Does Ember cost anything?

Ember is free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, with no in-app purchases today. Sync and Plan with Ember need a free account.

ember

Ember · your AI planning assistant

Say what you want. Ember plans the week. The day bends with you.

Tell Ember what this week is for. It asks the questions a good planner would, drafts the plan around your real calendar, and commits it when you say so. When the morning doesn’t survive contact with real life, it re-plans the rest of the day from right now. Momentum, not streaks, so there is never anything to break.

Plan with Ember Watch a day bend

iPhone & iPad Works offline No streaks, ever

Every planner on the App Store assumes the day will go to plan. Real days don’t — so Ember is the one built for what happens next.

Why the last five apps failed

It was never that you didn’t want it badly enough.

You’ve done this before. You found a beautiful app. You spent a happy Sunday setting it up — projects, tags, colours, a system that would finally hold. For nine days it was perfect. Then you missed a day. The streak went to zero, and the app that was supposed to help you turned into a small daily accusation on your home screen — so you moved it to the third page, then deleted it, and the whole thing became one more piece of evidence in a case you’ve been building against yourself since school.

Here’s what nobody tells you: the app was badly designed, and you were the one who paid for it. Almost everything on the App Store is built on four assumptions that quietly do not hold for real people with real days.

Streaks

They assume consistency is the goal. For you the streak isn’t motivation — it’s a fuse. One bad day, and the number that was carrying you becomes the reason you never open the app again.

The infinite list

They assume the hard part is remembering. It isn’t — you remember everything, constantly, at 3 a.m. The hard part is beginning, and a list of 84 items makes beginning harder.

Red for overdue

They assume urgency helps. An alarm you can’t switch off doesn’t create urgency — it creates avoidance, and then you stop opening the app that’s shouting at you.

The plan is sacred

They assume a plan, once made, describes the day. So by 11 a.m. the plan is fiction, the fiction is evidence against you, and the only move left is abandoning it — and the app with it.

Plan with Ember

A planner you talk to. A day that bends.

Planning is a conversation, not a form. You say what you want; Ember does the arranging. And when a morning fails — the moment every other planner abandons you — one tap re-plans the rest of the day from the actual time on the clock. It keeps what still fits, moves what can move, and tells you honestly what it dropped.

Say it. Ember plans it.

Tell it what the week is for, in your own words. It asks what a good planner would — when you work, what is fixed, what matters — drafts a week with room to breathe, and shows every change before anything is written. It remembers your logistics, so next week’s conversation is shorter.

Apply today, from now

Tell Day chat what happened, or tap Apply today. Not from 9 a.m., not from an ideal you: from the wall clock, and from whatever the day has already done. The morning is never held against you.

Rescue says what it dropped

A day that shrank by two hours has to lose something. Rescue picks what still fits, names what fell out and where it went — because a planner that pretends everything still fits is lying to you.

Just start

One big button starts a 25-minute focus block on your next step. Distracted? One tap hands the time back, at no cost. The gap between deciding and starting stays one tap wide.

Tuesday 9:00 am

now

Deep work — portfolio

9:00 · 90 min

Email sweep

10:30 · 30 min

Call — accountant

11:30 · 30 min

Tax return, part 2

1:00 · 60 min

Gym

3:00 · 60 min

Afternoon re-planned from 11:04.

Dropped one thing: Tax return → Thu 9:00. The rest fits.

Live re-creation · demonstration data

Resting

The mechanism · momentum, not streaks

The lowest state is called Resting.

Not Inactive. Not Low. Not a red zone. Momentum is a rolling average, not a chain — a good day lifts it, a bad day dents it, and nothing can break it. An ember dims. It doesn’t break. That single design decision is the whole app.

One block in

Starting is worth more than finishing.

Starting a block scores 12 points. Finishing a whole project scores 10. That’s not a bug — in the behavioural literature the usual bottleneck isn’t motivation or memory, it’s getting started. So the scoring reinforces the behaviour that’s actually hard.

A few honest days

Distractions cost nothing. Ever.

The moment an honest self-report lowers a number, people stop reporting honestly and the data becomes worthless. The Distracted button is free to press — it just quietly hands you your time back.

The good stretch

Absence and failure never look the same.

A day you didn’t open the app is drawn as a gap in the line — never a zero. Life happened. The app declines to render it as a verdict on you, which is why you can still open it on the bad weeks.

Where it goes

Blow on it, and it comes back.

After a break, one 25-minute block starts pulling the line up again. No apology tour, no rebuilding a number from zero. That’s what the name means: an ember is what a fire looks like when you’re not tending it — and it takes almost nothing to bring back.

Three months, honestly drawn

The line has gaps in it — three weeks where things fell apart — and it still climbs.

In a streak app, this same quarter reads as four separate failures. Here it reads as what it was: a life slowly coming back, with interruptions. “Active on 13 of the last 14 days” is a count, not a streak — it cannot be broken, only slowly changed.

points for starting a block

Momentum.swift, line 9

for finishing a whole project — upside down, on purpose

streaks to break · points lost, ever

usable offline, no account

House rules

Five rules the app is built never to break.

Not a philosophy page — constraints in the code. Each one exists because its opposite is how the last app lost you.

Rule 01

Logging a distraction can never cost you points.

The instant honesty lowers a number, honesty stops. The Distracted button is free to press — it just quietly hands you your time back.

Rule 02

Absence and failure must not look the same.

A day you didn’t use the app is drawn as a gap in the line, never as a zero. The chart refuses to render a verdict on you.

Rule 03

The lowest state is called “Resting.”

Not Inactive, not Low, not a red zone. This is the difference between a dashboard you can open on a bad week and one you avoid for a month.

Rule 04

The plan bends before you do.

When the day breaks, the plan re-forms around the time that’s actually left — and says what it dropped. A missed morning is a scheduling fact, never a moral one.

Rule 05

Five active projects. Then it says something.

Over the cap you get a calm inline note — never a block, never a warning triangle. The board still takes the sixth. It’s your life; it just tells you the truth about it.

None of this is a new idea

People worked this out a century ago.
Software just stopped listening.

1890

“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”

William James · The Principles of Psychology

So we builtThe Distracted button. Attention wanders — that’s not the failure, that’s the job. Pressing it costs nothing, because James was describing bringing it back as the skill.

1971

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Herbert A. Simon · Nobel laureate in economics

So we builtA planner that fits things to the time that exists, holds five active projects, and then says something calm. Your 84-item list isn’t a plan — it’s a tax on the one resource you’re short of.

1957

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower · speech, Washington

So we builtPlan with Ember. The plan is a draft that the assistant keeps redrafting with you as the week moves; the planning conversation is the product. A plan that cannot change is the one you abandon.

1989

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Annie Dillard · The Writing Life

So we builtThe dashboard — not a score to chase, a record of days kept somewhere you can bear to look at it. Three months of an honest line is evidence a streak counter can never give you.

The coach

On Sunday, it writes you the truth.

The Coach reads your actual week — first touches, finished blocks, the shifts, the parked distractions, the wins — and writes what the charts can’t say. Every fact is computed from your data before a word is written; the writing only connects the dots. No pep talk. No “you’ve got this.” The kind of noticing you’d pay a coach for, from data you were never punished for producing.

Day & week reads Facts first, prose second Yours to delete

This week · read by Ember

SAMPLE · WRITTEN FROM DEMONSTRATION DATA

Local-first

Yours, even with the signal off.

Every tap writes to your device immediately — on a plane, in a basement, on the subway. There is no spinner between you and your own plan, because a planner that stalls on a bad connection is a planner you stop trusting.

Sync keeps your iPhone and iPad holding the same records, each written locally first. Neither is the companion of the other. And your data exports in one tap, because it’s yours.

Everywhere you look

The plan, without opening the app.

Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets with real checkboxes you can tick in place. A Live Activity for the block that is running. Control Center controls. A layout built for iPad as well as iPhone.

The plan lives where your eyes already go, so starting is never more than a glance away.

Pricing

Free. The assistant too.

Ember is free on the App Store, with no in-app purchases today. Everything on your device works without an account; a free account adds sync and the assistant.

On your device

$0 / no account

Download it and start. No email, no onboarding survey.

Threads, Daily, Week, Calendar, Dashboard
Focus blocks, Distracted, Park and Sit
Widgets, Live Activities, Control Center
Works fully offline

Get Ember

The assistant With a free account

$0 / sign in

Everything on your device, plus the parts that need our server.

Plan with Ember — the week, drafted with you
Day chat, Apply today and Rescue
Sync between iPhone and iPad
Export or delete everything from Settings

Plan with Ember

The assistant runs on our server using Anthropic’s Claude, and nothing is sent to it until you ask it to plan.

Coming to the App Store

Ember: Plan Your Future

Your AI planning assistant, for iPhone and iPad. Submitted to Apple and on its way to the App Store.

iPhone & iPad iOS 17 or later Free

Questions people actually ask

The honest answers.

What does Plan with Ember actually do?

You say what you want from the week, in your own words. Ember asks the questions a good planner would — when you work, what is already fixed, what matters most, what is realistic — then drafts the week around your real calendar and shows you exactly what will change before anything is written.

Nothing is committed until you say so. It remembers your logistics, like your working hours and the gym on Tuesdays, so next week’s conversation is shorter.

What happens when I miss the whole morning?

Tell Day chat what happened, or tap Apply today, and Ember re-plans from now. It rebuilds the rest of the day from the current time, keeps what still fits, moves what can move, and tells you plainly what it dropped and where it went. No red, no penalty, no reset — the morning is a scheduling fact, not a moral one.

Do I need an account?

No. Download it and start — no email, no onboarding survey. Ember is local-first: everything lives on your device. A free account adds sync between your iPhone and iPad, and Plan with Ember, the planning assistant.

Does it work offline?

Completely. Every action writes to your device first and never waits on a network call. Planes, tunnels, basements, dead zones — identical behaviour. This isn’t a fallback mode; it’s how the app is built, and syncing was added on top afterwards.

What happens if I stop using it for two weeks?

Nothing bad. There is no streak to lose and no number that resets. Your momentum drifts gently toward Resting, and those two weeks appear on the chart as a gap — not as a row of zeros. When you come back, one 25-minute block starts pulling the line up again. This is the single most deliberate design decision in the whole app.

What does the AI actually see?

Your goals, threads, to-dos and schedule — the things a plan is made of — sent to our server and on to Anthropic’s Claude to generate your plan, and nothing else. Nothing is sent until you ask Ember to plan. Facts about your week are computed as plain numbers first; the model connects them into prose. Your data stays yours: it lives on your device, syncs through your account, and exports or deletes in one tap.

Is Ember a medical app?

No. Ember is a planning and productivity app. It is not a medical device and makes no health claims.

What it is: an app whose design decisions were made deliberately, informed by behavioural research on motivation and getting started.

Who is this actually for?

People who have already tried the beautiful apps, the paper planner, the wall of sticky notes and the app with the tree that dies. People who don’t need another system — they need the gap between deciding and starting to get smaller, and a plan that survives contact with a real day.

We designed it with people who find it hard to get started, including people with ADHD, and it works for anyone whose to-do list has stopped helping.

Lit

The next twenty‑five minutes
are available.

That’s all this needs from you. Not a new system, not a better week, not a version of yourself that has finally got it together. One block — Ember takes it from there.

Get Ember for iPhone & iPad Open Ember in your browser

Free to download iPhone & iPad No streaks to break