Time blindness
An hour vanishes into a “quick” tab. You only find out at the end of the day, when it's too late to do anything about it.
a clock that counts every minute, and a score that moves as you work or drift.
New Breadcrumbs: pick up exactly where you left off
The focus app that notices before you do.
A Mac menu-bar timer, designed around ADHD. It notices when you drift and keeps your place for when you come back.
For macOS 14 and later. It also runs on your phone as a web app, and works offline.
Every 20 minutes, one tap. No answer counts as drifted, so drifting can't hide.
The ADHD tax
Willpower isn't the problem. Visibility is.
Most productivity apps assume you'll notice when you've drifted and remember where you were. Those are the two things an ADHD brain is worst at. Ratchet takes both jobs off your plate.
Starting cold
A big goal with no obvious first move just sits there, making you feel worse every time you look at it.
break any goal into a tiny next step and start it in one tap. The timer is already running.
The lost thread
Switch tasks once and the context is gone: which tabs, which notes, what you were about to try.
each goal keeps its own workspace and a Breadcrumb that says where you left off.
The part nobody talks about
You stopped believing your own “I'll do it today.”
After enough broken plans, the hardest part of ADHD isn't the work. It's that you no longer trust the person who promised to do it.
Pep talks don't fix that, and neither do bigger plans. What rebuilds trust is evidence: small promises, kept, and seen.
So Ratchet shrinks the promise to one sitting (“by the end of this, I will have…”), asks honestly at the end whether you did, and keeps the record. A “not yet” is just a not yet: it's parked with a note, never held against you. Over a week the record starts to say something your inner critic can't argue with.
Promises to yourself · this week
Answer the reviewer commentsYou said 25 min · took 22Mon 10:40
Pay rent before the late feeYou said 5 min · took 6Tue 9:15
Draft the related-work sectionNot yet · parked: “stuck on how to frame it”Wed 4:02
Draft the related-work sectionPicked up from the note · doneThu 11:30
25 of 29 things you said you'd do, you did. That's not a feeling. It's your week.
How it works
One loop, every sitting.
Ratchet lives in your menu bar and runs one simple loop. It's short enough to keep doing on a bad day, which is the only day that matters.
Say what, and why
Every sitting starts with a task and the goal it serves. Work with no goal can't start at all: the bad path is impossible, not just discouraged.
By the end of this sitting, I will have…
Every minute counts
The clock runs from the moment you start. Time nobody accounted for shows up on the day as it happens, not at midnight.
18 minutes in · on track
Still on it?
Every 20 minutes, a single tap. Say yes and carry on. Say you drifted and start again, no lecture. Silence counts as drift.
Still on it? · Yes · I drifted
Did you finish it?
Each sitting ends with an honest answer before anything new can start. Finished, not yet, or parked for later with a note.
Did you push the fix? · Yes · Not yet
What's inside
Everything a scattered day needs, and nothing it doesn't.
Each feature exists because a specific kind of drift kept winning without it.
The day score
1000 points is a full, focused day. Watch yours climb.
A fixed bar that never moves to flatter you. Focused time earns points, drift costs a little, and finished goals pay a bonus. A faint line shows yesterday at the same hour, so every day is a race against yourself.
TodayYesterday, same time
Breadcrumbs
Where you left off, before you even ask.
When you set a goal down, Ratchet asks one question: where did you stop? The next time you switch back, the answer opens on top of everything else.
Breadcrumb · Tue 4:12pmRun 3 is training; loss looked off after step 2k. Suspect the learning-rate warmup.Next: plot it against run 2.
Workspaces
One click, and the whole goal comes back.
Every goal remembers its station: the browser tabs, folders, files, apps and terminal sessions it needs. Switch goals and your Mac rearranges itself, with everything else out of sight.
Ze6 tabsFiexperiments/CuCursorClClaude
Goals that nest
Big goals become small, startable steps.
Goals grow into trees with deadlines and finish bonuses that shrink as a deadline slips. Overwhelmed? Break it down: the next tiny step starts right away.
Submit the workshop paperby Fri
Rerun the ablations+12
Fix the data loadernow
Meanwhile
Waiting on an AI agent? Don't wander off.
Ratchet sees when Claude Code is working for you, and offers one small side quest to fill the wait. When the agent is done, you're brought back to the main task.
Agent refactoring the eval harness0:48
Meanwhile: start the laundryside quest
Torque, your coach
“The rebuttal's been parked since Thursday. Ten minutes on the first reviewer, then go get groceries.”
A small, opinionated dog that reads your week and suggests one move at a time. Accept or dismiss each with a tap. Runs on your own Claude subscription.
Frontiering
Eat. Shower. Move. They count.
The basics hyperfocus skips are on the scoreboard too. Do them and they pay; skip them and the day shows it.
Breakfast+20
Walk+30
Dinner that isn't cereal
Friends & body doubling
Race a friend, not a stranger.
Add a few friends and see each other's day bar, each measured against your own usual, so nobody is shamed for a slow day. Share a live public dashboard if being watched helps you work.
Everywhere you are
Mac menu bar. Phone. Offline.
The Mac app, a phone web app and your dashboard all stay in sync. Lose the connection and it keeps counting and catches up later. A calendar view shows your day as it really went.
⌘Menu bar▣Phone31Google Calendar
Why it works
Built on what the research supports.
Ratchet borrows from a few of the better-replicated findings in behaviour change. It isn't a treatment. It's scaffolding.
Plans in “when, then” form
Deciding exactly what you'll do before a sitting starts makes you more likely to follow through. Every Ratchet sitting opens with that decision.
Implementation intentions: Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006, meta-analysis of 94 studies.Watching your progress
People who track progress toward a goal are more likely to reach it, especially when they record it and can see it. The day score and the timeline do exactly that.
Progress monitoring: Harkin et al., 2016, Psychological Bulletin.Make the bad path impossible
Designs that rely on willpower fail on the days it's needed most. So Ratchet won't start work without a goal, and won't start something new until the last thing has an answer.
Design principle: change the defaults, not the person.Straight talk
What Ratchet is, and isn't.
It is
- A firm, friendly structure for the hours you want to spend on purpose.
- Honest: a fixed daily bar that never adapts to make a bad day look good.
- Kind about drift: one tap and you're back. No streaks to lose and no guilt trips.
- Yours: your own data, synced through your own cloud.
It isn't
- A medical treatment for ADHD, or a replacement for one.
- Surveillance: it never records your screen or your keystrokes. It only looks at what's open when you ask it to set up a workspace.
- Another to-do list that fills up and then gets ignored.
- For Windows, yet. It's Mac first, plus a web app on your phone.
Questions
FAQ
Won't a check-in every 20 minutes break my focus?
It's one tap, and it never takes over your screen. If you're deep in the work, “Yes, still on it” takes under a second. If you've drifted, that tap is exactly the interruption you needed.
What happens when I ignore it?
An unanswered check-in counts as drifted. That's on purpose: with ADHD, drifting is usually silent, so silence is treated as a sign of it. You can always correct a sitting afterwards.
Do I need to plan my whole day first?
No. You only ever name the next sitting. Goals and deadlines help when you have them, but “Break it down” turns anything into a five-minute first step.
Where does my data live?
Ratchet syncs through a small cloud service that runs in your own Cloudflare account; the installer sets it up. Nothing is sold, and the public dashboard only shows what you choose to share.
Does it work without the AI coach?
Yes. Torque, the coach, is optional and runs on your own Claude subscription. Everything else works without it.
What does it cost?
The download is free. A Pro plan for the coach, Workspaces and the extras is planned; what's free today stays free.
Start your next sitting
Turn the day one notch at a time.
A ratchet only turns one way. Small sittings, honestly answered, add up to days you don't lose.