The Focus Room · The Switchboard

Where are you right now?

Naming it is the point. Putting a feeling into words, which the research calls affective labelling, measurably takes the edge off it. So the sentence below is not admin. It is the intervention, and it goes into the master log.

Pick the one thing

One most important task for the day, so morning Em never has to decide. Steps are optional, one per line; each becomes a tick box on the card, and the last tick marks the whole thing done.

The task Steps, one per line A link to open (optional)

The day

The start-of-day check-in. Say it to Claude in any session and it lands here, or write it here. How the day feels, then the next steps in order; every tick goes to the master log, and the next unticked step is dealt as a card once the body gate is open.

How the day feels, and what you decided Next steps, one per line, in order Coming days, one per line (optional) Standing goals, one per line. A number goal is "text | target unit", for example "Walk | 20 km"

The morning checklist

Thirteen small things. Tick them in any order, here or on the phone; each tick goes to the master log. The two notes at the end are the point of the whole list.

0 of 13

Vault copy: 01 Unsorted/morning checklist.md. Timers: tap ⏱ and it counts down right here, then chimes.

The Focus Room, version 0.18

2026-09-18. Log rows take follow-up notes, so an entry can gather context after the fact.

What changed in 0.18 (2026-09-18)

The calendar in The day. Today's events from em@ponders.us, em@vgrants.org, the Time Scratch Pad and Join Em, in order, with how long each takes, an orange "now" line that says how long until the next thing, the running event in green, past ones faded, and a red "overlaps" flag when two things collide. All-day events ride as small pills; tomorrow is one line underneath.
One copy. Google Calendar is the copy. The droplet reads it every ten minutes (focus_calendar_push.py) and the page only shows it. To block out laundry, a drive or a shop, put it on the Time Scratch Pad, or tell Claude the day and it will.

What changed in 0.17 (2026-09-18)

Notes under a log row. Tap a timeline row to open it. Under the text there is a box, "Add a note after the fact". Write how it went ("I'm feeling good, good sleep, do kind of feel less anxious") and press Enter. The note sits under the row in purple with how long after the entry it came ("14 hours later"). A closed row shows a small count of its notes.
Still one log. A note is its own row in the behavior ledger that points at its parent, the parent is never rewritten. The daily note gets a line that names the entry it follows up, and the generated domain logs show the note indented under the entry. A note deletes like any row, with the same ten second Undo.
Open rows stay open. The two minute refresh used to close any open row. Open rows and half typed notes now survive it.

What changed in 0.16 (2026-09-16)

Yoga cards, in sage. The pose deck from yoga.withwarmth.org (forty-nine cards: sun salutations, standing, balances, floor, hips, backbends, twists, rest) is dealt here like the German words: one card, "show me", a hold countdown, then Not yet / Wobbly / Steady / Solid. Same shared state in the cards hub, so a pose graded on the mat is graded here and back.
It rides with the body. Yoga counts as a body card: it sits in the body lane in every band but late night, joins the Self focus, and the legend has a sage toggle for it. The card face says how many minutes were logged on the mat this week.

What changed in 0.15.2 (2026-09-14)

Delete a timeline row. Tap a row to open it, then "Delete". The row goes at once and an Undo toast stays for ten seconds. Nothing is erased: the sweeper marks the ledger row as deleted (a backup of the ledger is kept first), the views and the timeline at log.ponders.us stop showing it, and the daily note line gets "(deleted from log)" appended. Restore takes it all back.

What changed in 0.15 (2026-09-14)

The day. A section at the top of the room for the start-of-day check-in: how the day feels and what was decided, the next steps in order with tick boxes, the coming days, and the standing goals (a tick per day, or a number against a target that can ramp day by day). Say it to Claude in any session and it lands here through focus_day.py, or tap ✎ plan and write it. One copy, in the day record on the server, so the phone and the laptop agree.
The next step is a card. Once the body gate is open, the first unticked step of the plan is dealt right after the most important task. "Did it" on that card ticks the step and the stack moves to the next one.
Every tick is a log line, like the morning checklist: "Day plan: … ✓ (2 of 6)", "Goal: ankle physio ✓", "Goal: Walk, 8 km today of 8 ✓".

What changed in 0.14.6 (2026-09-11)

One tap, one log line. Tapping a step of the most important task ticks it at once, and a second tap unticks it. Before, the tick box sometimes did not repaint, so repeated taps each logged "step done" again (eight times for one step on 2026-09-07). The same event twice within thirty seconds, a double tap on "My body is good" for example, now counts once, in the page and on the server.

What changed in 0.14

The morning checklist is a modal. ☀ in the body row opens it: hang for thirty seconds, ankle physio, a positive memory, three minutes of meditation, one kind thing for your partner, five minutes towards the most important task, note the most important task, note the one thing that makes everything else easier, then psyllium husk, D3, zinc, apple cider vinegar and teeth. The count sits on the button. Timed items have a ⏱ that counts down in place. The MIT note writes the header strip. Ticks are stored on the server, so the phone and the laptop agree.
Feelings in clusters, on the left. Six clusters (bright, calm, wired, heated, low, tender), thirty-five words, pick as many as fit. The four state chips are gone from the bar; the lowest-capacity word you pick sets the state the stack deals by. The bar shows the words you picked.
The sleep chip takes a sleep entry. Tap it: one slider from 20:00 the night before to 09:00, an end for when you slept and an end for when you woke. Save writes "Slept from … to …" to the master log and shows the hours in the chip.
The timeline sits at the right edge of the screen, the feelings column at the left, the room in the middle.
Tick projects off on the ticket view. A circle on every row and a "done" button on the ticket. Done projects drop out of every ranking, here and on the map, and gather in a Done list at the bottom of the ticket view with an undo.

What changed in 0.13 (2026-09-06)

The most important task, in the header. A strip under the first row: "Most important task – what it is" (just "MIT" on a phone), with the step count beside it and a green check mark once it is done. It is stored on the server, so the pick you make on the laptop shows on the phone.
Tap it and it opens in Right now. The task lands on top of the stack as a card with its steps as tick boxes. "Did it" marks the whole thing done; the last tick does too. "Sit with it" starts a twenty-five minute block on it.
Pick tomorrow's one thing tonight. The ✎ pick button beside the strip, and the evening "Pick tomorrow's one thing tonight" card, open the picker: today or tomorrow, the task, steps one per line, an optional link. Every pick and every tick goes to the master log.
Claude can set it too. ~/scripts/focus_mit.py writes the same record from either machine, so "tomorrow I want to focus on X" in a chat becomes the strip.

What changed in 0.12 (2026-09-06)

The timer moved into the bar. Small: 5, 10, 25, a +1, and the countdown beside them. Tap a length and it starts, tap the countdown to stop. The chime opens a small debrief under it. The big block section is gone from the column.
The poop chip has a "when" slider. Just now, 30 minutes, 1, 2, 4, 6 or 8 hours ago. The entry goes to the master log stamped at that time, not at the time you tapped.
Restless deals breathing first. The one minute orb comes to the top, then the walk.
Left and right on the one useful thing. Arrows beside the legend, or the arrow keys, look through the stack without marking anything done or later.
The check-in is a modal. The ✎ button in the bar opens it. Ctrl or Cmd and Enter saves.
Body before board is a row in the bar. TENS, breathing, water, feet on the floor as chips, with "My body is good" beside them.

What changed in 0.11 (2026-09-04)

The context bar. Clock and time of day, the four state chips, last night's sleep score, the latest Bristol score (tap it to log a new one), the intention as a dropdown, and four focus buttons: work, self, relationships, learning.
The stack. The decks from repeat.ponders.us are dealt here now, one card on top, in repeat's "a" style. What is on top depends on the time of day, your state, the focus button and whether the body gate is open. German and piano theory cards grade against the same shared state as their own sites.
The timeline. A column you can hide. Every click in this room writes to the master log through the same inbox log.ponders.us uses, so the sweeper routes it to the daily note and the behavior ledger. The column also shows the last week of the ledger, so the master log flows back in.

How a coach would grow this for an ADHD brain

Exactly one prompt on screen. Open the page and see one card and one button, everything else folded. The stack is the start; the check-in, body list and timer could fold into it as cards too.
Landing ritual with a clock. Arriving is a two minute timed thing (water, feet on the floor, one breath), not a checklist to skim.
Implementation intentions. "At 09:00 when the kettle is on, then ankle band." Scheduled prompts that fire as browser notifications, later as push to the phone.
Eat before you decide. After 13:00 the bar asks when you last ate protein. Low blood sugar reads as fog and gets logged as a mood.
A parking lot during blocks. One input during a timer for intrusive thoughts. It goes to the log, not to a new tab.
Streaks that forgive. Dead bug seven days in a row, shown as "6 of the last 7" after a miss, never a reset to zero.
Close the loop with outcomes. Show tomorrow's sleep score next to tonight's late choices. The ledger already pairs behavior and outcome; the room should show the pair.
An "I am jumping" button. One tap logs the switch and asks what pulled. No shame, just data, and over weeks a picture of the pull.
Interleave, do not block. After every 25 minute work block the stack deals a 5 minute body card automatically. The interleaving research says this is how it sticks.
Evening shutdown at 21:00. Pick tomorrow's one thing tonight (done in 0.13: the card opens the picker and the pick sits in the header the next day). Next: the room could ask for it at 21:00 unprompted.
Defaults instead of choices. Intention defaults to yesterday's, focus defaults by time band, so a foggy morning needs zero taps to get a good card.
A Sunday evening review card. Blocks done, moods by day, Bristol trend, sleep trend, drawn from the ledger, read in two minutes.
Voice in. The phone inbox's record button in this bar, so a spoken check-in lands in the same timeline.
Phone first. A home screen web app where the bar is the whole screen and the stack is one thumb swipe.

The Focus Room is a private page. Nothing here is graded, and the log is yours.

Today

One useful thing

Pick one thing

What matters most right now