An accountability app with friends and real stakes
Stint is an accountability app for focused work. You join a group taking the same daily focus challenge, everyone pays an entry fee into a shared prize pool, and your devices verify your progress, so nobody has to take your word for it.
What an accountability app does
An accountability app makes a goal visible to someone other than you and adds a consequence for following through or not. Telling no one makes it easy to quit quietly; telling a group, and having your progress show up for them, makes showing up the easier choice.
The kinds of accountability
- Self-tracking: streaks and checklists. Useful, but the only person who notices a missed day is you.
- A partner or a group: someone expects to hear from you. It works as long as everyone keeps reporting honestly.
- Stakes: something you value is on the line, so quitting has a cost and following through has a reward.
- Verification: progress is measured rather than reported, so the group can trust what it sees.
How Stint does it
- A group: each pool is a fixed set of people taking the same challenge, with the same daily focus goal for the same number of days.
- Real stakes: everyone pays the pool’s entry fee into the prize pool. Meet the goal on the days the rules require and you qualify; everyone who qualifies splits the prize pool equally.
- Visible progress: the pool shows who has qualified today, and its group chat has reactions and cheers.
- Verified, not self-reported: your phone and any computer you link report each minute of a session to Stint’s server. Only time in your chosen work apps counts.
- Blocking you choose: the apps and sites you pick are blocked during a session, and nothing else is.
Accountability with friends
Public pools are open to anyone, so you can join a group of strangers with the same goal. Private pools are invite-only and shared by a code or a link, so you can take a challenge with friends, classmates or a team.
Who it’s for
People who have tried app blockers and habit trackers and turned them off when it got hard. It suits anyone with focused work to do: students, remote workers, writers, developers and designers. Pools with an entry fee are for adults 18 and over, and the most you can lose is the entry fee you paid.
Where it runs
Stint runs on iPhone, with apps for Android, Mac, Windows and a browser extension. One session covers every device you link. Questions about payouts and refunds are answered in the FAQ.