outcomes follow attention, and we refuse to fake the order.

most apps count what you didn't do. this one watches what you do notice. the interval — the time between two cigarettes — is the unit. it is open, or it has just closed. the home screen does not show a clock, because a clock is a score in disguise.

the numbers exist. they live in /history. look at them when you want to. don't make them the thing.

cigarettes do not give pleasure. they relieve a withdrawal they themselves create. the wave you feel is your own body asking for what was taken from it. the wave will pass either way — through you, or through a cigarette.

so: no streak. no days clean. no failure. no red. no notifications. equal-weight buttons for I waited and I smoked. attention is the medicine. the rest is theatre.

three findings drive the architecture. bouton (2004) — extinction does not erase the old memory; it builds a competing one, and the competing memory must be built in the context where smoking happens. brewer (2011) — attention to the urge breaks the urge→smoke link even when abstinence does not move. neff — self-compassion is protective against the shame→relapse loop the standard apps produce on the day you slip.

what the body does

• 20 minutes. heart rate drops. blood pressure starts to fall.
• 12 hours. carbon monoxide in the blood returns to normal.
• 2–3 days. nicotine fully out. taste and smell sharpen. withdrawal peaks here and tapers.
• 2 weeks. circulation improves. lung function measurably rises.
• 1–9 months. cilia regrow. cough decreases. shortness of breath decreases.
• 1 year. excess risk of coronary heart disease cut in half.
• 5 years. stroke risk reduced toward that of a non-smoker.
• 10 years. lung cancer mortality risk roughly half that of a continuing smoker.

(U.S. Surgeon General; Benowitz, Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, 2009.)

so the daily line in this app, every third day, is identity, in present tense. you are someone who notices.

tombor (2015) found that the strongest single predictor of long-term abstinence is not willpower, not motivation, not method. it is whether you begin to think of yourself as someone who does not smoke — early, and without irony.

an optional companion breath. a soft slow respiration in your ear that rises and falls with the ring. co-regulation through audible breathing is one of the fastest nervous-system down-regulators we have (porges, polyvagal). off by default. turn it on in settings if you want it. only the two-minute branch — never on the street.

v1.1. designed now, native build next. consent, not interruption.