Several intrinsic topological ways to encode connections on vector bundles on smooth complex algebraic curves will be described. In particular the notion of Stokes decompositions will be formalised, as a convenient intermediate category between the Stokes filtrations and the Stokes local systems/wild monodromy representations. The main result establishes a new simple characterisation of the Stokes decompositions.
\begin{equation*} \ \ \ \includegraphics [width=0.6\textwidth ]{fission} \end{equation*}