Glossary
Skill atrophy
Skill atrophy is the measurable decline of a capability that goes unpractised. Skill-decay research suggests detectable decline within roughly 60 to 90 days of disuse and significant degradation over six months or more.
In more detail
Skill atrophy is one of the better-established findings in the psychology of skill retention, studied for decades in aviation, surgery, military training and language learning long before AI existed. The shape is consistent: complex skills that combine judgement with execution decay faster than simple procedural ones, and skills learned to a lower initial standard decay faster than over-learned ones.
What AI changes is the rate at which disuse accumulates. A capability is not lost through a decision to abandon it. It is lost through many small moments where using it was optional and not using it was easier — and a tool that makes the alternative available at every one of those moments compresses years of gradual disuse into months.
IMPRINT's Skill Vault applies a deliberately short 14-day window as its inactivity signal. That is well inside any decay threshold in the literature, and intentionally so: the point is to flag a gap while it is still a gap rather than to confirm a loss after it has happened.