# What Added Time will never do

Most apps in this category are built out of small coercions: a counter that scolds you, a streak
that punishes you for stopping, an escape hatch you have to pay for. They work, in the sense
that they move numbers. They also make people feel worse.

So the refusals are written down, in the product's own planning documents, before anyone asks
for them. Naming a thing is how it stays refused. This list is not marketing language bolted on
afterwards — it is a design constraint the app is built against, and it is the reason several
obvious features do not exist.

**The same list points at our own marketing.** A growth tactic that violates it would spend the
only thing we actually have.

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## In the app

**No intercept or temptation counters.** No "you tried to open Instagram 47 times today." It is
scolding with numbers, and it makes a bad afternoon into a scoreboard.

**No social accountability, shame-sharing or bets.** No friends watching, no money on the line,
no posting your failure to a group. Social pressure is outsourced coercion, and it is not the
kind of motivation this app is for.

**No streak-loss theater.** No streak funerals, no "don't break the chain," no in-app purchase
to buy your streak back. The counter that matters — days active — is **a total, never a run**.
It is stated as an invariant in the app's own specification. There is no streak to break here,
so a Tuesday off costs you nothing.

**Nothing turns red. Nothing is called wasted, missed or failed.** The app counts what you kept.
A goal you didn't reach today is drawn the same way it was drawn this morning — not as a
failure, just as not yet done.

**No paywalled escape valves.** Breaks, the hold-to-skip, and the emergency exit are free on
every tier and are never made harder for a paying customer or an ex-paying one. If Plus lapses,
a firmer exit you had turned on reverts to the ordinary five-second hold — so a lapsed
subscriber never faces a *harder* door than a free user. Charging someone to get out of
something they chose is the line.

**No hardcore or prison mode as a pitch.** A firmer hold exists because people asked for it. It
will never be the headline, and the app will never sell itself on how hard it is to escape.

**No shaming about screen use at all.** The app isn't anti-phone. It's pro-your-time.

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## In how we sell it

**No urgency devices.** No countdown timers, no "launch price ends Sunday," no struck-through
prices, no manufactured scarcity. Stated prices, and the free things stated as free forever.

**No incentivized or gated reviews.** No rewards for rating, and no routing happy users to the
App Store prompt while unhappy users get quietly diverted to a form. One quiet rate row in
settings is the ceiling.

**No streak-guilt re-engagement.** No "your streak is in danger" notifications, no win-back
emails — there are no emails, because there are no accounts. If you stop, your windows and
limits rest in the Week until you come back. That is the entire win-back campaign, by design.

**No astroturfing.** No undisclosed self-promotion, no fake organic posts, no sockpuppet
reviews, no paying for placement that reads as editorial.

**No competitor names in our App Store keywords.** Against Apple's policy, and off-brand
besides: we win the comparison when the reader makes it themselves. Our published comparison
page leads with the competitor's genuine strengths.

**No tracking-based growth.** No attribution SDKs, no ad pixels, no retargeting.
App Store Connect's own dashboards are the only instrument we have, and that is a priced
decision, not an oversight.

**No fear-of-phone advertising.** No "your phone is destroying your brain." Nothing shaming
about screen use, in the app or about it.

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## The point

Every one of these makes the app harder to grow. That is the trade, and it was made on purpose.
The product's value is that you can trust the number — and an app that manipulates you to keep
you is an app whose numbers you would be right to doubt.

If any of the above ever changes, it will be visible in the app, and you may hold this page up.

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*Sources: `03-FEATURE-EXPANSION.md §C` ("Refused — name them, so they stay refused") and
`LAUNCH.md §4` ("What we refuse — marketing edition"), Added Time's internal planning documents.
Quote freely.*