CogniFocus
Focus better with a timer, blocker and Goblin
Today I launched CogniFocus on Product Hunt 🚀
After months of building, rebuilding, and questioning my sanity, it's finally live.
The idea started from a problem I kept running into:
Most focus apps are great at measuring focus.
They're terrible at protecting it.
The moment you open TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, or whatever your personal attention black hole is, the timer just keeps ticking while your focus disappears.
So I built CogniFocus.
A focus app with a Goblin that reacts when you get distracted.
Not an AI chatbot. Not another productivity dashboard.
Just a weird little focus companion that notices when your attention slips and tries to drag you back.
Current features include:
👺 Reactive Goblin companion
🛡️ App blocking & distraction interception
⚡ Focus recovery nudges
📈 XP, streaks & progression
🔔 Planned sessions & reminders
🧠 Behavioral insights
The bigger vision is something I'm very excited about:
Most focus apps count time.
CogniFocus reacts to behavior.
I'm trying to build a companion that remembers patterns, notices focus struggles, and helps people recover from distraction loops before they lose an entire afternoon.
Would love feedback from fellow builders.
What feature would make a focus app genuinely harder to ignore?
Product Hunt launch: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cognifocus
Tiny win before the Product Hunt launch 😭
CogniFocus somehow hit Trending on PeerPush -> https://peerpush.net/p/cognifocus within 2 days, while I’m shipping the biggest update yet: v5.0.0
This release completely reworks the app atmosphere and turns more of the experience into a reactive behavioral system instead of a passive timer.
→ redesigned onboarding
→ alive/reactive UX overhaul
→ Focus Shards progression
→ improved Goblin reactions
→ better Shield interruption flows
Launching on Product Hunt June 1 ✨
Made a proper video for the CogniFocus website today.
Wanted something special that explains the actual feeling behind the app instead of just throwing screenshots everywhere.
The whole idea is basically: “one quick check” → attention slips → session falls apart.
So CogniFocus reacts when that happens instead of silently counting time.
Also, huge shoutout to @Arcade , they genuinely made creating the video flow way easier than I expected
Completed a massive overhaul of the CogniFocus website. The original landing page was too text-heavy and I came to understand that people must know what the product is about within the first five seconds. This was my primary goal while designing the new landing page. The following topics received visual emphasis
-> Hero section now explains the product visually within seconds
-> the issue of scrolling through the screen just once
-> switching between applications
-> distraction in the middle of a session
-> why regular countdowns don't work.
I also updated the homepage layout, made SEO more coherent with the content, optimized the description of the Goblin reactions and Distraction Shield and tried to emphasize the uniqueness of the product more than its productivity aspect. I’m still working out some details, but the current version seems much closer to reality
What do you think about it?
Spent the last 3 days rebuilding the CogniFocus website architecture
Migrated the site to Astro because the old setup started becoming painful once blog posts, release notes, SEO pages, sitemap generation, and content scaling started growing
The new setup feels much cleaner:
-> faster static pages
-> better routing/SEO structure
-> easier content management
-> cleaner long-term scalability
Connected the publishing flow through Firebase too, so updating the website is way less chaotic now.
One thing I underestimated while building CogniFocus
-> the faster the product evolves, the more important maintainable website architecture becomes.
Curious how other founders here handle growing content systems.
While building CogniFocus, I realized most people don’t consciously decide to stop focusing.
It usually starts with “I’ll check one thing,” and then suddenly 15 minutes disappear. The dangerous part is how automatic it feels. You don’t intentionally quit the session; your brain just slowly drifts away from it.
That changed how I think about focus apps. A timer can track time, but it doesn’t react when your attention starts slipping. So, I started building around interruption recovery and attention protection instead of only counting minutes.
Curious if others experience the same thing too or if it’s just me?
I’m building CogniFocus , a bootstrapped Android focus app.
The idea came from a simple problem: I could start a focus timer and still end up switching apps mid-session.
The timer kept running, but my focus was already gone.
So I built CogniFocus around a different loop: start a focus session, block distracting apps, get pulled back when you drift, and let a Goblin roast or praise you depending on how you focus.
The goal is to make focus feel less passive. Not just “track time”. More like: bro, stay here.
CogniFocus is launching on Product Hunt on May 31, so I’m trying to get early feedback before launch day.
Would love thoughts from other indie hackers: does a reactive companion make focus more motivating, or would it get annoying over time?
If the idea sounds interesting, you can follow the launch page to get notified when it goes live.
I kept switching apps every few minutes while working. Timers didn’t help. They just tracked time while I was distracted. Even app blockers didn’t stick, I’d just turn them off. Made me realize the problem isn’t discipline
it’s that nothing interrupts you in the moment.
Curious about what actually helps you stay focused when you're working?
4 Comments
The feature I would make impossible to ignore is a very specific recovery screen after the blocked tap: what did you mean to do instead, and one button to start that thing now. Blocking alone creates friction, but recovery gives the user a clean next action before they reflexively try another distraction.
You should check StartupSubmit for visibility, backlinks, and early traffic.
The strongest part here is that you are not positioning this as another timer. “Most focus apps count time, CogniFocus reacts to behavior” is the real hook, and it is much more memorable than another productivity dashboard.
I’d keep pushing that angle hard: the product is about interruption recovery, not focus tracking. That makes the Goblin feel less like a gimmick and more like a visible behavior loop.
One thing I would pressure-test before more Product Hunt traffic, app assets, SEO pages, and user memory build up is the brand frame. CogniFocus is clear, but it still sounds like a focus app category name. If the bigger direction is a behavioral productivity companion that detects patterns, blocks distractions, nudges recovery, and becomes part of someone’s daily work loop, the name may eventually feel narrower than the product.
Xevoa .com would fit that larger direction better because it feels more like a modern productivity system than a single focus timer, while still leaving room for behavior tracking, app blocking, recovery nudges, AI patterns, and cross-device focus workflows.