01 · Why
Three tabs open, just to do one thing.
Tasks in one app. A timer in another that would not let me extend my session without paying for a subscription. Music in a third. All of it to do the one thing I actually came to do: focus.
Even the music was not simple, because what I needed changed with the work. Sometimes a podcast. Sometimes alpha beats. Sometimes beta music to lock in deep. I was spending real attention just assembling the conditions to pay attention.
So I built it myself, with Claude Code. Focus is one place to keep your tasks, run your timer, and play whatever gets you into flow, whether that is a YouTube podcast you paste in or binaural beats matched to the kind of work you are doing.
02 · What it is
One place for the timer, the tasks, and the sound.
Three things, done well, with nothing between you and starting.
A Pomodoro timer with every state it needs and no more: idle, focusing, time is up, break, and break done. You set your own focus and break lengths and how much time the add-time button gives you. No paywall to keep going.
A task list that adds, edits, checks off, and clears completed items, and remembers everything in your browser. No account, because it all lives in local storage on your own machine.
Sound that matches the work. Four science-backed ambient options, including binaural beats and brown noise and rain, plus any YouTube link you paste in for a podcast or a playlist. The thing I used to need three tabs for, in one.
03 · The feeling
A quiet tribute to Artemis II.
Seeing humans travel that far and look back at Earth, this tiny fragile thing floating in space, put everything in perspective.
No problem feels that big from out there. Nothing feels random. Life is small and beautiful and worth being present for. That is the feeling I wanted the app to carry, underneath the timer and the task list.
Life is small and beautiful and worth being present for. Go focus on something that matters.
It is why I added mantras: small reminders to stay grounded and keep going. A focus tool is not only about blocking distraction. It is about remembering why you sat down in the first place.
04 · Built with AI
Claude built fast. I decided what to leave out.
Built with Next.js, TypeScript, and Tailwind, with Claude Code as the build partner. The speed came from the AI. The restraint came from me.
With Claude handling a lot of the implementation, I could move from idea to a working tool quickly and spend my attention on the decisions that mattered: the five timer states and how they transition, which sounds earned a place, how the mantras feel, how settings stay out of the way until you want them.
Every one of those is a no as much as a yes. No account. No dashboard. No streaks or badges. The product is small because I kept saying no, and the AI made it cheap enough to keep iterating until the small version felt right.
The point
AI makes it easy to add. The work of a designer, even more so now, is deciding what not to add. Focus is the result of that discipline: a tool that does a few things, carries a feeling, and gets out of the way.
It is live at focus.prelisa.design. No login. Open a tab and go focus on something that matters.