Oooooh, Me likey! :)
I'll be stealing this forthwith. Up until now I've been using the standard highlighted stat combined with Awesome dice. Each use of awesome dice marks xp too. This has been slightly unwieldy and less about defining what the players want to do than just doing 'awesome stuff'. Though the bowl full of tactile 'rewards' is always gratifying.
I really like the idea of broad keys or player flags like your concepts; not only to reward players through the xp mechanic, but inspire narrative flow in directions the players want to pursue. Rather cool. Well done.