The productivity tool for people who've abandoned every productivity tool.

Nudge is an open-source, local-first AI tool that breaks ADHD task paralysis. No cloud. No subscription. No signup. Just your tasks, your machine, and an AI that helps you actually start.

Download Nudge View on GitHub

Free. Open source. No account required.

macOS · Windows · Linux

How It Works

Tell it what's on your plate

Add ideas, tasks, and context as simple markdown files. Note your energy level, how much time you have, what's been weighing on you. Nudge reads it all.
Ask it what to do next

"I have 30 minutes and low energy." Nudge looks at your ideas, your history, and your current state — then suggests something small and gives you a concrete first step. Not the whole project. Just the start.
Start. Check the box. Repeat.

Click the checkbox. Get the dopamine hit. Do another one if you want. Or don't — starting is success, completion is optional.

Why Nudge

It's built for how your brain actually works.

Most productivity tools assume you can look at a list and just... do things. If that worked for you, you wouldn't be here. Nudge is designed around ADHD — it reduces activation energy, matches tasks to your current energy, and makes the first step so small you can't not start.

Your data never leaves your machine.

Everything is stored as plain markdown files on your local filesystem. No cloud account. No sync service. No company with a privacy policy you didn't read. You can cat your tasks. You can git your ideas. You can rm -rf the whole thing if you want. Your data. Your rules.

You bring your own AI.

Nudge uses your Anthropic or OpenAI API key — direct to the provider, no middleman, no markup. You control exactly what gets sent, and you can read every prompt. No data is stored or used for training by Nudge. Ever.

It costs nothing. Forever.

No subscription. No freemium. No "upgrade to unlock." MIT-licensed, open source, built in public. The only cost is your own API usage, which you already monitor and control.

It's open source. Actually open source.

Not "open core." Not "source available." MIT licensed. Fork it. Inspect it. Rebuild it. The entire thing — workflow, file format, AI prompts, build pipeline — is on GitHub. If you work in security, you already know why this matters.

The Story

I'm Jet. I've been writing software for 30+ years and working in application security for over a decade. I also have ADHD.

My whole career, the pattern was the same: avoid the task, feel guilty about avoiding the task, scroll to escape the guilt, panic when the deadline hits, hyperfocus for 6 hours, deliver, crash, repeat.

Productivity tools didn't help. They're designed for people who can already start — they just need organization. I needed something that made starting the default outcome instead of the exception.

So I built Nudge. It started as a set of markdown files and AI prompts — a personal experiment to see if I could trick my brain into starting things by making the first step ridiculously small. It worked. Getting dopamine from checking tiny boxes turned into momentum. Momentum turned into habits. Habits turned into actually getting things done without the panic spiral.

Now it's yours if you want it.

Why This Over Alternatives

Todoist / Things / TickTick

Those are task lists. Nudge is a task starter. They organize what you already know you need to do. Nudge gets you past the paralysis of actually doing it. Also: no subscription, no cloud, no account.

Obsidian

You already love markdown. Nudge adds the missing piece: an AI workflow that reads your energy, suggests what to work on, and breaks it into a first step. It's not a plugin — it's a protocol.

Notion

Notion is where ADHD goes to build elaborate systems it will never use. Nudge is intentionally simple: ideas, tasks, daily logs, and an AI that nudges you to start.

ChatGPT / Claude (raw)

A conversation doesn't remember yesterday. It doesn't know your energy patterns. It doesn't have your idea backlog. Nudge gives structure to the AI interaction so it's a system, not a chat.

Goblin.tools / Focusmate

Cloud-based, limited, and not designed for technical users. Nudge is open source, local, and built by someone who actually works in a terminal.

Willpower

How's that going?

Ready to start starting?