A green dot should cost something

In most tools, "online" means a browser tab exists. It costs nothing to claim, so it gets claimed constantly: by a laptop asleep in a bag, by a phone in a pocket, by a tab somebody opened on Tuesday and never closed.

The result is a status that everyone has learned to ignore. You do not look at the dot before asking a question, because the dot has been lying to you for years. So you write the message anyway, and you wait.

In Deskly, presence is where you chose to stand. You are somewhere - the open desks, a meeting room, the lounge - because you walked there. That is a deliberate act, and a deliberate act is worth reading.

Away is decided by the server, not the browser: screen lock and real operating-system idle, not a mouse-move timer that a jiggler defeats. When your laptop locks, you are away, instantly, whatever the tab says.

This is why the hours are worth anything. Time on tasks is the overlap between what you said you were doing and the time the presence ledger says you were actually active - so it can never exceed the time you were there.

Walking into a room to talk to somebody costs a second of intent. That second is what makes the floor readable: if everyone is somewhere on purpose, then looking at the floor tells you something true.

A status that costs nothing to set is worth nothing to read. We would rather ask for the second.