Stop planning your work. Start finishing it.
StayFocus is a smart focus timer for Pomodoro-style deep work: one task, one timed session, and a place to dump every thought that pulls you away. Distraction does not lose to a longer to-do list. It loses to a system that makes you start.
No card required · 14-day free trial
3 hours.
Zero real progress.
Not because you're lazy…
…but because your attention leaked away, drop by drop, all day.
"I'll focus right after I check this one thing."
You've checked "this one thing" fifty times today 💀
Being busy isn't getting things done.
You don't need more time.
You need a way to protect you from yourself.
Why it works
Most productivity tools help you plan. This one helps you do.
To-do apps are great at collecting tasks, and terrible at getting you to start one. StayFocus is built backwards from that: a smart focus timer for Pomodoro-style deep work, a quiet place to offload whatever distracts you, and small experiments you can actually keep up. Less organizing your work. More doing it.
A big goal is easy to quit. A two-week experiment isn't. You either showed up or you didn't, and the timer doesn't let you pretend.
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Not a task manager.
It won't hold your endless list. It gets you to finish what matters today.
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Not a social network.
Sharing your work in public is there to keep you honest, not to entertain you.
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Not a life overhaul.
No grand transformation. Just small, repeatable wins that quietly add up.
Product
The whole app is one quiet loop you can actually keep up with.
Five small pieces, and that's the point. A thought pulls you away, so you park it and keep going. You sit down for one smart Pomodoro-style focus timer block. When it ends, you reflect on paper. Over a couple of weeks, tiny experiments show you what actually helps you protect deep work. And because other builders can see you, you show up.
Where you left off
Smart Focus Timer
One task. One deep work block. A clock that won't argue.
Pick the thing, set a Pomodoro-style length, hit start. No tab-switching, no "just five minutes" on your phone. While the smart timer runs, the only job is the one in front of you, and a focus block you actually finish beats a to-do list you never touch.
Brain Dump
A thought hijacks you mid-task? Park it.
You're working, and your brain serves up something that suddenly feels urgent. Drop it here in one line and keep going. It'll still be there when you're done, you just don't have to chase it right now.
Reflections
Get the noise out of your head.
Every session leaves a residue: small wins, frustrations, half-finished ideas. Write them down somewhere that's just for you. It isn't journaling for its own sake, it's how a cluttered head turns into a clear next move.
Experiments
Try it for two weeks. Then decide.
Big promises are easy to quit, so don't make one. Pick a tiny change, run it for a set number of days, and look at what actually happened. There's no pass or fail here, just proof of what works for you.
Live Map
Other builders can see you're working.
Start a session and you show up on the live map with everyone else who's heads-down right now. It's quiet pressure, the good kind, much harder to drift onto your phone when people can see you're mid-block.
Open the live mapAI workflow
Already thinking out loud with AI? Don't lose it.
Some of your best planning happens in a chat window. Connect your assistant to stayfocus and let it drop things exactly where they belong, so a good conversation becomes real work instead of a closed tab.
Brain Dump
Caught an idea mid-chat? Save it.
When a conversation sparks something, have your assistant send it straight to your brain dump. You keep the momentum without breaking flow.
Reflections
Vent first, keep the takeaway.
When you talk something through and it finally clicks, save the conclusion as a reflection, so the insight doesn't vanish the moment you close the tab.
Focus
From spiralling to one clear block.
Ask your AI to shrink the overwhelm down to a single concrete step, then start a focus session on it right away.
Review
Close the loop at the end.
After you ship, have AI help you name what worked and what didn't. Small, honest reviews are how tiny tweaks turn into steady output.
In the open
Built in the open, by people who needed it
No customer logos and no invented quotes. These are the counts behind the public directories, and every one of them is a page you can open and check.
- builders with a public profile
- 46 builders with a public profile
- projects shipping in public
- 38 projects shipping in public
- focus sessions finished this week
- 5 focus sessions finished this week
- hours of deep work logged
- 139 hours of deep work logged
hey, i'm zakaria. before stayfocus, i kept running into the same problem every day.
i'd open my laptop ready to work. everything was set up. the task was right in front of me. and then... nothing.
i'd tell myself i'd start in a minute. pick up my phone. check one thing. then another. then suddenly an hour was gone.
some days the problem wasn't that i had nothing to do. it was the opposite. i had too many important things to do. too many ideas, too many tasks, too many directions. instead of working, i'd spend my time trying to decide where to start.
and even when i finally started a focus session, my brain would find a way out. a random idea would show up and suddenly feel urgent, important enough to stop everything else. a few minutes later, i'd be completely off track again.
i read the books. i tried the systems. i experimented with productivity apps and planning methods. but eventually i realized something: my problem wasn't a lack of information. i already knew what i should be doing. i just struggled to sit down and actually do it.
that's why i built stayfocus. not to manage more tasks. not to create another complicated productivity system. just to make it easier to do the one thing that matters most:
start.
Pricing
Invest in your craft, not your distractions.
Cheaper than the apps fighting for your attention, and far more rewarding. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial. No card required.
Monthly
$7 /mo
Flexible, billed every month.
Less than two coffees a month.
- Unlimited focus sessions
- Unlimited tiny experiments
- Live builder map & streaks
- Connect Claude, ChatGPT & MCP assistants
- Cancel anytime
- 14-day free trial
Yearly
Recommended$59 /yr
For builders in it for the long run. A full year of focus, locked in.
Save ~30% vs monthly
- Unlimited focus sessions
- Unlimited tiny experiments
- Live builder map & streaks
- Connect Claude, ChatGPT & MCP assistants
- Cancel anytime
- 14-day free trial
Questions
Last questions before you start.
Straight answers to the things people ask before their first session.
What is StayFocus, and how is it different from a to-do list or a Pomodoro timer?
StayFocus, available at stayfocus.now, is a smart focus timer for Pomodoro-style deep work. A normal Pomodoro app is a private 25-minute beep, and a to-do list just stores tasks. StayFocus adds the things that actually change behavior: your focus sessions can show up on a live map so someone can see you're working, your brain dump catches distractions, and tiny experiments (7, 14, or 30 days) help you learn what improves your output. It's not a task manager and not a social network, just a way to make solo focus harder to skip.
What does a typical session look like in the app?
It's one simple loop. Drop ideas, tasks, and links into your brain dump so nothing gets lost. When you're ready, start a focus session, pick a task and a duration, and the countdown holds the boundary so you stop negotiating with yourself. Turn a recurring idea into a tiny experiment with a real deadline. Jot a quick reflection on what worked afterwards. Then post an update when you ship, even something small counts.
Do I have to share my sessions publicly?
No. Sharing is the default because accountability is the point, but private sessions and ghost mode are one click away in your settings. Your brain dump, reflections, and experiments are always just for you, only your focus sessions ever appear on the live map, and only if you choose to keep that on.
What counts as a "tiny experiment"?
“Write 200 words a day for 14 days.” “One focused 45-minute session every morning for a week.” A tiny experiment is small, time-bound (7, 14, or 30 days), and clear enough to evaluate. At the end you are not asking whether you became a new person, you are asking what you learned and whether it is worth continuing.
Can I connect StayFocus to Claude or ChatGPT?
Yes. In Settings → Account, you can connect Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, or Claude Desktop over MCP. Once connected, your assistant can capture and manage your brain dump, start and end focus sessions, read and create reflections and projects, and read your experiments and stats, scoped to your account only. It can never see other users' data, billing details, or account credentials, and you can disconnect it at any time.
How does pricing work?
Monthly ($7) and yearly ($59, about 30% cheaper) both start with the same 14-day free trial, no card required. Both include unlimited focus sessions, unlimited experiments, and the live builder map, and you can cancel either plan anytime. When your trial ends, you'll just be asked to pick a plan, your sessions, notes, and history stay exactly as you left them, with no surprise charge.
Will this work if I work alone?
Especially then. The whole point is to make solo work less invisible, the live map gives you the feeling of a shared room, even at 6am at your kitchen table. And everything that keeps you accountable, the timer, the experiments, the notes, works the same whether anyone else is watching or not.
Get started
Start one session. See what changes.
Forty-five minutes from now, you'll either have shipped something, or you won't. There's only one way to find out.
No card required · 14-day free trial