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Data & intelligence

Relationship Depth Score

The Relationship Depth Score (RDS) measures how strong and recent your relationship with each contact actually is — based on the quality and frequency of your interactions, not just the number of contacts you have.

What RDS measures

RDS is a per-contact score that lives on their profile. It's not a rating you assign — it's computed automatically from your interaction history. A high RDS means you've been in consistent, substantive contact. A low or zero RDS means the relationship is dormant.

The score is unbounded — it can grow indefinitely with continued engagement, like a stock chart that reflects the cumulative value of a relationship over years. There's no cap, and no artificial normalisation that would compress your best relationships into a 1–10 scale.

How it's calculated

Starting boost (+15)

When you add a contact to Rolo, their score starts at 15. This acknowledges that the act of intentionally adding someone means there's already a relationship worth tracking.

Interaction sentiment scores

Every interaction you log is given a sentiment score on a scale of −10 to +20, where 5 is neutral. This score is added directly to the contact's RDS:

  • +15 to +20Highly positive — major breakthrough, deep trust established
  • +8 to +14Positive — great conversation, strong follow-through
  • +4 to +7Neutral to slightly positive — normal check-in
  • 0 to +3Neutral — transactional or minimal interaction
  • −1 to −10Negative — conflict, misunderstanding, or dropped ball

Rolo classifies sentiment from your note content automatically. You can override it if the classification doesn't match your assessment.

Time decay

RDS decays over time to reflect the reality that relationships need ongoing maintenance. The decay follows a logistic curve:

  • First 30 days since last interaction: no decay (grace period)
  • Days 30–90: gradual decay — about 25% reduction at 90 days
  • Days 90–180: continued decay — about 50% reduction at 180 days
  • After 12 months without interaction: approximately 90% reduction

The score floor is zero — it can't go negative from decay. The decay parameters can be adjusted in Settings → AI Ops if you want a more or less aggressive decay curve.

Where RDS appears in Rolo

  • Contact profile: Shown in the profile header as a number with a trend indicator (growing, stable, or drifting).

  • Network graph — RDS mode: Nodes sized by their RDS score. Your deepest relationships appear largest.

  • Search results: RDS contributes to result ranking — high-RDS contacts surface higher when the query is ambiguous.

  • Rank presets: You can configure rank presets to weight RDS heavily or lightly depending on the use case.

  • Dashboard — Person of the Day: The POTD algorithm uses RDS to surface contacts whose score is declining — a signal that it's time to reach out.

Rarity tiers

Alongside RDS, every contact has a rarity tier — a label you assign to communicate how important this relationship is to you right now. Rarity is a human judgement call, not an algorithm.

Legendary

The most important people in your professional life — mentors, key investors, co-founders, closest collaborators. A few dozen at most.

Epic

Important relationships worth consistent investment — strong professional contacts, valued advisors, close colleagues.

Rare

People you want to maintain relationships with but don't need weekly contact — warm connections, industry peers, conference friends.

Common

Everyone else in your network. Still worth having their profile in Rolo for context, but not actively prioritised.

None

Unassigned. New contacts start here until you evaluate them.

Rarity labels and colors are fully customisable in Settings → Rarity definitions. You can rename them to whatever vocabulary makes sense for you — "Inner circle", "Warm network", "Cold network", for example. The system tiers are just defaults.

Using RDS practically

  • Sort your People list by RDS monthly to see which relationships have been growing and which have been quiet.

  • Set up a rank preset called "Relationships to reinvigorate" that shows high-rarity contacts with low or decaying RDS — these are the relationships worth the most attention right now.

  • Use the dashboard's Person of the Day as a daily signal — it picks someone whose RDS is actively decaying.

  • After each quarter, review the network graph in RDS mode to see if the structure of your deepest relationships has shifted.

Next: Settings

Configure custom fields, rarity tiers, integrations, billing, and AI behaviour.

Go to Settings docs