Stride
AI-Powered Focus Companion
Overview
In 2004, researchers at UC Irvine found that people spent an average of about two and a half minutes on a screen before switching to something else. By 2012, that dropped to 75 seconds. By 2016, it was down to just 47 seconds, with half of all observations lasting under 40 seconds.
Research by Dr. Gloria Mark also found that after an interruption, it takes people around 23 minutes to fully return to their original task.
Most productivity tools respond only after you've already lost focus. They block distracting websites, start countdown timers, or encourage you to begin another session once you've been interrupted. They're useful, but they're all reacting to something that has already happened.
What interested me was the period before someone loses focus.
People rarely become distracted instantly. There's usually a gradual decline in attention, reflected in small patterns throughout a work session. If those patterns can be recognized early enough, there's an opportunity to intervene before focus is lost.
That idea became Stride.
What Stride Is
Stride is an AI-powered focus companion that learns how you work, predicts when your attention is beginning to fade, and sends a timely reminder before you're likely to become distracted.
You start a focus session and work as you normally would. During the session, Stride compares your activity against patterns it has learned over time. If it predicts that your attention is about to drop, it generates a short, contextual nudge designed to help you stay on task.
Rather than interrupting constantly, Stride aims to intervene only when it's likely to be useful.
The biggest difference between Stride and traditional focus apps is timing. Most tools react after you've already become distracted. Stride is designed to step in before that happens.
Features
Predictive Interventions
This is the core feature of the product. As a session runs, Stride continuously compares the current session against your learned focus patterns. When it detects that your attention is likely to drop soon, it generates a contextual reminder instead of waiting until you've already lost focus.
Each intervention is generated with AI using the current session's context rather than selecting from a fixed list of reminders. The goal is to make every nudge feel relevant to what you're doing.
Focus Fingerprint Premium
Over time, Stride builds a profile of how you typically focus. It learns things like how long your strongest focus periods last, when your attention usually begins to fade, and the patterns that often appear before a drop in concentration.
Premium users receive interventions based on this personal history instead of general heuristics, making the reminders more accurate as more sessions are completed.
Focus Sessions
Everything in Stride revolves around focus sessions. Start a session, work until you're finished, then review it later through your dashboard.
The free and premium plans share the same workflow so new users can experience the core product before deciding whether to upgrade.
- Free: Up to 3 sessions per day, maximum session length of 45 minutes, general AI-generated interventions.
- Premium: Unlimited sessions, sessions up to 180 minutes, personalized interventions based on your Focus Fingerprint.
The free plan is intentionally generous. Forty-five minutes is enough time for someone to understand how predictive interventions fit into their workflow.
Dashboard & Focus Trends
The dashboard provides an overview of your focus history without turning productivity into a game. You can review completed sessions, see how your focus patterns are changing over time, and understand when interventions occurred throughout your work.
Session history is displayed using your local timezone so daily activity is always grouped correctly.
Pause & Resume Premium
Focus sessions don't always happen without interruptions. Premium users can pause a session and continue later without losing progress. While a session is paused, Stride also suspends any scheduled interventions so reminders aren't sent while you're away.
Although this seems like a simple feature, keeping session timing and intervention scheduling in sync became one of the more interesting engineering challenges during development.
Core Concepts
Everything in Stride is built around five core ideas. Keeping these concepts simple made it much easier to design the product and make technical decisions throughout development.
Architecture
The technology stack was chosen with one goal in mind: move quickly without creating unnecessary complexity. As a solo developer, I wanted managed services wherever possible so I could spend more time building the product and less time maintaining infrastructure.
Design Decisions
Designing a focus application comes with an unusual challenge: the interface itself shouldn't become a distraction. Every screen was designed to stay out of the user's way while still providing the information they need.
- Supportive Interventions. The reminders are written to encourage users to return to their work without making them feel guilty for losing focus.
- Intervene Before the Break. The product emphasizes prevention rather than reflection. Stride focuses on helping users avoid distractions in the first place, influencing both behavior and the UI.
- Minimal Session Interface. During a session, the interface stays intentionally simple. Only the information needed for the current session is visible.
- Clear Premium Features.Premium functionality is clearly identified throughout the application, highlighting where personalization adds value so users understand what they're upgrading for.
- Straightforward Copy. Rather than relying on marketing language, the interface focuses on clearly explaining what each feature does and setting realistic expectations.