The measurement

The Drift Score

A 0–100 number describing how far your current thinking sits from your own recorded baseline. Not a comparison against anyone else — a comparison against who you were before you started delegating.

Written by Suman Debnath, creator of IMPRINTLast updated 5 September 2026

What the number means

The IMPRINT Drift Score runs from 0 to 100, where higher means further from your baseline. It is a measure of distance, not of quality, and it is not comparable between people — two identical scores describe the same relative movement from entirely different starting points.

0 – 39 · Anchored
Recent work sits close to your baseline. You still write and reason recognisably like yourself.
40 – 59 · Drifting
A measurable gap has opened. Usually one signal moving rather than all four.
60 – 79 · Critical
The gap is large and consistent across signals.
80 – 100 · Identity Crisis
Recent work bears little resemblance to your baseline.

A single reading is the least useful way to read it. The score is built to be watched as a series, where the habit signals are stable and a change in baseline divergence means something.

What goes into it

Four signals, each computed on its own 0–100 scale, combined by weight:

Baseline divergence · 40%
How far this calibration's vocabulary richness and sentence length sit from your baseline. Weighted heaviest because language moves first.
Vault inactivity · 25%
The share of your tracked skills not practised in the last 14 days.
AI dependence · 20%
Dependency flags raised by the Mirror when you ask it to decide rather than to reflect.
Journal irregularity · 15%
The share of the last 14 days with no journal entry.

The exact arithmetic for each, including the fallback values and what each one gets wrong, is on the methodology page.

How to get your Drift Score

1 · Create a free account

Email and password, or Google. No payment details, and no trial that expires into a paid plan.

2 · Capture your baseline

Seven steps, 20 to 30 minutes. Prompts come from four universal modules — opinion and belief, decision under pressure, memory and recall, emotional fingerprint — plus modules matched to your profession. Answer without AI; that is the entire point of the exercise.

3 · Run your first calibration

The same modules again. Your responses are compared against the baseline per module, and the four signals produce your first score.

4 · Recalibrate fortnightly

Two signals use a rolling 14-day window, so calibrating at least every two weeks keeps them describing the period the score actually covers.

Common questions

What is a Drift Score?

The IMPRINT Drift Score is a 0–100 measurement of how far your current thinking sits from your own recorded baseline. Zero to 39 is Anchored, 40 to 59 Drifting, 60 to 79 Critical, 80 to 100 Identity Crisis. Higher means further from yourself, not worse than other people.

How do I get a Drift Score?

Create a free IMPRINT account and complete baseline capture, which takes 20 to 30 minutes and records how you write and decide. Your first Drift Score is produced by your first calibration, which compares a fresh set of responses against that baseline.

Is this an AI dependency test?

Partly. One of the four signals measures AI dependence directly, at 20 percent of the score. The rest measure what has happened to your own output and practice habits — which is the more useful question, because the amount of AI you use matters less than whether your capability is changing.

How accurate is the Drift Score?

It is a structured, repeatable prompt to look at your own work, not a clinical measure. The metrics are lexical and proxy reasoning depth rather than measuring it, there are no population norms, and the weights are a judgement rather than a fitted result. All of that is published.

What this is not. The Drift Score is not a clinical or diagnostic instrument, not a measure of intelligence, and not validated against any external benchmark. It is a transparent, repeatable prompt to look at your own work. Everything it gets wrong is listed on the methodology page at the same length as everything it gets right.