A recovery protocol is a stack architecture template for testing whether a stable roster supports readiness, soreness, sleep, or training return across a defined block. It keeps the stack small and the proxy pair explicit so normal fatigue, training load, and expectation do not get mistaken for supplement effects.
Why recovery is easy to misread
Recovery changes every time training load, sleep, illness, alcohol, travel, or stress changes. A protocol cannot remove those variables, but it can tag them and keep the supplement layer stable.
That is why the first step is the stack goal. The user must decide whether the protocol is mainly about training readiness, soreness, sleep quality, or return-to-baseline speed.
Stack shape
The stack separates daily core items from optional tests. Optional items should not be added during the same week as a training-plan change, because the review would not know which variable mattered.
Dose windows should match the recovery question. Evening items belong near sleep review, post-training items belong near soreness and next-day readiness, and morning items belong near the readiness check-in.
Proxy pair
The primary proxy can be readiness score, soreness rating, sleep efficiency, or return-to-baseline after a fixed workout. A secondary proxy can be hrv baseline, resting heart rate, or another objective signal the user collects consistently.
The protocol does not require every proxy to improve. It requires the review to show what moved, what stayed flat, and what became noisy.
Review rules
Recovery blocks should be judged after the training load is understood. A hard training week followed by lower readiness is not automatically a stack failure, and an easy week followed by higher readiness is not automatically a stack success.
The relevant pillar is understanding dose windows and cycles, because recovery stacks are especially sensitive to timing, carryover, and cycle boundaries.
How this appears in Unfair
In Unfair, a recovery protocol would prefill a training-context tag, a readiness check-in, and a review prompt that compares the proxy pair against recent load. The decision at the end is whether to keep the optional item, drop it, or rerun under a cleaner block.
Clinical safety note
A recovery protocol is not a substitute for care after injury, infection, unexplained fatigue, or persistent pain. Those signals should pause stack optimization and move the user toward clinician or coach review.