How we build
Every feature exists because of a symptom.
ADHD is not one problem. It is a cluster, and each part of it fails in a specific way, at a specific moment. Nothing here was designed from a feature list.
The method
Name the symptom.
We start at the illness. Not at what a competitor shipped, not at what is easy to build. Working memory, time blindness, initiation, prioritising, emotional regulation, impulsivity, hyperfocus, shame — each one is a distinct failure with its own shape.
Find the point of performance.
A symptom is not a mood, it is a moment. Not “trouble with time” but the fifteen minutes before you need to leave. Not “trouble starting” but the specific afternoon where the form is open and nothing happens. The failure has an address. Advice arrives early, when a person is calm and capable. The failure happens later, alone, at 2:40 on a Tuesday.
Build the thing that is already there when it happens.
The feature is whatever shows up at that address without being summoned. That is the whole design constraint, and it eliminates most of what the category builds.
If a feature requires the person to remember to use it, it is not a feature for this population.
The map
- Working memoryYou are told something and it is gone before you can act on it.
She holds it. Text it, forward it, photograph it or say it out loud, and it is out of your head and inside something that brings it back at the right time.
BUILDING- Time blindnessAn hour and ten minutes feel the same. People are rarely late waking up. They are late leaving.
Countdowns before you need to move, a warning when it is actually time to go, and a deadline turned into a sequence that starts today, not Thursday night.
BUILDING- Task initiationYou know exactly what to do, and you cannot start.
She cuts the task down until the first step is almost too small to refuse, then hands you one piece at a time so the rest is never in the room.
BUILDING- Getting set up to startThe task is twenty minutes. Finding the form, the login, the right order and the number you need is the rest of the afternoon.
She does that half and hands over the rest. Sources gathered, links in order, the first move named. What reaches you is only the part that needed you.
BUILDING- Planning and prioritisingForty things all feel equally urgent, so nothing gets picked.
She picks three and says that is the whole day. Everything else stays held, and is not mentioned.
BUILDING- Emotional regulationOne bad moment takes the rest of the day with it.
She meets it before she tries to fix it. On a day that has clearly gone wrong she lightens what can be lightened and tells you she did, instead of asking you to catch up.
BUILDING- ImpulsivityThe thing is bought before the wanting has been looked at.
Send her the link and she holds it a day, then asks if it is still worth it. No shopping, no cheaper alternatives, nothing that talks you back into it.
BUILDING- HyperfocusSix hours gone, no food, no water, and the other thing missed entirely.
She interrupts gently and names the way out in the same breath, so surfacing does not feel like being caught.
BUILDING- Shame and avoidanceYears of letting people down teach you to avoid the situations where it could happen again.
Nothing counts you and nothing keeps score. Coming back after a month away looks exactly the same as never having left.
BUILDING
Status as of August 2026. We update this page when we test on a phone, not when we merge.
Where we are strong, and where we are not
Holding something and handing it back at the right moment is the half that works. Memory, time, the first step made small enough to take, the day cut down to three things, a bad day met before anyone tries to fix it — those are running today.
The half still being built is the one where she does the work before it reaches you. Getting set up to start — finding the form, gathering the sources, putting the pieces in order so what arrives is only the part that needed you — is the thinnest thing here, the largest part of what comes next, and where the felt value is.
What this rules out
Working backwards from symptoms does not only produce features. It disqualifies them. Shame and avoidance are on that list, which means anything that manufactures either one is ruled out by the same method that produced everything else.
No streaks or scores. Nothing that can be broken, and nothing that turns a bad week into a visible loss.
No counting you. Times and prices are the product working. Numbers about you are the product failing.
No guilt about elapsed time. When something finally gets done, she credits the effort — never the delay.
Nothing to maintain. No program to complete, no habit to keep, no progress to lose. A ramp does not get steeper because you did not use it.
We know how to accommodate a body. Ramps, railings, curb cuts, captions, larger type. For the brain, we mostly still hand out advice — and then treat it as a character problem when the advice does not take. Mags is the other thing: something that is simply there at the moment it goes wrong.