Squirrel is an app blocker that makes you pay yourself to break it. Tap Instagram and you get a real block, no swipe-away screen. Want in anyway? Open Squirrel, pick how long, and set aside a few dollars first, and Brian says those few seconds of having to decide are doing most of the work. No money actually moves, no card, no bank account, it just tracks what you set aside until you go buy something in your own brokerage. He built it after a night out where everyone agreed social media had hijacked their brains and everyone also felt behind on investing. He had a 45 minute daily Instagram limit for months and still hit 10 hours a week. First week on Squirrel: 1h45m.

Mantra Timer is a meditation timer that does nothing else, which took Brent 3,700 consecutive days of practice to want badly enough to build. No account, no data collection, no notifications, no guided programs, no monthly subscription for the privilege of sitting in silence. Just timers, chimes, and a check-in before and after if you want one. He went looking for this and found a market of bloated wellness apps asking for his personal background and $10 a month, and built the thing he'd been wanting for a decade instead, at what he calls a human pace while managing a chronic illness. The whole core is free.

Mise plans the meal, not the recipe, which is the actual problem with cooking dinner. Pick your dishes, tell it when you want to eat and for how many, and it schedules everything backwards from that minute: one start time, one running order, one merged shopping list, step by step instructions with their own start times. Recipes have always assumed you're making one thing, and anyone who has ever had the potatoes ready twenty minutes before the fish knows how that goes. Andrew is upfront that it isn't always perfect, and says it still beats guessing or paper notes. Thousands of recipes in there already, or it'll generate new ones.