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Sitting Enforcer

A Windows desktop application and solo software product designed to reduce unhealthy long sitting through break reminders, guided routines, enforcement options, and product-grade delivery.

Sitting Enforcer application branding

Overview

Sitting Enforcer is a Windows desktop application I started in February 2026 and am still actively developing. It is one of my strongest current product projects and is approaching MVP as a paid release.

The app is built around a simple but important problem: people who spend too long sitting at a desk often ignore basic reminders to move, rest their eyes, drink water, or break unhealthy work patterns. That problem shows up especially for developers, desk workers, and gamers, where long uninterrupted sessions are common.

The goal is not to create another reminder that is easy to dismiss. The goal is to build a desktop product that can genuinely improve follow-through.

Product Goal

The core product idea is to make healthier break behaviour more realistic for people who are deeply focused on screen-based work.

That means the app needs to balance several things at once:

  • lightweight day-to-day use
  • enough structure to actually interrupt unhealthy sitting habits
  • guided routines that make breaks more useful
  • settings flexibility for different user types
  • stronger enforcement options for people who know they will otherwise ignore the prompt

The product direction is intentionally practical rather than vague wellness branding.

Key Product Capabilities Implemented

The app has already evolved well beyond a basic timer.

Implemented work includes:

  • sitting and break-cycle runtime for desktop use
  • guided break routines such as Eyes reset, Hydration, and Mobility
  • a dedicated break screen and break overlay flow
  • stricter break-enforcement behavior for users who want stronger interruption
  • separate experience tuning for different usage styles, including gamer-oriented behavior
  • reminders, session warnings, and upcoming-break guidance
  • stats and progression tracking
  • dedicated settings, stats, and legal windows
  • premium onboarding and account/billing surfaces
  • voice-guidance support using system speech plus optional offline voice-pack handling

This makes the app closer to a structured desktop product than a simple tray reminder.

UX and Behaviour Design

A large part of the work has gone into how the product behaves in real use rather than just what features it lists.

Examples include:

  • break routines presented as guided, in-app flows rather than static tips
  • stronger break-state UX with dedicated navigation and clearer status indicators
  • adjustments for both standard work use and gamer-style sessions
  • progressive refinement of countdowns, reminder timing, and break-home presentation
  • responsive desktop layout work across the main window, settings, stats, and legal surfaces

The product has gone through repeated UX passes so it feels deliberate and usable rather than improvised.

Application Architecture

Sitting Enforcer is built as a Tauri v2 desktop app using TypeScript on the frontend/runtime side and Rust for native desktop integration.

Important technical work includes:

  • modular main-window runtime logic
  • a structured enforcement runtime with scheduler and state-machine logic
  • persistence, preference sanitization, and session state handling
  • window management for main, settings, legal, stats, and break-overlay surfaces
  • tray integration and desktop-specific workflow handling
  • stats progression and analytics logic
  • test coverage around runtime and enforcement behavior

This has been a real software-engineering project, not just a UI prototype.

Premium Product and Backend Readiness

Another major part of the work has been preparing the app to function as a real sellable product.

That includes:

  • premium onboarding inside the desktop app
  • account and license activation flows
  • trial handling
  • entitlement validation
  • backend integration for paid-product state
  • release and installer delivery preparation

The surrounding monorepo also includes a backend service, release automation, and normalized installer deployment paths, which means the product work spans both the desktop app itself and the commercial delivery layer around it.

Quality, Refactoring, and Release Work

The project has also involved a substantial amount of product-hardening work:

  • repeated TypeScript and build-fix passes
  • CSS architecture refactors for the main desktop UI
  • runtime deduplication and cleanup passes
  • legal and privacy surface preparation for launch readiness
  • security and entitlement hardening
  • app-specific changelog discipline and release flow

That kind of work matters because polished software products are shaped by reliability and maintainability just as much as by visible features.

Current State

Sitting Enforcer is still a work in progress, but it is close to MVP and already demonstrates strong depth across:

  • product thinking
  • desktop UX
  • technical architecture
  • licensing and paid-product readiness
  • release and deployment preparation

It is one of the clearest examples of the kind of thing I want to keep doing as an independent developer: build practical software products that solve real problems and are strong enough to stand up as real commercial software.

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