An alarm with a morning mission
Published 2026-10-23
Most people can turn off an alarm without waking up. The thumb knows the way.
Pryvyd keeps ringing until you turn it off, and then it gives you a mission. The mission is a move you recorded yourself, such as squats, with a deadline. Ten minutes is the default. If the deadline passes before you finish, a second alarm rings. So the first alarm is not the end of the morning. It is the start of a small task.
Why a move you recorded? Because nobody has to build a library of missions for us, and because the exercise can be yours: a stretch, a push-up, whatever your body can do. You record it once, the app learns the shape of it, and then it counts your repetitions.
Counting happens on the phone. The camera sees you, the phone works out the angles of your joints, and the video is not kept. The app stores the angles and a little information about the move, not your face. You can delete all of it in the settings.
Mornings are not always kind to cameras, so we planned for the dark. The app checks the light before it counts, and tells you to turn a lamp on. If that is not possible, there is a backup mission that uses the movement of the phone, such as shaking it or balancing it, so you are never locked out of switching the alarm off.
Some mornings should not count. If you are ill or it is a day off, you can freeze the day. A frozen day counts neither for you nor against you, and you get two a week. A mission that punishes illness would not be a good mission.
Alongside all this lives the Ghost, the version of you that gets up on time every day. It never insults you. You can switch it off with one toggle and keep the alarm, the mission and the counting.
The idea is simple. The alarm should not only wake you. It should get you moving before you can talk yourself back to sleep.