How it works
Capture. Curate. Focus.
Three moves, forever. Everything in Sarabellum is one of them, or the space to do them badly without it costing you anything.
The premise: most productivity systems fail neurodivergent people at the very first step — before the timer, before the tags, before the beautiful dashboard. They ask you to make a decision at the exact moment your brain is least able to make one. So we moved every decision to later.
Move one
Capture — get it out of your head.
A thought shows up. It’s important. It’s also 11pm, or you’re mid-shower, or you’re already doing something else. You have maybe eight seconds before it’s gone.
The Brain Dump takes it with no questions asked. No project. No tag. No due date. No priority. No “which list?”. It autosaves as you type and it will still be there tomorrow, and next week, and after you forget about it entirely.
Why it matters: every field an app makes you fill in is a toll on capture, and the tax gets paid by the thought. Most systems collapse because filing became work, so you stopped filing, so the system went stale, so you stopped trusting it. Capture has to cost nothing or it doesn’t happen at all.
Saved. Sort it out whenever.
An illustration of the app, not a screenshot.Move two
Curate — decide once, calmly, later.
When you’ve got capacity — not before — the pile becomes tasks. Split a wall of text into separate jobs line by line, phrase each as something you could actually start (“Email Sam about the invoice”, not “invoice”), and drop it in a bucket.
There are eight: Right Now, Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Next Week, Backlog, Someday, Projects. A task is in exactly one. Not tagged across four, not living in three views at once. One task, one home, drag it between them.
Today stays small on purpose. You could have six hundred tasks in the system, and Today shows a shortlist. The mountain is still there — you can go look at it whenever you like. It just isn’t looking at you.
Move three
Focus — one thing, and a timer that’s on your side.
Promote exactly one task to Right Now. The rest of the app collapses out of the way — not minimised, gone. Whatever was in the slot steps politely back to Today, because two things in focus is just a list again.
Then start the timer, and here’s the twist: it runs backwards from a pomodoro. A pomodoro interrupts you at 25 minutes whether or not you’ve finally, miraculously got into it. Ours does the opposite — work as long as it’s flowing, and the break you earn grows the longer you go, up to a three-hour deep session before it wraps you up.
Getting into flow is the expensive part. An app that breaks it on a schedule is charging you that price over and over.
in flow · break earned: 9:26
And then you fall behind
Because you will. That’s the part everyone skips.
Every app is designed for the version of you that keeps up. Sarabellum is designed for the week you don’t — because that week is the one that decides whether you ever open it again.
Clean Slate
Sweep everything, in one move. It isn’t deleted — it goes to a holding pen, and restoring lets you pick a new home for each thing with fresh eyes. Start from calm instead of from guilt.
Push to Tomorrow
One tap at the end of the day clears whatever’s left. You wake up to an empty list and choose the day on purpose, instead of opening the app to yesterday’s pile. Nothing lost. Nothing late.
Survive neglect
Go dark for three weeks and nothing breaks, because nothing was counting. No streak to lose, no red badges waiting, no “you missed 14 days”. It just picks up where you are.
The words matter
Language that doesn’t shame you.
This isn’t decoration. The vocabulary an app uses becomes the vocabulary you use about yourself, and most task apps are fluent in failure.
Words we don’t use
- Overdue — it isn’t late, it’s just not done
- Failed — a checkbox can’t fail
- Missed — you were somewhere else, doing something
- Streak broken — nothing was broken
Words we use instead
- Parked — waiting, deliberately
- Not for today — a choice, not a verdict
- Reset — the system catching up to you
- Recover — where you go after a hard week
The shortcut
Or just ask Sara.
Everything above is three moves you have to make. On the days you can’t make them, Sara will. She reads your whole system, picks the next thing, promotes it, starts your timer, and checks in on you morning and evening in Discord. The loop still runs — you’re just not the one holding it.
Questions about the loop
What if I never get around to curating the Brain Dump?
Then it sits there, harmlessly, and nothing nags you about it. That’s the design, not a failure of it — a capture inbox you’re scared to open is worse than one you ignore. Sara can also do a pass with you and turn the pile into tasks in a couple of minutes, if you’d rather not face it alone.
Isn’t “Today is small” just hiding my work from me?
Yes. Deliberately. Everything is one tap away in its bucket and nothing is deleted — but a list of six hundred things doesn’t help you do the next one, it helps you do none of them. Small isn’t denial; it’s the only size a day actually comes in.
Does the heat marker (🌶️) change the order things appear in?
No, and that’s on purpose. Heat flags intensity so you know what a task will cost you, but it doesn’t re-sort your list behind your back. Order is yours — drag things where you want them.
What if I want a normal pomodoro?
The timer is deliberately opinionated in the other direction, so there’s no 25-minute mode. You can end a session whenever you like — the point isn’t to trap you in flow, it’s to stop the app from ending it for you.
Three moves. That’s the whole system.
Free while it’s in beta. No card, no trial countdown, no catch.