馬 Dinesh Achari

Status — withdrawn, August 2026

SuperNudge is being rebuilt.

SuperNudge was a native macOS focus companion for ADHD brains — it watched for drift and offered a hand back instead of blocking or scolding. I pulled the download in August 2026. The version I shipped worked, but not well enough that I would ask an already-tired brain to trust it, install an unsigned build, and click through three Gatekeeper warnings to find out. I would rather say that plainly than keep a download link warm. The rebuild has no date attached, because a date is exactly the kind of thing I would be inventing to sound reassuring.

What it was

SuperNudge ran quietly on macOS and paid attention to the gap between what you said you were doing and what was actually on screen. When the two drifted apart it surfaced a small capsule with a warm line — never an alarm, never a block, never a red BLOCKED screen. The design rule underneath it was that a nudge arriving at the wrong moment must be ignorable without penalty, because a system that punishes you for ignoring it is just another thing to fail at. Three ideas did most of the work:

  • time blindnessA chromatic ticker that shifted the screen edge from teal toward amber, so a session aged in your peripheral vision instead of on a countdown you had to keep checking.
  • driftScreen-aware nudges that knew the stated goal and named no failure — "Life happens. Let's get back to it."
  • initiation paralysisA one-percent micro-victory rule: it asked only for the first action, then celebrated as though you had shipped the whole thing.

Why I pulled it rather than patch it

The honest answer is that the problems were structural. Fixing them means revisiting decisions made at the foundation — how it watches, what it stores, how it decides a moment is worth interrupting — and that is far easier to do with nobody depending on the current build. There is a second reason that matters more to me. This entire project rests on refusing to oversell systems to people who have been oversold to their whole lives. Every Field Note argues that the tool should adapt to the brain rather than the other way round. Keeping a live download for software I would not honestly recommend to a friend would contradict the only thing the writing is for.

The practical gate is real too: distributing a Mac app properly needs a signing identity I do not currently have, and the build that existed asked people to bypass macOS security warnings to install it. That is an acceptable trade for something excellent. It is not an acceptable trade for something merely promising.

What happens next

The rebuild is underway and deliberately undated. What I can commit to is the shape of it: the next version will not ship as an unsigned build with an install guide apologising for itself, and it will not appear here until I would put it in front of someone I care about without a caveat. In the meantime the Field Notes continue, and they were always the larger half of this project — long-form breakdowns of how these minds actually run, with the mechanism named, the research cited, and a fix you can run on an index card. None of them ever needed the app to exist.

If you want to know the moment there is something real to try, the notes list is where it gets said first. It is the only channel I keep current.

The manual, in installments

free · no schedule promised

I will tell this list first.

No launch countdown and no waitlist theatre — just the Field Notes as they are written, and a note when the rebuild is genuinely worth your attention.

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Questions people ask —

Can I still download SuperNudge?
No. The download was withdrawn in August 2026 and this site no longer links to a build. The version that existed worked, but it was an unsigned indie build that asked a distracted person to click through macOS Gatekeeper warnings before they could try it, and it was not reliable enough to justify that. Putting a download behind that much friction only makes sense if the thing on the other side is genuinely good, and it was not there yet. Rather than keep a link warm while I knew that, I took it down.
Why pull the app instead of just improving it?
Because the problems were structural rather than cosmetic. Fixing them means changing decisions made at the foundation, not patching behaviour at the edges, and doing that properly is easier with nobody depending on the current build. There is also an honesty argument: this whole project is built on not overselling systems to people who have been oversold to their entire lives. Keeping a download link live for software I would not personally recommend would contradict the only thing the writing is actually for.
When will SuperNudge come back?
There is no date, and inventing one would be the same mistake in a different costume. The rebuild is happening alongside a distribution account that needs a proper macOS signing identity, which is its own gate. What I can commit to is that the next version will not ship as an unsigned build with an install guide apologising for it. If you want to know when something real exists, the Field Notes list is where that gets announced first — it is the only channel I keep current.
Are the Field Notes still being written?
Yes, and they were always the larger half of this project. The notes are long-form breakdowns of how neurodivergent minds actually run — the mechanism named, the research cited, and a fix you can apply with an index card rather than software. None of them depend on the app existing. Six are published and more are in progress, all free to read at dineshachari.com/blog, and they carry the parts of the method that never needed a Mac in the first place.