How it works
Three rituals, the blocks between them, and two shortcuts. No projects to configure, no streaks to protect. You open the day, work the blocks, hand off cleanly between them, and close it. Here is exactly what that looks like.
Ten minutes at the start of the day. Pull work from the backlog, drop it onto the hours, and mark every block deep or shallow — the choice is required, because it decides how hard the app protects the block. Your calendar's events sit on the same timeline as context you can't move. Empty hours aren't free time; they're unclaimed, so you claim them or fence them off.
Start a block and the window steps aside. What's left is a menu-bar timer carrying the time remaining and whether the work is deep or shallow. If the block has a focus profile attached, its blocklisted apps and browser tabs close as it starts — with a notice explaining each one. There is no pause button: time runs on the wall clock, and quitting the app doesn't stop it.
Every block ends at a short popup you can't click away from. Did the task finish? If a deep block was on either side of the switch, you write one line about where you left it — that line is what stops the last task bleeding into the next. Deep blocks also ask for a one-tap rating while the work is still warm, rather than reconstructing it at midnight.
At the end of the day, a short close. Every block gets a verdict — done, or pushed back to the backlog for tomorrow. Every note you captured mid-block gets resolved. Then the day is finalised: its numbers freeze into a snapshot, the timeline locks, and you land on a screen that says the day is over. Done means closed.
The block, up close
Uninterrupted concentration, 45 minutes at minimum. Settling in costs 15–25 minutes, so a shorter deep block is mostly ramp-up — and earns no depth credit in the score.
Email, admin, catch-up. 30 minutes at minimum, batched into their own blocks so they don't leak into the deep ones. Drawn with a dashed edge, everywhere in the app.
Turn it on and the app holds a pause before your next block: 20% of the deep time you just worked, 15% for shallow. You can't shorten it. That's the point of it.
Both exist for the same reason: a thought that arrives mid-block shouldn't cost you the block. Write it down, keep working, deal with it at shutdown — where the ritual won't let you close the day until you have. Everything else is a click, on purpose.
Set a few goals for the week and attach work to them. When the last working day shuts down, the week closes with it — and a closed week is read-only, permanently. You can't reach back and tidy your own history.
Forget to shut down? The next morning Conberate offers to catch up: resolve yesterday's leftovers, close it properly, then get on with today. It offers once, and you can decline.
A tool, not a coach
Conberate measures the day and shows you the arithmetic. What you do about it is not its business.
Chips on the planning toolbar flag when you've scheduled more deep work than you sustain, when one deep block runs past 90 minutes, or when the day spills past your working hours. Nothing is moved for you. Conberate never reschedules your day.
Focus capacity is learned from your own history — the deep hours you actually sustain — and reported with a confidence band, never as a target. If you're a night owl who has parked every deep block before noon, it says so once and drops it.
Insights need at least ten days of data, at least three samples on either side of any comparison, and a gap wide enough not to be noise. Every one names the number of days it stands on. Three days can't tell you that Tuesdays are your best day.
Free while in beta · macOS 14+