I had not moved in three hours.

I was at my desk, working, and I started to feel sore and restless at the same time. I looked at the clock in the corner of the screen, worked backwards, and realized I had not stood up in over three hours.

I knew what I needed. Short walks, fresh air, a few stretches, spread through the day instead of saved up for the end. What I did not have was anything to hold me to it. A reminder I could ignore was a reminder I would ignore, and a notification that slid quietly into a corner was one I would miss entirely.

Then there was the opposite problem

Breaks were only half of it.

A coworker would come over and we would end up talking about the project we were both buried in, or about what everyone was doing for the long weekend. Good conversations, the kind that make a place worth showing up to. But while I was standing there, fully present and three feet from my keyboard, my status was quietly turning yellow. Away. As far as anyone messaging me could tell, I had left for the day.

I did not want to look gone when I was right there. So the app has a nudge: it tells me to touch the mouse and stay green. It never touches it for me. That line matters, and it is one the app does not cross.

What I wanted it to be

One small app, sitting quietly off to the side most of the time, able to flash across the whole screen and chime when it actually mattered.

No two days are the same. Some are a steady rhythm of focus and rest. Others are built around meetings that will not move and a lunch pinned to the clock. Every one of them still needs a break schedule of some kind. I tried other timers, and they each did a piece of this, or did it in a way I could not shape around the day in front of me.

Why a Mac app

I work on a Mac and I wanted something that behaves like it belongs there. Small, contained, out of the way. Some days I want the full window, with the timer large enough to read from across the room. Other days I want nothing but a countdown in the menu bar.

Having that choice matters, and so does the tinkering. There are enough settings to shape it around very different kinds of sessions. Once you find the ones that suit you it becomes set and forget, the timer you start when you want a cadence to focus and to rest, and then stop thinking about.

The look is deliberate too. A calm field of color, nothing shouting, nothing to dismiss. It should feel like a moment you are taking for yourself in a busy day, because that is what it's for.

The name, and the colors

A cadence is something you keep, not a deadline you race toward. The app is trying to give the day a shape rather than hurry you through it.

The themes are named for places and moods, and their colors are chosen to evoke them. Sonoran is the desert outside Phoenix, copper and sunset. Santa Fe is adobe and turquoise, which you see everywhere in New Mexico. Sedona is red rock under a desert sky. Oregon is evergreen and wet bark. Miami is a neon sign at night. Noir is black and white. Clay came first, a muted terracotta that nods at the old tomato timer without the alarm clock attached. Seven of them ship with the app, and you can build your own.

What it is actually for

My days come out better balanced now. I get to the end of a long one feeling better than I used to, knowing I stood up, went outside, and took a few moments along the way. That is the whole idea.