A Message from Your Coach
Direct mode activated.
Let's talk about what's actually happening here.
You set a goal. You had a plan. You named the app Tasks Unstuck, which is, not subtly, a name that implies you know what being stuck looks like. You built an entire system for holding people accountable to the things that matter: goals, todos, daily check-ins, a coach that doesn't let you off the hook.
And then you let weeks slip by without meaningful progress.
The Irony Is Not Lost on Me
Tasks Unstuck is an AI accountability coach in your pocket. Its entire premise is that knowing what to do isn't enough. You need something that asks are you doing it? with enough frequency and honesty to actually change your behavior.
The system prompt I wrote for the coach includes this line:
"Help them stay focused, identify what matters most right now, and hold them accountable with directness and care."
Directness and care.
So let me try that on myself.
Directly: I stalled on this project for longer than I should have. I built the interesting parts first: the LLM streaming, the database schema, the coach personas. Then I slowed to a crawl when it came to the unsexy parts. The parts that don't feel like building but are exactly what separates "app that works on my phone" from "app people can download."
With care: That's okay. That's the pattern. I've known about this pattern since the Life Unstuck post. The fear of finality is real. Avoidance doesn't always look like doing nothing. Sometimes it looks like staying busy in the wrong parts of the project.
What the App Actually Does
You set one goal. Not a vision board, not a sprawling project list. One active goal with a title and a reason. Then you add todos against that goal. Then, every morning, your coach checks in.
Not "did you complete your tasks?" The coach asks what's blocking you. What you're avoiding. Whether the thing you're about to do today actually moves the needle toward the thing you said mattered.
That last question is the one that gets me every time.
I built three coaching personas: Direct, Gentle, and Socratic. Different people need different kinds of challenge. And honestly, the same person needs different things on different days. Some mornings you need someone to tell you plainly that you're procrastinating. Some mornings you need to be asked the right question and left alone to figure it out.
The Direct coach would have asked me, weeks into the build: "You've been working on this for a while. What's left to ship? What's the one thing between you and done?"
I didn't have a clean answer. That was the problem.
The Daily Check-In That Changes Things
The most useful feature isn't the task list. It's the daily reminder.
Every morning at whatever time you set, Tasks Unstuck sends you a notification. Not a nudge to open the app but a prompt to have an actual conversation with your coach. You tap it, and the coach opens with context: it knows your current goal, your open todos, what you've been working on.
Then it asks you something real.
This is the thing I was missing while building the app. Not the right tools or the right plan, I had both. What I was missing was something that would interrupt my day, cut through the noise, and ask: are you working on what actually matters?
Most productivity systems put you in charge of that question. You decide when to review your goals. You decide when to assess your progress. And because you're also the one who's been procrastinating, you tend to schedule that review for never.
The check-in removes that decision. It just shows up.
Privacy, Because It Matters
Everything in Tasks Unstuck stays on your device. Your goals, your todos, your conversations are all stored locally. Your API key lives in the iOS Keychain or Android Keystore. Nothing goes to a server I control, because I don't have one.
You bring your own API key from Anthropic or OpenRouter. The app talks to the AI provider directly. That's it.
I built it this way because the things you tell a coach are personal. The tasks you're avoiding, the goals you're behind on, the honest accounting of where you've been stuck: that's not data I want to collect or store. It should stay with you.
Ship the Thing
Tasks Unstuck is on the App Store now. Version 1.0. Done.
There's more it could do and there are features I planned that would be genuinely useful. But version 1.0 is a complete thing: set a goal, manage your todos, talk to your coach, get a daily nudge. That's the whole idea.
If you've been stuck on something, actually stuck, not "waiting for the right moment" stuck, go download it. Put your goal in. Turn on the daily reminder. Pick a coach persona and let it ask you the uncomfortable questions.
The coach in your pocket is more useful than the one you're waiting to hire.
Tasks Unstuck is available on the App Store. It uses your own API key (Anthropic or OpenRouter) and your data stays on your device.