Pomodoro kept cutting me off.
Twenty-five minutes in, the timer would cut me off mid-flow. Flowtime counts up while you focus, then sets a break in proportion. In a browser that has two catches: background tabs slow timers down, and closing the tab loses the session.
The problem, on paper.
Practitioners manually time sessions with phone stopwatches, calculate break durations mentally.
The spec’s test: finish a first full cycle within two minutes of landing.
- 6timer states
- 189unit tests
- ⅕default break
- 2-minutefirst cycle (the target)
Count from a fixed point, and ask instead of guessing.
- Time comes from a timestamp, so a sleeping tab never loses minutes.
- The break follows the focus: a fifth by default, adjustable from a third to an eighth.
- Every state has a name: six of them, so the interface always knows what to show.
- Ask, don’t assume: come back to an unfinished session and Flowtime asks what to do.
Everything stays in your browser.
Sessions, tags, notes, and settings live on your device, with a CSV export. A service worker keeps it working offline. It works from the keyboard and announces changes to screen readers.
Used, not launched.
I use it for my own focused work, and friends have used it too. I didn’t record what changed from what they said, and it isn’t launched or measured yet.
What I’d do next
- Move between devices, keeping local storage as the default.
- Show when you focus best, like the time of day you tend to focus longest.