code philosophy
we are building an app whose job is to give you your attention back. that constrains how we build it.
last updated September 2026
the app must not become the habit
Every screen-time app faces the same temptation: to hold attention in order to measure engagement. We refuse it. There are no streak guilt-trips, no notifications engineered to pull you back, no infinite feed. The best session in this app is a short one, and closing the guarded app instead of unlocking it is recorded as the win.
the most personal data never moves
What you write and which apps you guard stay on your device. This is a design constraint we accepted before writing the first screen, and it shapes the architecture: personalisation runs on anonymised theme labels, not on your words.
the interface should be calm
Nothing flashes, nothing nags, nothing shouts a number at you. Motion exists to explain a change, not to demand attention. The gate is the most carefully made screen in the app because it is the one you meet at your least patient moment.
accessible by default
Contrast is measured, not eyeballed. Motion respects the system reduce-motion setting. Type scales with Dynamic Type. Nothing important is communicated by colour alone.
we owe the source
The wisdom in this app is not ours. We attribute every clip, we keep it in context, and we point people to the official source. If the people whose work this rests on ask us to change something, we change it.
talk to us
If you have an idea, a correction, or a hard question about how we built something, write to info@shankaranpill.ai. We would rather hear it than not.