| # | Phase | Cycle | Trigger | Action | Rationale | Priority | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| {{ step.id }} | {{ step.phase }} | {{ step.cycle === null ? '—' : step.cycle }} | {{ step.trigger }} | {{ step.action }} | {{ step.rationale }} | {{ step.priority }} |
| Priority | Action | Why now | Checkpoint | Phase | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| {{ row.priority }} | {{ row.action }} | {{ row.reason }} | {{ row.checkpoint }} | {{ row.phase }} | |
| No adherence guidance available. | |||||
Stimulus control is a behavioral insomnia method that tries to make the bed feel like a cue for sleep again instead of a place for clock-checking, frustration, and problem-solving. That matters because many stubborn sleep complaints are maintained not only by short sleep, but by repeated awake time spent in bed. This planner turns that principle into a structured response plan.
It is most useful when the problem is easy to describe in behavior terms: trouble falling asleep, repeated night awakenings, early waking, or some mix of the three. Instead of giving broad sleep-hygiene reminders, it builds a repeatable script around a wake anchor, an awake-in-bed threshold, and a calm out-of-bed routine.
A person who lies awake at the start of the night needs a different reminder set from someone who wakes at 4:30 a.m. and stays in bed waiting for sleep to return. The planner reflects that by changing which night, bedtime, and morning steps appear, how many reset cycles are allowed before escalation, and which adherence items rise to the top.
What comes back is not a diagnosis and not a sleep score. You get an ordered action list, a ranked adherence list, a path chart that shows the sequence, and a JSON summary of the current rules. That makes it easier to turn a vague goal like breaking the bed-awake habit into a concrete plan you can review before a difficult night.
This guidance is informational and covers one behavioral part of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, often shortened to CBT-I. It does not diagnose insomnia, rule out medical causes, or replace clinician guidance when sleep problems involve severe daytime impairment, breathing issues, pain, mood symptoms, mobility limits, or another condition that changes what is safe to do at night.
For a first pass, match the main sleep pattern to what happens most often and keep the default 20-minute awake rule unless you already use a different threshold with a clinician. Set the fixed wake time to something you can realistically keep seven days a week, because the planner treats that wake anchor as the most stable part of the routine.
The strongest fit is someone whose problem is clearly behavioral in the moment: lying awake in bed, waiting for sleep, then staying there longer. It is a weaker fit when getting out of bed is unsafe because of fall risk, urgent medical instructions, or another nighttime limitation. In that situation the generated plan can still help organize a discussion, but it should not be treated as a ready-to-use order set.
Before trusting the result, look at Night protocol and Complexity in the summary and ask whether the plan is realistic for a rough night. A detailed plan with optional cue, partner coordination, morning light, strict adherence language, and five cycles may be correct in logic but too heavy in practice. If the summary feels harder than what you can follow, simplify the options before you print or copy anything.
One common misread is to treat the threshold as permission to stay in bed frustrated until the exact minute appears. The point is the opposite: once the Primary rule is reached, shift into the fallback routine and return only when sleepiness is back. After that, use Adherence Guidance to decide which two or three rules must survive a difficult week.
The planner models stimulus control as a rule set rather than a sleep-quality estimate. Its key inputs are the awake-in-bed threshold, the fixed wake time, the number of allowed reset cycles, and a small group of modifiers that add or remove steps according to the insomnia pattern. Every output row is generated from those settings, so the same selections always produce the same plan.
The pattern choice is the biggest branch. Trouble falling asleep adds a bedtime delay rule for nights when sleepiness is not present, Frequent night awakenings adds a reminder to keep each break quiet and non-rewarding, and Early-morning waking adds a morning leave-bed rule so early wakefulness does not turn the bed into a place for starting the day. Mixed pattern includes all of those branches.
Other settings change how strict or elaborate the plan becomes. Clock-view policy can hide time cues or allow one decision check, Max night cycles repeats the leave-bed and return-bed pair, Escalation action appears only when the cycle ceiling is at least 3, and the optional partner, wind-down, and morning-light switches append reinforcement steps. Intensity profile does not change the threshold itself. It changes the adherence language by adding either a strict morning review step or a gentler self-criticism buffer after difficult nights.
The summary badges are derived from that generated step list. Complexity is based only on how many rows are produced, not on insomnia severity. The JSON export also reports high_priority_steps, which counts rows with priority 9 or 10. When you compare two runs, keep the wake time, threshold, and optional branches stable unless you are intentionally testing a specific change.
| Setting or condition | Rule inserted | Effect on outputs |
|---|---|---|
pattern = onset or mixed |
Add a bedtime rule to delay bed entry until clear sleepiness appears. | Increases steps, affects Action Plan Table, and adds a bedtime branch to the chart. |
pattern = maintenance or mixed |
Add a night reminder to keep each out-of-bed break quiet, brief, and non-rewarding. | Extends the night sequence and reinforces the maintenance-insomnia branch. |
pattern = early or mixed |
Add a morning rule to leave bed instead of starting the day there after an early waking. | Creates an extra morning row and changes the chart end-state. |
Max night cycles = n, where 1 <= n <= 5 |
Create 2n cycle rows, one for leaving bed and one for returning when sleepy. Add escalation when n >= 3. |
Directly changes steps, Night protocol, the chart, and the top adherence rows. |
| Optional toggles and intensity profile | Add wind-down, morning light, partner coordination, or adherence-emphasis rows. | Changes step count, Complexity, and Adherence Guidance without altering the threshold trigger. |
The Night protocol badge is a planning-load estimate, not a prediction of how long you will actually stay awake. It combines the chosen threshold with the chosen cycle count, then adds a 10-minute escalation block when the cycle ceiling is 3 or higher.
Here m is Night protocol in minutes, t is the awake threshold, c is Max night cycles, and e is the escalation block. A 20-minute threshold with 3 cycles therefore produces 70 minutes of planned night protocol time.
| Output field | Meaning | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
Action Plan Table |
The ordered protocol with phase, trigger, action, rationale, and priority for each step. | Main reference for what to do during bedtime, night awakenings, and the morning anchor. |
Adherence Guidance |
Ranked rows that weight the most important rules for the chosen follow-up cadence. | Helps decide which behaviors to protect when consistency slips. |
Night Response Path Chart |
A sequence view of the generated phases and their priority weights. | Useful for checking whether the overall flow feels too long or too branch-heavy. |
JSON |
Machine-readable export of settings, summary values, and all generated rows. | Useful for saving the current configuration or comparing runs outside the page. |
Use the planner as a short setup and review loop, not as something to improvise in the middle of the night.
Main sleep pattern based on the complaint that dominates most nights. The planner needs that choice before it knows whether to insert bedtime, awakening, or early-morning branches.Awake-in-bed threshold, Fixed wake time, and Calm fallback activity. These three values create the core leave-bed rule and the wake anchor that the summary will display as Primary rule and Wake.Advanced only if you need to tune the plan. Adjust Clock-view policy, Intensity profile, Max night cycles, Escalation action, the optional switches, and Follow-up cadence to match how detailed you want the script to be.Stimulus-Control Plan summary appears. If nothing renders, correct Fixed wake time to a valid clock value such as 07:00; the plan is hidden until that field parses correctly.Action Plan Table from top to bottom. The key columns are Trigger, Action, and Priority, because they tell you what starts the rule, what to do next, and which rows deserve the most protection.Adherence Guidance to see which behaviors stay most important at your selected cadence, then check Night Response Path Chart to make sure the sequence still feels workable. If you need a saved version, copy or download the table or JSON after the flow looks right.Action Plan Table is the main result. Read it as a scripted response order: what starts the rule, what you do next, and why that behavior belongs in the plan. Adherence Guidance then ranks which parts of the protocol matter most if motivation drops or nights get harder.
| Field | Boundary or rule | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
Primary rule |
Leave bed when awake time is >= the chosen threshold. |
This is the central stimulus-control trigger, not a suggestion to keep resting in bed. |
Complexity |
<= 9 steps = Simple, 10-13 = Moderate, >= 14 = Detailed. |
This describes plan length only. It does not measure symptom severity or treatment quality. |
Night protocol |
(threshold × cycles) + 10 when cycles >= 3. |
This is planning load in minutes, not a promise that you will stay awake that long. |
Do not overread the chart or the priority numbers as proof that a plan is clinically complete. A shorter plan does not mean better sleep, and a higher priority row does not mean the underlying problem is more severe. Before using the output, verify the Wake badge and the first two night rows, because those settings change the entire sequence more than any other single choice.
A user chooses Frequent night awakenings, keeps the 20-minute threshold, sets Fixed wake time to 07:00, leaves clocks hidden, and keeps 3 cycles with the default breathing-reset escalation. The summary shows 13 steps, Complexity = Moderate, and Night protocol = 70 min. In Action Plan Table, the highest-priority rows are the bedtime entry rule, the first two leave-bed and return-bed pairs, and the fixed wake anchor. Adherence Guidance then keeps threshold consistency, the escalation rule, and the wake anchor near the top, which is exactly what a first stimulus-control plan should emphasize.
A second user selects Mixed pattern, lowers the threshold to 10 minutes, sets wake time to 06:30, turns on the wind-down cue, morning light, and partner note, chooses single check for clocks, raises Max night cycles to 5, switches intensity to Strict, and chooses a guided body scan for escalation. That produces 21 steps, Complexity = Detailed, and Night protocol = 60 min. The result is not "better" than the shorter example. It simply contains more branches, more repetitions, and more adherence pressure. The real interpretation is that this user should confirm the plan is still executable before treating the extra detail as useful.
A third user picks Mixed pattern and enters a threshold and fallback activity, but leaves Fixed wake time blank. The page shows no Stimulus-Control Plan summary, no Action Plan Table, and no Adherence Guidance because the planner only renders when the wake time is a valid clock value. As soon as the user enters 07:00, the full plan appears. If the first render feels too heavy, turning optional switches back off is the cleanest corrective path.
No. The planner covers stimulus-control sequencing plus optional reinforcement steps such as a wind-down cue, morning light, and relaxation-style escalation. It does not calculate sleep restriction windows, review sleep diaries, or diagnose insomnia.
Because the main goal of stimulus control is to weaken the bed-awake association. The repeated leave-bed and return-when-sleepy rows are the core mechanism, which is why they carry some of the highest Priority values.
Treat the result as a planning draft, not a rule to follow blindly. Fall risk, mobility problems, severe pain, and medical instructions to remain in bed all change what is appropriate, and those situations need clinician-specific adaptation.
The planner hides results until Fixed wake time parses as a valid clock value. Enter a standard time such as 06:30 or 07:00 and the summary, tables, chart, and JSON output will render again.
No. Complexity reflects how many rows the selected options generated, and Priority reflects how strongly the planner emphasizes a behavior within that generated sequence. Neither field is a severity grade.