Grounded

A to-do app that doesn't believe you.

Most to-do apps are neutral ledgers — they record intent and never object when you ignore it. Grounded is an enforcement layer: it holds a model of what you committed to, notices when reality diverges, and imposes escalating consequences you agreed to in advance.

Design axiom: the checkbox is the enemy. Every feature exists because self-reported completion is worthless to someone trying to stop lying to themselves.

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Repository

frontend/     Flutter app (Android · iOS · Web · Windows)

See frontend/CLAUDE.md for the architecture and conventions, and frontend/design.md for the design language.

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The model

Three primitives; everything else is derived.

Primitive	Meaning
Commitment	Something you said you'd do. Has a due window, a class, and a proof requirement.
Debt	The weight of what you've missed — a decaying, weighted score rather than a count.
Standing	Good → Warned → Grounded → Lockdown. Derived from debt; decides what the app lets you do.

Streaks reward perfection and collapse permanently on one miss. Debt is continuous, forgiving in shape, hard to ignore, and gives you a way back.

Goals contain commitments — "Workout" holds "Monday shoulders". A goal never carries debt; the tasks inside it do.

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What makes it different

• Due windows, not due dates. Mon 06:00–08:00 can actually close. A miss is a permanent event, never a silent rollover to today.
• Capacity blocking. Chronic overdue is usually overcommitment misdiagnosed as laziness. The app plans against what you historically complete, learns your per-category estimation multiplier, and refuses plans that don't fit.
• Excuses get clustered. "'Too tired' has appeared 14 times this month, 11 of them on gym days, 9 of them after 7pm. Consider moving gym to morning."
• Proof of completion. Honour · Photo · Timer · Location · Health · Witness. Completing outside the window records as late complete — distinct in history, and it never reduces debt to zero.
• A live runner. Starting a task takes over the screen, keeps time from wall-clock so screen-off can't cheat it, and pauses when you leave the app.
• Plyometrics is where it stops you. Weekly ground-contact ceilings and enforced recovery gaps — connective tissue doesn't recover on a motivation schedule.

And what keeps it usable

An app built on guilt has an obvious failure mode: the people who need it most delete it during their worst week. So — rationed amnesty tokens, sick and travel mode that pauses debt entirely, a tone slider hard-capped so no copy ever attacks the person rather than the behaviour, and distress detection that drops the strict persona completely when debt spikes while engagement and readiness fall. Strictness is never the response to someone who is actually struggling.

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Running it

cd frontend
cp .env.example .env      # then point it at your backend
flutter pub get
flutter run

Requires Flutter with Dart ^3.6.2.

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Status

Frontend scaffold complete: the full architecture, the debt/standing/capacity/ integrity engines, and every screen in the MVP cut. The backend is not in this repository yet — CommsDirections.dart defines the contract it needs to satisfy.