Health, home and travel decision
Spool - Save your Thread
A competent technical user can implement the core blocking, prompt, storage, and simple LLM insights, but reproducing the polished iOS UX, App Store presence, retention mechanics, and ongoing platform-specific blocking reliability is a multi-week effort and partially covered only by Android prior art.
View on the App Store↗$7.99/mo
$96/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off138 h to build
$25/mo6 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 5 seats.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Spool - Save your Thread alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- User tries to open a blocked app -> app intercepts and shows a prompt to type/justify -> record the excuse and send to backend -> evaluate patterns and deliver insights/recommendations -> enforce blocking rules/schedules
What it still won’t have
- App Store brand, ratings, and existing userbase
- Polish: onboarding, retention mechanisms, and ongoing UX refinements
- Built-in reviews, existing changelog and platform-specific bug fixes already addressed by the vendor
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 5 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal iOS replacement using SwiftUI + Combine and a small backend. Stack: SwiftUI iOS app (requires iOS 17+), use DeviceActivity/FamilyControls for blocking, Node.js + Supabase (Postgres) for backend, and OpenAI-compatible API for LLM tasks. Core features in scope: enforce app blocking and schedules via DeviceActivity; justify-before-open prompt that records text attempts to backend; per-user analytics page showing attempt counts and simple timeframe heatmaps; monthly subscription via StoreKit with receipt validation; server-side job to run simple NLP classification/duplicate-detection on excuses and produce daily insight summaries. Out of scope: cross-platform support (Android/Mac), advanced behavioral-research models, large-scale analytics pipeline. Include error handling, StoreKit edge cases, automated tests for critical flows, and CI deployment guides for the backend.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 2 cited sources+1
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score65
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 2
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productSpool: Screen Time Control - App Store
- open sourceJordyHers-org/Times-up-flutter
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
