morning yoga 7am every weekday
captured. classifying.
01capture
Get the thing in your head out, now.
One bar. One keystroke. No follow-up questions on the capture path, ever. A sentence, a paragraph, a pasted URL, a long-press for voice.
φρήν · an older word for the mindbeta
An alignment engine for one mind.
A calm alignment engine for one mind. Catches thoughts at the speed they arrive, organizes them quietly in the background, and surfaces only what matters today.
one keystroke to capture·no tags, no fields, no triage·private to one person
01one bar. all content.
↳convert to task inwork
02AI suggests; you decide.
how it works
Three steps the user does not perform.
The interface earns its emotional weight through warmth, quiet, and confident typography — not through asking the user to file, tag, or triage.
7:42morning yoga 7am every weekday
morning yogahealth · routine
02classify
A quiet hand on the back.
The thought becomes a task in Work, or a note in Health, or a draft of a goal — sorted in the background while you weren't looking. Visible only as outcome.
today
review the offer letter
walk before the 2pm
morning yoga
+ 2 more, hidden
03surface
Only what matters today.
Open the app tomorrow and see three to five things — not a wall of everything. Skipped tasks lose visibility instead of nagging.
the surface
A diary page, not a dashboard.
Today’s date is the loudest thing on the screen. The rest is quiet eyebrows announcing each shift.
thursday7 may
today
review the offer letter
walk before the 2pmwork
reply to mara, one paragraph
captured
7:42morning yoga 7am every weekdaymake routine · health
8:18that book mara mentioned — “the inner game”save note · library
wed
6
6
thu7 may
fri
8
8
morning
stretch + tea
read 20m
5/7 this week · 18/30 this month
evening
close laptop by 10
what’s on your mind?⌘J
date · loudest on theprinciples
Six rules. They shape every decision.
- 01
Capture is the floor.
Every other surface is downstream. If capture is unavailable for a heartbeat, the product has failed that moment.
- 02
AI is a quiet hand on the back.
It moves things while you aren't looking. Never narrates, summarizes, or asks for confirmation in the capture path.
- 03
Show less, reveal more.
Default views are sparse. The active slice is three to five items, not twenty. Density lives one tap deep.
- 04
The system removes decisions, not adds them.
No tag pickers at capture. No required fields. No triage rituals. Classification is the system's job.
- 05
Personal time-scale.
Goals are three to six months, not sprints. Skipped tasks lose visibility instead of nagging.
- 06
Calmness made visible.
Restraint is the aesthetic. No counters, badges, scores, streaks. Warmth, quiet, and confident typography.
what it isn’t
Eight traps. Designed away from.
Each entry below names a product we admire and the trap we refuse to step into.
- NotionSchema as product.Phren never asks 'what database is this?'
- TodoistGamification.Karma points, streaks, productivity scores. We don't measure you.
- SunsamaDaily ritual as cost.A fifteen-minute morning ceremony is the wrong shape for a full life.
- Roam, LogseqGraph anxiety.Bidirectional links surface complexity instead of hiding it.
- Things 3Beautiful but single-mode.Thinking should sit next to doing — under one goal, not two apps.
- Mem, ReflectBusy AI.Suggestion chips on every item. We surface AI only when there's something to say.
- Apple RemindersNo point of view.Generic to the point of forgettable.
- ChatGPT-as-PMChat as primitive.Capturing a thought should be one keystroke, not a turn-based conversation.
voice
A thoughtful friend who edits before speaking.
not this
“Welcome back, champion! Ready to crush today?”
“You have 12 unprocessed items in your inbox.”
“Great job completing your task!”
this
“You mentioned distraction four times this week.”
“Reschedule, or let it go?”
“Nothing to process.”
questions
What people ask before they sign up.
Short answers. The longer version lives in the manifesto.
- 01
What is Phren?
Phren is a calm alignment engine for one mind. You capture a thought in one keystroke; an AI quietly classifies it in the background — as a task, a note, a goal candidate, or a saved resource — and surfaces only what matters today. It is built for makers and knowledge workers who think faster than any tagging system can keep up with.
- 02
How is Phren different from Notion or Obsidian?
Notion and Obsidian treat schema as product — the database, the tag system, the graph. Phren treats capture as product. There is no database to pick, no tag to apply, no graph to maintain. Classification happens after capture, in the background, while the user is doing something else.
- 03
Does Phren replace Todoist or Things?
For one person, often yes. Phren has tasks and routines, but no streaks, no karma, no productivity dashboard. Skipped tasks lose visibility instead of nagging. For shared household lists or team work, a dedicated task manager remains the right tool.
- 04
How does the AI work?
A small language model classifies each capture by type (task, note, goal candidate, saved resource), routes it to a corner of life (Health, Work, Finance, Study, Projects, Library, Personal), and attempts to attach it to an existing goal if one fits. All three passes happen in under a second, and the user sees only the outcome — never the process.
- 05
Does Phren train AI on my data?
No. Your captures and goals are between you and the system. Phren uses small language models for classification, intent, and voice transcription; it does not contribute your content to model training.
- 06
Is Phren for teams?
No. Phren is for one person at a time. There are no teammates, no shared lists, no assigned tasks. It is personal in the strictest sense — a private surface between someone and their own mind.
- 07
How much does Phren cost?
Phren is a single subscription at $5.99/month after a free trial. There is no free tier with limits designed to upsell, and no enterprise plan.
- 08
Can I capture by voice?
Yes. Voice is a first-class input mode. Long-press the capture bar and speak; transcription runs through a small Whisper-class model, the same classifier processes the result, and the captured thought lands as if it had been typed.
- 09
Is Phren good for ADHD?
Many users with ADHD find streak-based and ritual-heavy productivity apps stressful. Phren removes both: no score, no streak, no morning ceremony. Capture is one keystroke. Skipped tasks soften rather than nag. The daily view is three to five things.
begin
Get the thing in your head out.
One bar. One keystroke. The system does the rest.