A to-do list your phone obeys.

The problem with a normal to-do list

A to-do list has no authority. It sits in an app, politely, next to the apps that are genuinely trying to hold your attention, and it loses. Nothing happens when you ignore it. Nothing happens when you write it. The whole arrangement runs on you feeling like doing the thing, which is exactly the resource in short supply.

Meanwhile the phone in your hand has real authority over your day. It decides what you see first, what interrupts you, what is one tap away. The list asks. The phone tells.

So swap them. Let the list tell and the phone ask. That is the sentence, and the rest of this page is how it works in practice.

How the day runs

The day starts blocked. The apps you picked are shut from midnight, before you have decided anything, before you are tired, before the first scroll has a chance to set the shape of the morning. You did not have to be strong at seven in the morning, because the decision was made the calm way, once.

You write the day. Up to three wins, no more, yourself or with your agent. Set them the night before or over the first coffee. Three is the cap on purpose: a list of twelve is a way of deciding nothing.

Finishing earns credits. One finished win earns the credits you said it was worth, up to thirty. How much it takes to count is your choice, set once on a dial: your word, one line of what you did, or proof your agent has seen. Why your own word can be enough is covered in why app blockers fail: a tool you can lie to is a tool you can be honest with.

Credits bank, up to one hundred and fifty. Spending them is deliberate. One credit buys one minute of screen time, in a pass of two to thirty minutes, and then the apps shut again quietly. Credits unspent at the end of the day are not waste. That is the app losing, which is the app working.

The evening bell. At an hour you choose, the day is read back to you in your own words: what you wrote, what you finished, what you said about it. Then the day is closed and tomorrow starts blocked again.

Two numbers, and no others

There is a streak, which is the number of days you did at least one thing. There is a balance, which is how many credits you are holding. That is all. No weekly average that goes up when you are ill, no graph of your worst hours, no score to game.

The reason is simple. A number you can move without doing anything real is a number that will eventually be the reason you open the app. Two honest numbers are harder to lie to than twelve interesting ones.

What it is not

It is not a lock you cannot open. You can turn it off: take back the Screen Time permission and nothing stays shut. ScrollBuddy only ever knows what you or your agent tell it. It is not a coach that watches you: blocking runs on Apple’s Screen Time permission, so ScrollBuddy never sees which apps you open or what you do inside them. No email and no password. Your phone number signs you in, and the app works on its own without it. Your wins, your answers and your day count stay on your phone until you connect your number.

It is one person’s attempt at the smallest tool that actually holds. If a pause before the app is enough for you, one of the lighter apps in screen time apps compared will serve you better and cost you less. This one is for the day after the pause stopped working.

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