What a level means on a career path
Hone is a place to practise the work your career is actually made of. It gives everyone who practises here a level: an estimate of what they can do right now, built only from things they actually did in Hone. It is not a grade and it is not permanent. It is not a reward. It moves up when your answers prove more, and it moves down when they stop proving it.
Four words, quickly
Level is how good you are now. It can rise or fall. Rank and XP are how far you've come. They only rise. Streak is days in a row; one missed day a month is shielded and the pane says which day it covered. A question's difficulty (1-5) describes the question, not you.
The five levels
Starting out
You are at the very start, or nearly. The words and the numbers of this trade are still new, and that is exactly where everyone begins. Hone teaches before it asks: a short lesson opens by itself before each problem, worked examples come first, and the coach explains fully, nothing withheld.
Beginner
You have met the basics. You can follow a worked example, and doing it yourself still takes real thought. The full explanations stay on, the questions stay close to the ground, and getting things wrong here is the work, not a setback.
Learning
You follow most of it and can do some of it unaided. The coach changes with you: it offers a lesson rather than opening one, and it nudges with hints before it explains.
Working
You do this competently. What is left are the corners: the exceptions, the figures that look right and are not, the case that turns up on a bad shift. Help is earned here. Narrow your question and the coach gives more back; ask it to solve the whole thing and it will not.
Strong
You are here to keep an edge, not to be taught the basics. The questions start hard, lessons stay out of your way, and the coach points at where the problem is instead of teaching around it. You can still ask for any lesson; it just never assumes you need one.
What moves you up
Evidence, not effort. Practising at your own level proves you belong there; moving up takes questions one step harder than the level you hold, answered right at least three times out of four. One lucky answer proves nothing, so nothing moves until there are at least six answers at that harder step. Solving real problems without the coach counts too: two solved unaided at a difficulty is real evidence, four is strong evidence.
The level checks itself three ways: questions one step up from your level, problems solved without help, and where you started. The starting point only counts until you have done real work; after that, only the work speaks. A move needs two of the three agreeing, or one with a lot of evidence behind it, and it is always one step at a time. You can see all three, and the evidence behind each, in your Account pane.
It moves down too
If your answers at that same step fall to around what guessing would produce, the level follows the evidence down, one step, the same way it went up. That is deliberate. A number that only ever rises is a trophy, and a trophy tells you nothing. Because this one can fall, you can trust it when it stands.
Level is not difficulty
These are easy to mix up because both run one to five. Difficulty belongs to a question: how hard it is. Level belongs to you: what your answers show you can do. In Explore, topics are grouped by difficulty, from Easiest to Hardest; that grouping describes the questions, not you. A problem aims one step of difficulty above the level you currently hold, which is how it stays a stretch without being out of reach.
Level and rank are two different numbers
Rank, the 1 to 99 in the header, only ever climbs. It measures work done, so a hard day where everything went wrong still counts toward it. Early ranks come quickly and the later ones take real time, which is why a high rank means something. Your level is the measurement underneath: what your answers prove you can do right now. Practice alone can never raise it; getting harder things right can. Work always feeds your rank. Only real progress moves your level.
What your level changes
Three things. Which problems you get, since they aim one step above the level you hold rather than far above or below it. Whether lessons open by themselves, which they do for the first two levels and never for the rest, though asking always works. And how much the coach hands over, from full worked examples at the start to a pointed nudge at the top. That last one is why the level has to be honest: beginners genuinely learn more with more help, experienced people learn more with less, so a wrong level does not just misplace you, it gives you the kind of help that slows you down.