Show HN: Helix – a habit tracking app | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Helix – a habit tracking app

helix.startuplab.io

28 pointsrayalez13 comments

I love these habit tracking apps. It's better than the others without all the feature bloat. But not really helpful unless it can be a phone app.

But personally I'm looking for more of a SOP kind of app.

Like every work morning I'll take my nootropic stack, set aside my things to do list, meditate, pray, etc. I don't do this on non work days, and my work days aren't exactly Mon-Fri either.

On some days I have to do a Skype call and there's a list of things to do then - turn off fan & windows, check mic, put on a collared shirt.

There hasn't been any apps that help me set up a 'habit checklist' for certain situations. It would be good to just choose what routines I want to do today or tomorrow.

I was running into this issue with a "task reminder bot" running through facebook messenger since I would be off from work on a thursday or something an it would still nag me about work tasks. Do you think it would be better to have an option for "Work Day Routine" vs "Day Off"?

I think you should be able to select sets of routines. Something like a morning exercise routine might go on Tue Thu Sat, but people would still want their work day and day off routines.

I like this. Have you seen https://chains.cc/? It's a similar app. What's the difference between a check mark and thumbs up? Being able to reorder tasks would be really helpful, as would some notion of being able to group tasks together (maybe just layers of indention or something).

Edit: Found info on the check v thumbs up. Love the idea!

>Mark the day with every time you successfully complete a microhabit, and mark a day with every time you accomplish more significant progress.

Another nice feature would the ability to skip days. i.e. I'm going to exercise every MWF, and I'm going to go on the info diet M-Thursday.

Hey everyone! I've just deployed the beta of my new habit tracking app.

I'd really love to hear some what you think. Do you like it? Would you use it? What would you improve? Can you share some advice on which steps I should take next?

Source:

https://github.com/raymestalez/helix

(note that it's in early beta, bugs are possible)

I have had a very similar idea for a tracking app for a looong time. This is by far the closest I've seen to my idea.

I would definitely use something like this. However, I would primarily want to use a mobile app for daily tracking. It would also be nice to be able to set a daily reminder time for each item I'm tracking so that I remember to fill it in.

Is this just a fun side project, or do you plan to monetize somehow?

Thank you for your reply!

Helix works on mobile quite well already, and soon I am planning to make it progressive, that is you can add it to the home screen, it'll work offline, sync with the server when it can, and be essentially indistinguishable from a native app.

I haven't implemented notifications yet because I'm not using them myself, but I'm definitely planning to, apparently many people find them useful.

Yes, I am planning to monetize it, once I'll complete all the main requested features, it'll cost $12/year. But everyone who joins during the beta and sends me feedback will get free lifetime accounts =)

Quick question: once you monetize it, will it remain open-source?

Helix looks really cool. One small usability/onboarding to think about is it took me a little while to figure out that I need to double tap on an item to edit it (using Google Chrome on Android phone). Looking forward to trying Helix out!

Thanks for sharing! It seems quite similar to the Loop Habit Tracker ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.isoron.uha... ), an Android App with the same goal.

Really great simple interface which enabled and encouraged me to jump right into it!

Some feedback I'd like to give:

- First thing I noticed was that I'd like to re-order the habits to give them a priority.

- The 'streak counter' didn't change when I entered the past few days of accomplished habits. I've ticked off the current week and the counter still sits at 0.

- On first use, it'd be great to enter a streak further back than the current week. For example, I know an existing habit streak from Duolingo or a meditation app. Being able to enter these as pre-existing when I start using Helix would be great, so that the numbers match up. Bonus points for not making me manually check every single box of an existing two-months streak. :)

Very well done. Unfortunately there are already thousands of mobile apps that do the same.

Yours is the best I've found so far, but I'll not use it nonetheless. I've already tried others and failed.

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