THE PROBLEM
I did not want to build just another habit tracker.
There are already plenty of apps asking the same question every day: did you do the thing?
You check a box, keep a streak, and that is basically it.
The problem is that this was not what I needed.
If I want to go from 10 to 50 push-ups, I do not just need an app telling me “nice, you did your push-ups”. I need it to tell me how many to do today, how to increase without burning out, and how to come back after missing a day.
Same for reading more, walking more, or reducing screen time. The point is not only to be consistent. The point is to progress without quitting the first time the week goes badly.
THE IDEA
HabitScaler starts from a simple idea: a habit should have a trajectory.
You pick a goal, set your starting point and your cap, and the app calculates today’s step. If everything goes well, the target goes up slowly. If you miss, it stops climbing. If you miss multiple times, it deloads so you can restart from a realistic level.
I wanted a system that pushes the number up without turning every bad day into a dramatic failure.
For bad habits, it works the other way around. You can start from 4h of screen time and move toward 1h30, step by step.
The goal is not to make you check a box. The goal is to keep you moving in the right direction.
THE MVP
I started HabitScaler in early July 2026, right after putting TheoryCraft on pause.
This time, the scope was clear:
- create a habit
- choose a direction, scale up or scale down
- calculate today’s target
- handle missed days
- show compound progress
- ship a mobile app clean enough to test
That is already enough for a V1.
A “simple” mobile app stops being simple pretty fast when you add dates, states, stores, screenshots, auth, payments later, and all the small invisible things that eat a day without warning.
So I kept one rule: if it did not help me test the progression mechanic, it did not go into the first version.
HabitScaler was built and launched in about 10 days.
Not because everything was perfect.
Because this time, the point was to put the mechanic in front of real users as fast as possible.
THE SOCIAL PART
The thing I find interesting with HabitScaler is that progress is much easier to share than a streak.
A streak only says: “I showed up for 37 days”.
A progress card can say: “I went from 10 to 32 push-ups”, or “I got back 14 hours of screen time”.
That is much more concrete.
That is why I added shareable progress cards. The idea is not to build a social network inside the app, or a useless leaderboard. The idea is to create a small social moment around progress: you can show the trajectory, not just the presence.
And yes, it also makes quitting a bit more awkward.
That part is intentional.
THE RELEASE
On July 9, 2026, I opened access to HabitScaler by giving 12 free lifetime spots.
Not because I had some brilliant marketing strategy.
Because Google Play requires 12 testers for 14 days before a new individual account can publish to production.
That was the small reality check: building fast is nice, but releasing does not stop at the code.
There is Google Play, Apple, developer accounts, rules, screenshots, copy, forms, and sometimes company paperwork too.
For iOS, I also had to postpone because I wanted to open the developer account with my company, and that meant fixing the legal side first.
So yes, the app was ready.
But “ready” does not mean “available everywhere”.
In practice, building the app was the quick part.
NOW WHAT
HabitScaler is in Android closed testing. iOS will come after the admin side is fixed.
I do not know yet if this project can become a real business. Maybe yes, maybe no.
But that was not the only goal.
The goal was also to break my old pattern: get an idea, start a huge build, try to make everything perfect, then never really put the app in front of users.
This time I did the opposite.
I shipped small.
And honestly, that is already a win.