habituation: no new information, so people learn faster that this layer need not be read. Mastery detection therefore protects the channel, not merely manners. The detector should be conservative: one mis-click or one action driven by someone else is not mastery; but hinting after repeated success means the system refuses to update its model of the person. A seen flag answers “was this lesson put on screen”; mastery answers “does this sentence still have teaching value.” When both are true, stop automatic hints; silent copy by the entry may stay.
Where it stops holding
If consequences changed (export scope grew, default became public), old mastery does not cover new risk; that needs a new, delta-specific sentence, not a replay of the intro. Skills decay after long disuse; a rare high-cost action (a once-a-year tax export) may speak once more at the next relevant failure, with a new seen flag, not the intro tip as a nag. On an admin account used on someone else’s behalf, mastery belongs to the admin, not to the impersonated user. Keyboard experts may never use the menu entry; do not treat “never clicked Export in the menu” as unmastered.
Applying it
- Define mastery for every auto-hinted feature: for example N independent successes, or use in two consecutive weeks. On reaching it, turn that feature’s automatic hints off.
- Do not substitute “saw the intro” for mastery; and do not fire once more at people already using it just because they never saw the intro.
- If a change must be told after mastery, write a delta sentence bound to the new behavior or consequence; do not replay the intro.
- Verify by finding accounts with repeated successful use and checking whether they still receive that feature’s hint. If they do, wire mastery to the off switch, then spot-check whether success drops after silence—if it does not, the hint was already surplus.