Dasha Timing and Action Windows

The panels above say what the Timing feature shows. This long read goes underneath them: where the Vimshottari clock comes from in the classical texts, exactly how this app turns your birth Moon into dated phases, coloured windows and alerts, how to read every kind of result the page can return, one sample chart run through the real engine, and what a wrong or missing birth time does to all of it. If you want the plain introduction to dashas first, what a Mahadasha actually is covers it in six minutes.

Every number on this page was produced by running the code that serves the Timing page, on a sample birth chosen for this page - 15 June 1990, 10:30 IST, Mumbai - with nothing logged, evaluated on 2 October 2026. It is not a real person. Where the engine refuses to produce a number, this page says so too.

The clock: what BPHS actually specifies

Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra opens its dasha material (Ch. 46, Sl. 2-5) by admitting that there are many kinds of dasha - Ashtottari, Shodashottari, Dwadashottari, Panchottari, Shatabdika and others - and naming Vimshottari as the most suitable system for people in general. Sl. 6-11 lists around twenty more, from Chara and Sthira to Yogini, and says that in Parashara's own view they are not appropriate. The Timing page follows that ranking and runs on Vimshottari alone. Six of the nakshatra-based alternates are computed separately on the Alternate Dashas calculator, and Jaimini's sign-based Chara Dasha has its own page; neither feeds the windows or alerts described here.

Sl. 12-14 starts the count at Krittika: the lords run Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus and repeat; count the nakshatras from Krittika to the birth nakshatra, divide by nine, and the remainder names the first lord. Sl. 15 gives the years - 6, 10, 7, 18, 16, 19, 17, 7 and 20 - which total 120. The engine (vimshottariTimeline in astrologyEngine.js) writes the same cycle starting two places earlier, at Ashwini with Ketu, and takes the nakshatra's index modulo nine. The two are the same rotation. For this page's sample, whose Moon is in Shatabhisha, the 24th nakshatra, counting from Krittika gives 22, remainder 4, the fourth lord in Parashara's list - Rahu. The engine's index for Shatabhisha is 23, and 23 modulo 9 is 5, the sixth entry in its list - also Rahu.

Sl. 16 gives the balance at birth: multiply the lord's years by the time the Moon has already spent in the birth nakshatra, divide by the total time it stays there, and subtract that from the full period. The engine applies the same proportion to arc instead of time - the share of the nakshatra's 13°20' the Moon has already crossed - with a year of 365.2425 days. The two readings agree exactly only if the Moon crossed the nakshatra at an even speed, which it does not, so a tool that follows the time-based wording literally can date the boundaries slightly differently. Your own birth nakshatra and the sidereal Moon sign are the two inputs everything else here rests on, and both depend on the Lahiri ayanamsa the app uses throughout.

Inside each Mahadasha, BPHS Ch. 51 Sl. 1 sizes each sub-period as the product of the two lords' years divided by 120, and Sl. 2 says the first sub-period of any dasha belongs to its own lord, the rest following in the usual order. Ch. 61 Sl. 1 repeats the rule one level down for the Pratyantardasha. The engine uses one function for both levels, and the arithmetic is worked through in Antardasha and Pratyantar, explained. The Timing page shows two levels - Mahadashas as phases, and the running one's Antardashas as chapters. The running Pratyantardasha and the next three are published on the Kundali page instead, and every level can be dated without an account on the Vimshottari Dasha calculator.

How the texts judge a period, and how much of that the app uses

BPHS Ch. 47 Sl. 2 separates two kinds of dasha effect: general effects that come from the nature of the planet, and distinctive effects that come from where it is placed. Sl. 5-6 then gives one test that is repeated for every planet. The period is favourable if, at the start of the dasha, its lord is in the Lagna, in exaltation, in its own sign or in a friendly sign; it is unfavourable if the lord is in the 6th, 8th or 12th house, debilitated, or in an inimical sign. That single test is what buildDashaLordEffects() in kundaliEngine.js applies, on the natal chart, and it is the source of the word "favourable" wherever the Timing page uses it.

Ch. 48 adds the house-lord view. Sl. 2-8 say the dasha of a house's lord brings that house's matters: physical well-being for the lord of the 1st, house and land for the 4th, education and children for the 5th, learning and unexpected gains for the 9th, recognition for the 10th, and so on. The app carries these as the "life areas" under each phase, computed from which houses the lord rules from your Lagna. Where the text speaks of death for the lords of the 2nd, 7th and 8th, the app paraphrases the theme as financial, relationship or transformational strain. Rahu and Ketu own no sign in the engine's tables, so their phases list no life areas at all rather than a filler. For the houses involved, see the 6th, 8th and 12th house pages - the three the test above treats as the hard ones.

The same chapter then qualifies its own rule. Sl. 14-17 say a dusthana lord's period improves when it is joined with a trikona lord; that when a kendra lord sits in a trikona, or a trikona lord in a kendra, the period of a planet joined with either becomes favourable; and that an aspect from a kendra or trikona lord helps too. Sl. 18-20 read the periods of the lords of the 3rd, 6th and 11th, and of planets placed there, as unfavourable - with a note that Rahu and Ketu give good results in those three houses. And Sl. 5-8 close by saying that a planet's placement at birth and at the start of its dasha should both be weighed.

Saravali, writing about its own Moola Dasa, lists auspicious periods from exaltation, own sign, own navamsa, a friendly sign or full strength, and inauspicious ones from debilitation, an enemy sign, combustion or a malefic aspect (Ch. 41 Sl. 6-7). Sl. 8 names a climbing (Arohini) period for a planet moving towards exaltation and a descending (Avarohini) one for a planet moving away from it. Sl. 9 says the Moon's transit position at the start of a period must be considered, and Sl. 16 calls a period excellent when its lord stands in the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 10th or 11th from the Ascendant rising at the moment the period begins. The modern Advanced Predictive Astrology (Vol-II, p. 229) asks for still more: the significations, ownership, association, aspect, house, dignity, combustion and retrogression of both the dasha and bhukti lords, and the relationship between the two - and only then the transits. It compares the dasha to the hour hand of a clock and the transit to the minute hand.

Read together, the texts agree that a period is judged by its lord's dignity and house, and they disagree on detail. The sharpest disagreement touches the 3rd, 6th and 11th: BPHS Ch. 48 Sl. 18-20 reads planets placed there as giving unfavourable periods, while Saravali Ch. 41 Sl. 16 counts the same houses, with the 10th, as excellent - though Saravali is speaking of the lord's position at the start of the period, not at birth. This app scores the 3rd and 11th as mild support and the 6th as a dusthana, following Ch. 47 for the 6th and sitting closer to Saravali for the other two. That is a choice in the app's own scoring, and the label it produces should be read with that in mind.

• Used: BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-16 and Ch. 51 Sl. 1-2 for the dates; Ch. 47 Sl. 5-6 for favourable or testing, on the natal chart; Ch. 48 Sl. 2-8 for the life areas.
• Not used: Ch. 47 Sl. 3-4, which times a period's effects by the lord's dreshkana - first decanate at the start, second in the middle, third at the end, reversed when the lord is retrograde and always reversed for Rahu and Ketu. The app does not say when inside a period its effects concentrate.
• Not used: the check at the moment a period begins (the wording of Ch. 47 Sl. 5-6, Ch. 48 Sl. 5-8, Saravali Ch. 41 Sl. 9 and 15-18). Every verdict here reads the birth chart only.
• Not used: joins and aspects with kendra or trikona lords (Ch. 48 Sl. 14-17), and the Rahu-Ketu exception for the 3rd, 6th and 11th (Sl. 18-20).
• Not used: combustion, retrogression and navamsa dignity as period modifiers (Saravali Ch. 41 Sl. 6-7; Advanced Predictive Astrology Vol-II p. 229).
• Not used: the planet-by-planet sub-period narratives of BPHS Ch. 52-60 and the pratyantar lists of Ch. 61, nor the illness timing some of those passages and Advanced Predictive Astrology attach. Nothing on the Timing page is medical advice, and the app prescribes no remedies.

How the Timing page turns that into a phase

Each Mahadasha on your timeline, and each Antardasha inside the running one, is passed through one function, characterise() in lifeTimelineEngine.js. It never looks the planet up in a table of fixed meanings. It reads two facts about where that lord sits in your chart, adds them into one signed score, and picks a word from the score. The same function handles both levels, because both are a stretch of time ruled by one graha.

Step 1: the arena - which house the lord occupies

Step 2: dignity, plus the Lagna clause

The total runs from -5 to +6. A score of 3 or more is the strong band, 0 to 2 is mixed, and anything below 0 is weak. Without a birth time there is no house, so the arena term is missing and the best possible score is +3; for that case the engine lowers the strong threshold to 2, so that an own-sign lord and an enemy-sign lord do not collapse into the same middle band.

Step 3: the word

Because the word is indexed by arena and band and never by planet, a Saturn period and a Venus period in the same arena and band get the same word. What makes them different on the page is everything else - the phase name, the classical characterisation and the signals, which are written per planet. The facts that produced the word are always printed under it, in a sentence such as "Saturn is own sign in Capricorn in your 7th house (Kendra)", so the label can be checked rather than taken on trust.

Three verdicts on one lord, and why they can disagree

• Favourable or testing - the BPHS Ch. 47 test as a yes or no. A friendly sign counts as favourable. This drives the phase name (a favourable Saturn period is the "Structure and Endurance Cycle", a testing one the "Delay and Weight Cycle"), the wording of the resistance card, the story text, the "external support" state, and whether a dated dasha alert is marked as an opportunity or a risk.
• Quality - good, neutral or challenging. Here a friendly sign is only neutral; good needs exaltation, moolatrikona or own sign, and any dusthana makes it challenging. This drives the window scores and the dasha term of the risk score.
• Band - strong, mixed or weak, from the arena and dignity score above. This drives the phase word, the intensity panel, the colour of each block on the life map, and the outlook's agreement test.

They usually point the same way, but not always. In the sample, Mercury - whose Mahadasha follows Saturn's - sits in a friendly sign, Taurus, in the 11th house. It is favourable by the first test, so the story card describes it in the favourable wording. It is only neutral by the second, so its windows score lower. Its band is mixed, so its word is "Grinding". None of the three is wrong; they answer different questions, and the page shows them in different places. If you are reading ahead to a particular period, the Mercury Mahadasha and Saturn Mahadasha pages describe what the tradition says about each lord in general.

Action windows

The windows start from the next eight Antardasha boundaries on your timeline (nextDashaBoundaries in simulationEngine.js). Each boundary is scored by decide() in decisionEngine.js, the same function the Decision page uses: the quality of the Mahadasha lord running from that date - good 60, neutral 30, challenging 0 - plus the Shad Bala of the ruler of the house the question belongs to, as a share of 40. Timing asks the general question, which is the 1st house. The bands are fixed in timingIntelligence.js: 60 or more is green ("act"), 45 to 59 amber ("prepare and observe"), below 45 red ("avoid anything irreversible"). Those cut points match the energy bands of the Decision page's what-if simulator, which additionally calls 75 and above a peak, so a window called green here is not called weak there for the same date. The page shows the window running now plus five more, each running from one real boundary to the next. The strength figure behind the second term is the same one the Shad Bala calculator reports.

Because decide() reads only the Mahadasha lord, every boundary inside the same Mahadasha gets the same score. For most people, mid-way through a period that lasts six to twenty years, all six windows come back identical. The engine treats that as the normal case: it says every window scores the same, names the date the score can first move if a Mahadasha change falls inside the range drawn, and says that for this stretch what you decide matters more than when. When the windows do differ but none reaches green, it says that too, rather than promoting the best of a weak set.

Dated alerts

The alerts list is built by futureAlertsEngine.js, which emits a moment only if it can put a date on it from your own data. Each mechanism has a fixed weight, and a nearer moment gains up to 20 points over a distant one with the same weight. A total of 80 or more is marked high, 50 or more moderate, the rest low. The weights are an editorial ranking of how much of a life each mechanism moves, and they are published on every alert so they can be argued with.

Sade Sati is transit Saturn in the 12th, 1st or 2nd sign from your natal Moon, Ardha Ashtama Sani the 4th and Ashtama Sani the 8th; all three work without a birth time because they count from the Moon, and you can check them on the Sade Sati and Ashtama Sani calculators. Sign changes are found by stepping each graha's sidereal position forward and narrowing the crossing to the day; because Mars, Jupiter and Saturn turn retrograde, the alert carries a note that the same boundary can be crossed again. A transit alert fires only when a graha's verdict from your Moon actually flips - the same reading the Gochar calculator shows for today. On the page you choose a horizon of 30, 90 or 365 days. Choosing one of the six muhurat activities - marriage, business launch, property purchase, travel, new job or investment - adds up to two excellent windows to the list and a thirty-day calendar of the best window each day; the exact times stay on the Muhurat page. Below the list, every mechanism that was checked is shown with what it found, so an empty list reads as "computed, nothing in range" rather than as a fault.

One more dated item sits with the story card rather than the list. When the running Mahadasha ends within 180 days, the page raises a transition alert naming what ends, what begins and the date; further out, it gives the number of months and raises nothing. Advanced Predictive Astrology (Vol-II, p. 328) mentions in passing that the junction of two Vimshottari periods - the dasa sandhi - is where visible changes in life tend to show. The app's alert stops short of that: it states the handover, which is a fact on your timeline, and says nothing about what the handover will bring.

Risk, impact and confidence

The side rail carries three numbers from confidenceRiskEngine.js, each with its working. Risk adds four factors: the quality of the running Mahadasha and Antardasha (up to 30), Saturn's transit from your Moon (up to 25), the strength of the ruler of the chosen house (up to 25) and rated doshas (up to 20). Impact adds four different ones: how load-bearing the house is (25), whether the running lords rule or occupy it (30), how many grahas sit in it (24) and how strong its ruler is (21). Both are reported as a share of the points that could actually be read, and both are banded in thirds - above 66 high, 34 to 66 medium, below 34 low. If fewer than 50 of the 100 points can be read, no level is published and the badge says it could not be read; between 50 and 99 the level is published with an asterisk as provisional. The category chips - general, career, money, love, health, business - point the calculation at the 1st, 10th, 2nd, 7th, 6th or 11th house, and they change only risk and impact.

Confidence is a separate question: how much this chart can be relied on. It has three components - data strength (30: 18 for a birth time, up to 12 for logged events, full at twelve), chart clarity (40: how decisively the grahas sort into strong and weak, the spread of their strengths, how many hold a definite dignity, whether yogas and doshas pull the same way) and timing alignment (30). On the Timing page's confidence call no numerology timing is passed in, so the third component is dropped from the maximum and named in the limits list, rather than scored as zero. Bands are 65 and above high, 35 to 64 moderate, below 35 low - the same cut points decide() uses.

The ten-year outlook

For each of the next ten years, multiYearOutlook.js samples the Mahadasha running on 1 July and sets its band beside that year's numerology Personal Year. The Personal Year here is birth day plus birth month plus the calendar year, reduced to one digit with master numbers collapsed (docs/numerology-rules.md §3); it turns over on 1 January. Years 1, 3, 5 and 8 are read as opening, 9 as closing, and 2, 4, 6 and 7 as mixed. A strong band counts as opening, mixed as mixed, weak as closing. A row is marked "agree" when the two tones match and "differ" when they do not. The two are never averaged into a score - they come from different inputs on incompatible scales. Any Mahadasha handover inside a year is listed with its exact date, because a year is not a date. The arithmetic of the Personal Year is set out in Personal Year, explained, and why a disagreement between the two systems is worth noticing is the subject of When astrology and numerology disagree.

Evolution, and the period you just finished

Two sections read your own log rather than the chart. The evolution tracker places logged events into Mahadasha phases, or into the running Mahadasha's Antardasha chapters, and states a direction only when at least two periods each hold three recorded outcomes (or three resolved actions); a mixed outcome counts as half, and a move of less than 15 points is reported as no change. The retrospective sets the last finished Mahadasha's characterisation - written while it was running - beside a count of what you logged inside those dates, and deliberately computes no match percentage. Both stay empty, and say so, until there is something to measure. One structural fact is worth knowing: within the nine periods the engine computes, each lord appears only once, so the section that compares this period with "an earlier run of the same lord" has nothing to compare at the Mahadasha level and says so. Logging happens on the memory page, and the record you build is what the Accuracy feature later holds the readings against.

One sample chart, run through the engine

The sample: 15 June 1990, 10:30 IST, Mumbai (19.076° N, 72.8777° E), nothing logged, evaluated at noon IST on 2 October 2026. The engine places the Moon at 317.7412° sidereal, 17.74° into Aquarius, in Shatabhisha, which runs from 306.6667° to 320°. The Moon is 11.0745° into that 13.3333° span, so 0.8306 of it has gone and 0.1694 remains. Shatabhisha belongs to Rahu, an 18-year lord, so life opens in Rahu Mahadasha with 18 × 0.1694 = 3.0494 years left - to early July 1993 - and the remaining eight periods follow at full length. The Ascendant is Cancer at 29.87°, which matters later.

The page's headline reads "91% through a 19-year Saturn phase - Building." Saturn sits in its own sign in the 7th, a kendra: 2 + 1 = 3, the strong band, structure arena. The gauge beside it shows 17.2 of its 19 years run and 1.8 left. Its phase name is the "Structure and Endurance Cycle" because the Ch. 47 test reads it favourable. The life areas listed under it are the 7th and 8th houses, the two signs Saturn rules from a Cancer Lagna - which is why Saturn in the 7th house is the placement the whole phase hangs on.

The running chapter is the Jupiter Antardasha, from December 2025 to July 2028 - 30 months, which is 19 × 16 / 120 = 2.53 years. Jupiter sits in Gemini, a neutral sign for it, in the 12th: 0 - 2 = -2, weak, dissolution arena, so the chapter word is "Confusion", read from the same placement as Jupiter in the 12th house. A strong period with a weak chapter inside it is ordinary; the page shows both rather than averaging them. One level down, the Kundali page would show a Mercury Pratyantardasha from 16 September 2026 to 25 January 2027.

The windows are not flat on this chart, because Saturn hands over to Mercury inside the eight boundaries scanned. The window running now, to 2 July 2028, scores 86: Saturn's quality is good, worth 60, and the Moon - ruler of the Cancer Lagna - holds 12.83 of 20 Shad Bala points, 64%, worth 26. That is green. From 2 July 2028 every window scores 56: Mercury's quality is only neutral, worth 30, plus the same 26. That is amber. The five Mercury windows end on 29 November 2030, 26 November 2031, 26 September 2034, 2 August 2035 and 1 January 2037, all at 56.

Risk for the general category is 37, medium: 10 of 30 from the dasha term (Saturn good, but the Jupiter chapter challenging), 9 of 25 because Sade Sati is in its setting phase, 13 of 25 because the 1st-house ruler is only medium (64% of its maximum Shad Bala) and sits in the 8th, and 5 of 20 for one mild dosha. Impact is 46, medium: the 1st is a kendra (25 of 25), neither running lord rules or occupies it (0 of 30), Ketu sits in it (8 of 24), and its ruler is medium (13 of 21). Confidence is 40%, moderate - 18 of 30 for data strength (birth time, no events), 10 of 40 for chart clarity (only one of the seven grahas holds a decided dignity), timing alignment dropped - so 28 of 70. The phase panel turns the risk into a favourability of 100 - 37 = 63, mixed, and says neither clearly proceed nor clearly wait. The three core states read "Clear" for mental clarity (67), "High" for external support, and "Steady" for risk.

With a 365-day horizon, four dated alerts come back. Sade Sati ends on 2 June 2027, when Saturn leaves Pisces for Aries (weight 92, plus 7 for proximity: 99, high). Jupiter moves into Leo on 31 October 2026, the 7th sign from the Aquarius Moon, and turns favourable (60 + 18 = 78, moderate). Ketu moves into Cancer on 6 December 2026, the 6th from the Moon, and turns favourable (58 + 16 = 74). Personal Year 4 becomes 5 on 1 January 2027 (46 + 15 = 61). No Mahadasha or Antardasha boundary falls inside the year, and the scanned list says so. The next Mahadasha change is 21 months away, beyond the six-month transition window, so no transition alert is raised.

The ten-year outlook starts at Personal Year 4 for 2026 (15 + 6 + 2026 = 2047, 2 + 0 + 4 + 7 = 13, 1 + 3 = 4) and marks four years as agreeing: 2027 (Saturn strong, Personal Year 5 - both opening), and 2029, 2033 and 2035 (Mercury mixed, Personal Years 7, 2 and 4 - both mixed). Three of the four agreements are two mixed readings, which is exactly why "agree" should not be read as "good year". The Mercury handover on 2 July 2028 is listed against 2028.

How to read each kind of result

• The headline and the progress gauge are arithmetic: how far through the running Mahadasha you are, in years and percent. They make no claim about how that period is going.
• A phase word is a summary of one placement, not a forecast. Read the "why" sentence under it - the lord, its dignity, its sign, its house - because that is the part another astrologer could check against your chart.
• The intensity score is the size of the phase score, |score| ÷ 6, as a percentage. A score of +3 and a score of -3 both read 50; the direction is in the band, not in the intensity.
• A chapter can disagree with its phase. A weak Antardasha inside a strong Mahadasha is common, and both are shown.
• Window colours are a banded score, not an event. Green means the chart is least in your way for the general question; red means maintenance rather than launches. If every window shows the same colour, believe the note: the dates are real, but there is no difference between them to choose on.
• An alert's kind (opportunity, risk, emotional) and severity (high, moderate, low) come from the mechanism and its weight plus proximity. A high alert is a big mechanism nearby, not a big event.
• "Could not be read" in place of a risk or impact level means fewer than 50 of 100 points were readable. An asterisk means the level was published on partial data. Neither is a zero.
• The risk badge and the core-state word cut the same number differently: the badge at thirds (34 and 66), the core state at 40 and 65. A risk of 66 therefore reads "Medium" on the badge and "Unstable" in the core states.
• An outlook row marked "agree" means two independent systems point the same way - which can be both mixed. "Differ" is the usual result and is not a warning.
• The signals block is a test of the reading, not a forecast. If the things listed for your running lord are absent from your life, the reading is not describing you, and the page says that is useful information about the app.
• Empty sections - no history, no earlier run of this lord, no finished period yet - are answers. The engine leaves them empty rather than filling them from somewhere else.

Birth time: what moves and what does not

Everything on the Timing page is seeded from the Moon's position at birth. The Moon moves about 0.55° an hour and a nakshatra is 13°20' wide, so each hour of birth-time error moves the Moon about 4% of a nakshatra, and moves the balance of the first Mahadasha by the same share of its lord's years - about nine months for an 18-year lord like Rahu, about ten for Venus, about three for the Sun. Because every later period has a fixed length, every later boundary slides by that same amount. A wrong time does not stretch the timeline; it slides it.

Running the sample's birth date at every minute of the day shows how far that goes. Born before 12:51 IST on 15 June 1990 in Mumbai, the person is in Saturn Mahadasha on 2 October 2026; born at 12:51 or later, they are already in Mercury's. From 14:35 IST the Moon has crossed into Purva Bhadrapada and life opens in Jupiter's Mahadasha instead of Rahu's. The end of the Saturn period moves from 15 April 2036 for a midnight birth to 24 November 2026 for a birth at 12:39. Same day, same city - a nine-year spread in the date the page leads with.

The Ascendant is far more sensitive, and it drives every label. It changes sign roughly every two hours, and in the sample it sits at 29.87° Cancer. One minute later, at 10:31, it is 0.10° Leo. The dates barely move - the Saturn period now ends on 28 June 2028 instead of 2 July - but every house shifts by one. Saturn moves from the 7th, a kendra, to the 6th, a dusthana. Its word changes from "Building" to "Unsettled", its quality from good to challenging, and the window running now falls from 86, green, to 25, red. Risk rises from 37 to 55. Mercury's period becomes "Foundation" from the 10th. The Lagna calculator shows how close to a sign edge your own Ascendant sits.

Without a birth time the app casts the chart at 12:00 local time - for the sample, 1.5 hours after the real time, which moves the Saturn handover to 20 May 2027, over a year early. There are no houses, so every label comes from dignity alone ("Strengthening", "Levelling", "Testing") and the page says so in a note above the working. The window scorer needs the ruler of the 1st house, which needs an Ascendant; without one decide() returns 0 for every date, so every window draws red at 0 and the flat-case note appears. Read that as "not measured", not as a verdict. Risk falls back to the dasha and Saturn-transit terms and is marked provisional (55 of 100 points); impact is withheld; confidence is 0%. The phase panel can still say "proceed" on such a chart, because the risk it reads rests on 55 points, and the engine itself notes that its dasha term reads more favourably without a birth time than a full chart would. What a missing birth time costs sets out the rest, and why apps disagree on your nakshatra covers the boundary cases.

What the Timing feature does not do

• It does not predict events. The engine's own capability statement, shown on every load, says it dates periods and boundaries and scores windows, and cannot say what will happen, guarantee an outcome in either direction, or know anything you have not logged.
• It reads the natal chart only. The classical checks at the moment a period begins, and the dreshkana timing within a period (BPHS Ch. 47 Sl. 3-4), are not computed.
• Its dignity verdicts use the fivefold friendship of BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 55-58, with the temporary half read from where the sign's lord actually stands in the natal chart. That makes a label depend on the whole chart, not only on the graha and its sign: the sample's Moon in Aquarius is in a friendly sign because Saturn, its lord and a natural neutral, stands in the 12th from it, a temporary-friend position. The temporary relation is not re-read at the start of a period or from transits.
• Its astronomy is not Swiss Ephemeris. The Moon comes from a Meeus series whose accuracy the project's own notes give as about 0.1-0.3°. Carried through the arithmetic above, 0.1° is about seven weeks on every date for an 18-year birth lord and 0.3° about five months - so a boundary falling within a few weeks of today deserves less weight than one years away.
• It computes nine periods from birth, about 120 years, and no more.
• It does not combine the dasha and the numerology Personal Year into one number, by design.
• It does not prescribe remedies, gemstones or rituals, and it gives no medical reading of any period.

Where Timing connects to the rest of the app

Timing sits on the chart the Kundali page draws, and reuses its engines rather than running second copies. The window colours come from the same scorer as the Decision page, whose what-if simulator is linked from the phase panel. The "today" readings inside the alerts card reuse the daily dashboard's engine. The muhurat calendar is the day-level view of the Muhurat feature, which you can also try on the Muhurat calculator. The Personal Year column belongs to Numerology, and numerology's own parallel clock - a separate dasha seeded from your birth number - is on the Numerology Dasha calculator. The ratings you give the phase panel ("does this match your current life?") are collected for the Accuracy feature.

Without an account, the closest public view is the Convergence tool, which sets your running dasha beside your numerology timing for the next twelve months and, when no birth time is given, checks whether the assumed noon changes the answer. For what each lord is classically said to bring, the nine Mahadasha pages are the next stop: Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu and Venus - in Vimshottari order from the Sun. How the engines were checked is set out on the methodology page, and the books they come from are listed under sources.

Questions people ask about Timing

Why do all my action windows show the same colour and score?

Because the score reads only the Mahadasha lord, and every boundary inside one Mahadasha shares it. Most people are mid-way through a period of six to twenty years, so this is the common case, not a fault. The note under the windows names the date the score can first change if a Mahadasha handover falls inside the range shown. If your profile has no birth time, the identical score is 0 for a different reason: the scorer cannot run without an Ascendant.

The story card calls my next Mahadasha favourable, so why are its windows red?

Two different tests. The story uses the BPHS Ch. 47 yes-or-no test, where a friendly sign counts as favourable. The windows use a three-step quality where a friendly sign is only neutral, worth 30 points instead of 60, plus the strength of your 1st-house ruler. A lord in a friendly sign with a weak 1st-house ruler can be favourable in the story and red in the windows at the same time.

I do not know my birth time. What on this page can I still trust?

The sequence of lords and their lengths is unchanged, and Sade Sati, Ashtama Sani and transit alerts still work because they count from the Moon sign. The dates themselves can be off by months to years, and the labels fall back to dignity alone. The windows cannot be scored. This article lists what survives and how people recover a time.

Why are my dasha dates different from another app's?

The usual causes are a different ayanamsa, a different Moon position from a different ephemeris, a balance computed by time instead of by arc, or a different year length; this app uses Lahiri, a Meeus Moon, the arc proportion and a 365.2425-day year. A difference in birth time of even a few minutes also moves every date. Why apps disagree on your nakshatra covers the boundary cases.

Does a red window mean something bad will happen?

No. Red means the chart's own score for that stretch is below 45 for the general question, and the engine's advice is maintenance rather than launches. The capability statement on the page says plainly that a weak window is not a warning of failure and a strong one is not a promise.

Why does the Timing page not show my Pratyantardasha?

The page stops at the Antardasha, which is the chapter level. The running Pratyantardasha and the next three are on the Kundali page, and the Vimshottari Dasha calculator dates them without an account.

What do the asterisk and "could not be read" next to risk mean?

An asterisk means the level was published on partial data - between 50 and 99 of the 100 points could be read, usually because there is no birth time. "Could not be read" means fewer than 50 were readable, so no level is published. Neither means zero risk.

What does "agree" mean in the ten-year outlook?

That the year's dasha band and its Personal Year have the same tone - both opening, both mixed or both closing. It is a check on two independent systems, not a rating of the year. In the sample, three of four agreeing years were two mixed readings.

Why is my Personal Year different on the Personal Year calculator?

The calculator uses the Vedic method from Advanced Vedic Numerology, which runs birthday to birthday and adds a weekday number. Timing uses the day-plus-month-plus-year sum, which turns over on 1 January. Between 1 January and your birthday the two can show different numbers.

Can I tell the app that a reading is wrong?

Yes. The phase panel asks whether the reading matches your current life and records strongly accurate, somewhat accurate or not accurate against the running Mahadasha and Antardasha pair. The signals block is the other half: if the things listed for your lord are absent, the reading is not describing you.