Product Decisions
How we decide what to build, and what we refuse to. It starts with what we believe about you.
What we believe
The urge to reach for your phone is not a flaw. It is fuel.
You reach for it so much for real reasons. The apps and games are genuinely good, and in the right dose they make your day better. They are also built by some of the sharpest people alive to be very hard to put down. And much of it is not a choice at all: it is how you stay in touch, and how the work gets done. So the pull is not a defect. It is raw energy, and the only thing that matters is what it is aimed at.
Turning that pull into progress should not take willpower.
The better your phone gets, the more boring everything else feels next to it. The only tool most people are handed to bridge that gap is willpower: hour by hour you try to pick the task over the phone by force, and a task that is not naturally thrilling loses that pick almost every time. That is not a character problem, it is a missing tool. What works is a system that turns the pull into progress for you, automatically, so it stops being a fight you have to win all over again every hour.
So the wanting fuels the life you meant to build.
Here is the twist. Connect the two, and the pull that used to cost you your day starts paying for it. The phone becomes what you earn by doing the work, keeping the habit, showing up for the thing you meant to do. The fun does not disappear. It changes sides. Spending less time on what was eating your day falls out of that on its own, never the point.
What we build
Coins and metering
Your favorite apps start working for you. The urge becomes the earn.
The commitment rope
A harness you set ahead of time, that will not let you untie it in the weak moment. The coin delay separates an impulse from the spending; work you prove with a QR code or photo pays at once.
Situations
Set the harness once, by context, and it holds on every device you add it to, at the same time.
Proof that you actually did it
The reward should only count when the work is real. A task can ask for proof: photograph the place where it happens, or scan a code there, and it is verified before you earn. You are not left grading your own honesty, and the pull only ever pays out for something you truly did.
Every habit has a time
Every habit has at least one time of day. A new habit starts as Any time of day: due before midnight. Add a time to pick a specific one. Missing it costs its penalty once, if it has one.
The voyage log: a streak worth celebrating
Each day on the Habits page is drawn as a voyage along a shape, and every habit check-in is marked along it; a missed habit round is marked where it happened, and to-dos and deadlines never appear on it. Once a day ends, a day with at least one check-in and no misses earns a gold star, one with check-ins and some misses earns silver, and a day with no check-ins is simply quiet, never a failure. Days in a row where every habit is done make a streak (on a day with nothing due, opening the app counts it), and the log counts it and celebrates it. A streak still pays no coins and changes no blocking: a broken run cannot be bought back, there are no reminders or countdowns to keep it alive, and a run that ends is never shown as broken and costs you nothing. Your coins already do the earning and your rope already does the holding, so the log stays a keepsake of your progress, not one more rule to obey.
Anka, your AI
The pillar that turns all of this into understanding yourself. Anka reads your own patterns back to you so you know yourself better, and works as the secretary and anchor for your productivity, your habits, and your screen time.
No instant escape by deleting the app, while the lock is on
If deleting the app in a weak moment let you walk out of a block, the whole harness would be theater. So there is an app deletion lock: while it is on and you are enforcing, your phone pauses deleting apps for the whole device, because Apple only offers it that way. That reach is why new accounts start with it off and why we ask you to confirm before turning it on. While it is on, you turn it off the same honest way you change anything else here: it waits out your cooldown. You are never trapped, and with the lock on there is never an instant escape either.
No instant escape by deleting the Mac app
On a Mac, moving Ulyssify to the Trash does not switch blocking off. Once the app has been gone for a while, Ulyssify schedules the removal of its blocking service through the same cooldown as any other change that loosens your rules: your blocks stay on until the cooldown ends, then the blocking service removes itself. Reinstalling before then cancels it. You can also uninstall from Settings in the Mac app (Settings, Enforcement): it schedules the same removal through the same cooldown, and you can cancel it there until the cooldown ends (reinstalling does not cancel it). If this Mac cannot schedule the removal, blocking stays on and Ulyssify tells you how to stop it. If you never signed in on this Mac, there is nothing to wait out, and the blocking service simply removes itself.
On a Mac, both parts on, every rule enforced
On a Mac, Ulyssify blocks with two parts that work together: its blocking service and its content filter. With both on, all your blocks are enforced. If one is off, some or all of your blocks stop, and the Mac app tells you so you can turn it back on.
A humane emergency exit
The rope should hold in a weak moment, but life has real emergencies. So you can appoint a Judge ahead of time, someone you trust who can approve a brief skip of your cooldown wait when you genuinely need one. It is bounded and never an instant loophole: appointing a Judge itself waits out your cooldown, a Judge has to agree, and a skip only shortens the wait on changes you were always allowed to make. You are never trapped, and there is never an instant escape.
What we deliberately do not build
The stake is losing the fun, never your money.
Some apps make you bet real cash and take it when you slip. We never touch your wallet. What is on the line here is the fun itself: overspend and the metered apps lock until you earn your way back in. That stake is built into the loop, not a punishment bolted on, and it never treats a slip as a moral failing.
No per-task focus block.
Planned focus is already a Situation you set ahead; impulsive reaching already costs you coins. A per-task block is a fourth tool for a job already done, and it fights the routing: one app cannot be both blocked and metered at the same moment.
No lockdown super-mode.
The cooldown is already the hard part. More modes just add confusion.
When you notice something Ulyssify does not do, it is a decision, not an oversight. Your drive to focus is never the enemy: our job is to route it, not to punish you.