Your attention is water in a jar.
The attention economy drilled holes in it. Blockers plug the holes but leave the jar empty. Willpower refills it, but it's drained by noon. So we tried to do both, and put it where it can't be ignored: the home screen.
Two strangers, one text message.
Hi HN, we're Kamalraaj and Srinivas.
We met at the FOSS United annual event in 2025, swapped notes, and went back to our lives. A few months later one of us texted the other.
That text became ZenMode.
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2025
FOSS United
We meet, swap notes, go home.
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LATER, 2025
“What if…”
One text. The project starts.
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FEB 2026
Closed test
Two weeks with real users.
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MAR 2026
FOSS Hack
About 100 users in the first 12 hours.
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APR – JUN
We lost steam
Ordinary life reasons. It happens.
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JUL 2026 →
Back at it
V3, built in the open.
Replace the home screen, don't nag on top of it.
We picked the launcher on purpose. It's the one layer that sits between “I want to do X” and every app that would love to hijack that.
Most wellbeing apps sit on top of your home screen and nag you. We wanted to be the home screen.
Plug the holes. Refill the jar.
That's why we (and everyone we know) uninstalled blockers within a week. Plugging and refilling have to happen in the same place.
Type what you want. Don't browse a grid.
One search bar
Apps, files, settings and the web. Type “inst” and you see 12 min left today next to Instagram, before you tap.
A black home screen
About 8 apps you choose. No badges, no widgets, nothing lit up asking to be tapped.
A blocker with a scalpel
Block Reels, keep DMs. Block Shorts, keep search. There's a Pause 30m button instead of “allow forever”, on purpose.
Something to come back to that isn't a feed.
Instagram knocked 63 times on your loudest day. You opened it 4 times.
Your stats sit next to theirs on the home screen.
If you break your limit, their phone shows one quiet toast. Nothing else happens.
You set a daily ceiling and a stake. Every night you stay under it counts toward your own money going into a gold ETF.
You buy Gold BeES through Zerodha Kite. The units sit in your own demat account, and you can sell them on the exchange any time. ZenMode never touches your money.
ZenMode is not a broker or an investment adviser. Gold BeES is market-traded and can fall. Read the Gold Invest terms.
Yes, it's the hook model. Run in reverse.
Trigger, action, reward, investment. We know it's a little ironic. What's different is what it pays out in: your own time and your own money, which you keep even if you leave. Every piece can be turned off.
We also know extrinsic rewards can crowd out intrinsic motivation. So the plan is for the gold to taper the longer you stick with it.
Whether that works is an open question. A longer study across buddy pairs is next.
About that asterisk.
We ran a two-week closed test in February, entered FOSS Hack 2026 in March, and got about 100 users in the first 12 hours.
The asterisk: that version leaned on Firebase, so it wasn't fully open source.
Where it stands now: the launcher, its contracts and a mock backend are public under GPLv3, and a clean clone builds and runs with no keys. Firebase and analytics live in one private module that implements the same interface. Account features like buddy pairing go through it; the launcher itself doesn't need it.
app/
The launcher: search, home screen, blocker, recaps, the UI.
GPLv3 · PUBLICcore-api/
The interfaces. Every backend need is declared here first.
GPLv3 · PUBLICcore-mock/
Default backend. Builds without any keys.
GPLv3 · PUBLICcore-private/
Firebase, analytics, pairing. Maintainers only.
CLOSEDWhat made you uninstall?
We'd love feedback, especially from people who tried blockers and gave up. The reasons you quit are the spec for what we build next.