Forest

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Build me a focus timer that replaces Forest: a session I do not want to break, a record of what I did, and something growing.

Read this first, because it is the honest part: the money paid for the original plants real trees through a forestry partner. No home-made version replaces that. If that is why you bought it, keep buying it — or build this and set up a standing donation, which will plant more trees than the app ever did.

STACK
- A PWA that works offline, or a native app if you want the screen-time integration properly
- Local storage first: IndexedDB on device, or SQLite if native
- An optional server for sync and shared sessions: Node 20+ with Fastify, SQLite through better-sqlite3
- Caddy in front

THE DATA MODEL
- sessions: id, planned_minutes, actual_minutes, started_at, ended_at, outcome, tag_id, note, device — outcome is completed, abandoned or interrupted
- tags: id, name, colour, icon
- settings: session length, break length, long-break interval, sounds, strictness
- streaks and totals computed from sessions at query time, never stored
- rooms: id, code, host_id, planned_minutes, starts_at, status — for a shared session
- room_members: room_id, user_id, joined_at, outcome
- Every session recorded, including the abandoned ones. A tool that only logs successes is a tool that tells you nothing

THE TIMER
- Pick a length, pick a tag, start. Two taps, no configuration in the way
- A visible representation that grows — a tree, a bar, a circle filling. It must be legible at a glance from across a desk
- Runs correctly in the background: compute from timestamps, never from a counter that ticks. A timer that loses ten minutes because the phone slept is a timer nobody trusts
- Continues across a reload, a lock screen and a browser restart, because the state is two instants and not an interval
- A gentle sound and a notification at the end, both optional
- Break timer afterwards, and a longer break every few sessions

THE COMMITMENT, WHICH IS THE MECHANIC
- Leaving the session should cost something, and the cost has to be real without being punitive
- On a phone, detect leaving the app where the platform allows it and end the session as abandoned, with the reason recorded
- On a desktop, use the page visibility and focus events — and be honest that this is easily circumvented. The point is friction and a record, not enforcement
- A strict mode that cannot be stopped early, and a normal mode that can with a reason. Offer both; the strict one is the reason the mechanic works and the lenient one is why people keep using it
- Never shame the user. An abandoned session is data, not a failure, and the interface treats it that way

WHAT IT SHOWS
- Today: sessions, focused minutes, by tag
- The week and the month as a heatmap of focused minutes per day
- Time by tag over any period, so 'where did the week go' is answerable
- Best hours of day, computed from your own completed sessions
- Streaks, with an honest definition written next to them and a rest day that does not break one — a streak that punishes a Sunday is a streak that gets abandoned in week three
- Everything computed at query time from sessions

TOGETHER, WHICH IS WHAT MAKES IT STICK
- A room with a short code: everyone joins, the host starts, and everyone's timer runs together
- If one person leaves, the others see it. That is the whole social mechanic and it is enough
- No leaderboard, no points, no competition. Shared attention, not a game
- Works with two people and with twenty, over the same simple polling endpoint

BLOCKING, IF YOU WANT IT
- A browser extension blocking a list of sites during a session, with a plain page saying how long is left
- The list is yours, editable, and there is a way out that takes three deliberate clicks

WHAT NOT TO BUILD
- No account required. The app works entirely offline, forever
- No analytics inside a focus app. Not one event — what somebody is concentrating on is nobody's business
- No streak notification designed to make somebody feel bad. That is a dark pattern with a plant on it

OPERATIONS
- If there is a server: .env with DATABASE_PATH, BASE_URL, SESSION_SECRET; migrations on boot; nightly backup
- On device: export every session as CSV in two taps

WHAT MATTERS MOST
Timestamp-based timing and the honest record. Get the background behaviour right first — start a session, lock the phone for twenty minutes, and confirm the count is exact — then log abandoned sessions as carefully as completed ones. And go and set up that donation.

Give me the app, the sync server if you want one, and a README with build steps and the note about real trees kept at the top.