compact · the ideas this tool is built on
the ones people actually ask
About habits
One. Maybe two. One habit tracked for sixty days beats five habits abandoned in a fortnight, and every habit you add divides the attention the others get. If you want the app to hold you to that, turn on the Levels method in Settings — it keeps the next habit locked until your current ones hold 80% for two weeks.
Nothing breaks. Leave the square empty and follow one rule: never miss twice in a row. One gap is an accident, two is the start of a different pattern. And don't try to compensate by doubling tomorrow — that turns the habit into a debt, and people abandon debts.
No — that's what backfill is for. If you did the thing and forgot to log it, click the square. The record should match reality. It's only cheating if you're marking days you didn't do, and the only person that fools is you.
One, at the start, yes. An easy guaranteed square gives you a chain to protect and a small win on day one, which makes the harder habit easier to keep. Beyond that it's padding — a grid full of things you'd do anyway stops telling you anything.
Daily is easier, counterintuitively. 'Every day' needs no decision; '3× a week' means every single morning you get to negotiate whether today counts. If the behaviour genuinely can't be daily (heavy training, for instance), set the weekly target so streaks are judged fairly against it.
Immediately after doing the thing, if you can. The mark works best as a reward attached to the behaviour, not as bookkeeping. If that's impractical, one fixed review moment each evening beats checking in at random times.
When not doing it feels worse than doing it. There's no day it flips — automaticity climbs steeply for the first few weeks and then flattens, typically around two months in. If you're still deciding every day at week eight, the habit is probably too big; shrink it.
Assume it will — usually around week three, when the novelty is gone and results aren't visible yet. That's the point of tracking: on the days you don't feel like it, you're not running on motivation, you're running on not wanting to break a chain you can see. Lower the bar to the two-minute version and keep the square.
About this tool
Yes, with unlimited habits. Most trackers cap the free tier at three or four; this one doesn't. Extra features unlock through use rather than payment — that's the Milestone Path.
In your browser, on your device. There's no account, no server and no analytics on your habits — nobody can read them, including us. Use Export JSON in Settings for a backup, and Import to restore or move to another browser.
No. Open the page, add a habit, click today's square. Accounts will only ever exist as an option for people who want their data synced across devices.
Yes — it's an installable web app. Open the site on your phone and choose 'Add to Home Screen'; it then runs like a native app, with its own icon and window.
Your habits go with it — that's the honest trade-off for a tool with no account. Export a JSON backup now and then, especially before clearing anything or switching devices.
read once · then only today matters
Everything above is the tool. This is why it works — seven short chapters, no filler, written to be read once and then ignored in favour of clicking today's square.
A habit tracker is the simplest possible contract with yourself: do the thing, mark the square. This one lives at a URL, needs no account, and keeps every mark in your browser. The marking isn't the point — what a growing row of filled squares does to your decision-making is.
It is not a productivity system, a planner, or a to-do list. It answers exactly one question — did you show up? — and refuses to ask anything else.
Two rules carry almost the entire result. First: don't break the chain. Mark every day you do the thing, and let the unbroken row become something you're reluctant to lose. Second: never miss twice.
Everything else in this handbook is either an explanation of why those two rules work, or a tactic for making them easier to follow.
Loss aversion: people fight roughly twice as hard to keep something as to gain the equivalent. An empty calendar asks you to be disciplined, which is abstract and exhausting. A calendar with eleven marks asks you not to lose eleven marks, which is concrete and almost automatic.
A visible record also closes the feedback gap. Most worthwhile habits pay out on a delay of weeks or months, which is far too slow to reinforce anything. Marking a square gives you a small, immediate, honest signal on the same day you did the work.
The square is not a reward for the habit. It is proof, delivered on time.
Not 21 days — that number comes from a 1960s plastic surgeon's observation about patients adjusting to their appearance. The research that actually measured habit formation (Lally et al., University College London) found a median of 66 days to automaticity, with an honest range of 18 to 254 depending on the person and the behaviour.
Two things follow from the shape of that curve. The steep part is at the start, so early days cost more than late ones — and week three is where the novelty has faded but visible results haven't arrived yet. That gap is where most people quit, and it's precisely what the grid is for.
Track the two-minute version: not 'run 5k' but 'put on running shoes'. You can't build on a habit that doesn't exist yet, and a bar you can clear while tired is the only bar that survives a bad week.
Make the thing you want twenty seconds easier and the thing you don't twenty seconds harder. Environment doesn't get tired the way willpower does.
Install this page on your home screen. The grid you see every day is the grid you fill.
Everything you track is stored in your browser, on your device. No account, no server, no analytics on your habits — nobody can read them, including us. A habit tracker holds an unusually honest diary of a life, and that should belong to the person living it.
The trade-off is real and worth stating plainly: clear your browser data and your habits go with it. Export a JSON backup occasionally, and definitely before switching devices. Import restores it anywhere.
This tool is good at one thing: making repetition visible. That is genuinely most of what building an ordinary habit requires — and it is not what breaking an addiction requires, or treating depression, or managing an eating disorder.
If a behaviour feels compulsive rather than merely inconsistent, if stopping produces real distress, or if the thing you're tracking is entangled with your mental health, a grid of squares is a poor substitute for a professional. Use both, or use the right one. Nobody has ever recovered from something serious because a streak counter told them to.
A tracker measures showing up. It cannot decide what's worth showing up for, and it cannot treat what's underneath.
made by bernardzitzer.com · pairs well with daey.app for journaling