What has ever made you keep a habit app past week one?

I'm a solo dev. Pixbu goes live on Product Hunt this Sunday, so I would rather ask something useful than pitch.

Every habit tracker I used punished me for missing a day: a red X, a streak back to zero. So in Pixbu the progress bar is a pixel pet. It hatches from an egg, grows and evolves as you do small things for yourself, and when you miss a day nothing dies and nothing resets.

Here is the honest number: most people who install it never come back for a second session. That is on me, not on them.

So the question I keep chewing on: what has ever made YOU keep a habit app past week one? The streak? The design? A person? A reminder that landed at exactly the right minute? Or something nobody builds?

Genuinely curious, especially from people who bounced off every single one of these.