whelton

As a solo developer, I avoided building a desktop app for months, mainly due to worrying about the maintenance overhead. I built the desktop app within a single day with ToDesktop Builder, and there has been no notable maintenance/overhead since (other than me over-engineering some features/enhancements).

ToDesktop's deployments are super smooth. The API and docs are pleasant to work with, which made integrating Conjure's habit and time tracking through the menu bar, native notifications, and multiple windows fairly straightforward.

I did worry about the performance and resource consumption with Electron-based apps, but the Apple M1/M2 Chips absolved that concern. Most of my users (mainly Mac and Windows) don't seem to mind/care/notice the Electron nature of the app.

Disclaimer: I'm also friends with the founder, he's from the same town as me in Ireland.

I've focused more on metrics, behavior, and achievement, with a rules engine for automatically completing habits and goals off those.

As you identified, the biggest obstacle for users has been the friction and overhead of tracking at scale. Integrations and automations have decreased that a lot. Transforming unstructured input through AI is super promising, and probably will make it more accessible to people who are less of the power-user/productivity-junkie persona type.

Building it solo and bootstrapped I ensure I track a minimum amount of time every day to maintain momentum.

It's focused on personal objectives, habits, time and behaviour tracking. It has also has an API and several integrations (including Health Kit).

For some of the methodologies you can implement with it (eg time based goals and habits), check out the guides[1].

I explored a variety of things prior including Habitica, Beeminder, Forte, Everyday, Nomie (all excellent and strong in various dimensions).

Some of the use cases I had were:

- Be real time across web and mobile

- Keyboard shortcuts and a command Menu

- Automatically completing habits through rules and automation

- Have time based Habits (eg do 30 mins of reading a day)

- Habits be linked to Objectives/Goals and personal KPIs

- API and integrations with Apple Health, Zapier and others

- Variations of Habit Completions (eg Sick Days, Emergency Modes, etc)

- Different views (eg Day View, Week View)

- Dashboards and reporting

I’ve been using Conjure to build Conjure for myself these past 2 years, bootstrapped and solo.

It fits my daily needs and those of a growing community of users, but I learned in the process, different solutions work best for different people. Some people want a very simple solutions to track 2-3 habits a day, others want to track 18 things a day in a sophisticated manner.

Having worked with Vital’s API and Webhooks, I am so excited for our use of it in Conjure to go live. I really love their normalization of data (such as sleep[1]).

I build Conjure[0], a habits and goals platform, solo and bootstrapped, and have worked on it for 496 days in a row (at the time of writing) and have tracked over 3000 hours of development on it.

I have a daily habit[1] to do at least 1 minute of work a day (also known as a 'Habit Emergency Mode') to maintain a sense of momentum and progress. This helps me through my 'off days', have no 'zero days', and reduce negative emotions associated with the process.

Starting off, I had to manage my expectations and accept it may be a 2 year journey before I started getting any traction, and would commit to 1000 hours before I allowed myself to second-guess myself. I used objectives (within Conjure itself) to track these various time-based objectives.

As you can't always control the outcome, but you can control the process, I focus on making the activity the reward and enjoying the process[2] as best I can, even if I have to go slower at times.

Keeping in mind "you are a product of your environment, " I generally try to consume material and be around people with similar values and ambitions for motivation and peer accountability. I have tracked personal KPIs at various times to ensure I do this enough.