There is no order of importance here and no scoring. The grouping is by the moment the gap shows, which is the only ordering that helped when this list was being written. An item is filed under the stage where its absence stops you, not the stage where you first heard of it.
Rows marked as going stale need a date written next to them. That is not a formality. A dated thing can be judged. An undated thing has to be trusted, and trust is the expensive option. There is a short page on dating what you hold if that sounds fussier than it is.
Before you arrive
Before you log in
Before you pay
Before it goes wrong
Reading the marks
| Mark | What it means | What you do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Keeps | Once you have it, it stays good. Nothing about time alone spoils it. | Check it exists and that you can still reach it. That is the whole maintenance. |
| Goes stale | It was true when you wrote it and quietly stops being true afterwards. | Write the date beside it and replace it on a rhythm you choose, not when you are already in a hurry. |
A mark is a judgement, not a measurement. It was assigned by reading each item and asking whether time alone spoils it. Reasonable people would move one or two of these rows across, and the entry pages give the reasoning so you can disagree usefully.
If you are missing most of it
That is the normal state and it is not a disaster. Work backwards from where you actually get stuck. If you cannot reach anything at all, the gap is in the arrival list. If you can reach a page but cannot get into an account, it is in the account list. If money has already moved and you are waiting, go straight to the last list, because that one has a deadline built into it.
The four reference pages sit outside the stages. They cover things that come up in several entries at once: where a held thing can live, why dates are attached to everything here, what independence means when you collect the same string twice, and how to take something out of the inventory once you stop trusting it.
Questions that come up
Why are some items so small?
Because size is not the point. A username is a handful of characters and it carries as much weight as a wallet. The list is about what you must be holding, not about how much work each thing took to make.
Can I treat this as a checklist and tick it off?
You can, but it will mislead you. A tick records that you once had the thing. Half of this list rots, so the tick outlives the item. That gap is exactly what the page on current things is about.