Cohort creators: how do you actually know when a student is about to disengage?

I’ve been digging into cohort-based courses and noticed a pattern:

People rarely decide to quit.
They just slowly fade out - show up less, skip things, then disappear.

By the time it’s visible in completion rates, it’s already too late.

From what I’ve seen so far:

There are early signals (missed deadlines, less interaction)
But it’s hard to tell when they actually matter vs someone just being busy

For those running cohorts:

How do you currently spot disengagement early?
Do you rely on data, intuition, or nothing at all?
When do you usually realize it’s too late?

Trying to understand how people actually deal with this in practice.