HHelm

iPhone & Apple Watch app

Some days hold less. Helm plans for that.

Helm reads what your iPhone and Apple Watch already know — sleep, heart rate variability, overnight temperature — and turns it into one honest sentence about what today can hold. Then it helps you plan a day that fits.

Not launched yet · in development for iOS · not a medical device.

Your watch already knows it was a rough night. Helm is the part that does something about it.

The number, and its working

It shows its working.

Most trackers hand you a number and ask you to trust it. Helm hands you the number and every reading behind it — what moved it, where it came from, and by how much. A good day and a low day are the same card. The low one is what it's really for.

A good day
A low day

Illustrative — not real health data. Accent is the app; green means easing.

A floor, not a ceiling

“The last 5 days this read Recover, you got more done than it expected on 4 of them. Treat it as a floor, not a ceiling.”

Helm tracks whether its own forecasts were right, and says so when it has been too cautious. A low reading is never permission to stop — only an honest estimate of what the day will cost.

The chart

Your calendar and your reminders, finally on the same day.

Day, week, month — drag an event to move it. Plus a place for unclosed loops: the things still open, kept in view without ever becoming a to-do list. Nothing counts up to a target.

Aug 2 – 8
9:00 AMStandup
2:00 PMTherapy
3 unclosed loops · not a to-do list
2 Sun
11:00 AMCoffee with Sam
3 MonToday
9:00 AMStandup
2:00 PMTherapy
4 Tue
10:00 AMDentist
5 Wed
4:00 PMLaser cutting
6 Thu
Nothing scheduled.
7 Fri
1:00 PMShop order deadline
8 Sat
Nothing scheduled.
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Open reminders

It draws the day

It draws the day, over what's already there.

Talk through how tomorrow should go, and Helm lays it on a real grid, on top of what's genuinely in your calendar. Drag a block to move it; press empty space to add one. Nothing reaches your calendar until you say so.

Meals go in without being asked

They're the first thing to vanish from a day planned around demands — and the first thing whose absence becomes a bad afternoon nobody can explain.

Transition time comes with instructions

Each block carries two or three specific things into the calendar event, at least one that needs nothing at all. "Cold water on your wrists," not "practise grounding."

Journal

A conversation that pushes back.

Journal notices thought loops, and the things you say about yourself that aren't true. Come back later and it's waiting where you left it — not halfway through a sentence you don't remember.

The shipmates

Nine companions. Each carries something different.

The most striking thing in Helm, and the hardest to explain until you've met them: nine illustrated shipmates you can actually talk to — external supports, never parts of you. Beaver keeps track of meds, food, and water; others hold the harder conversations. Swipe to the one that fits — once to choose, once to be sure.

Meds, food, waterBeaver
Messy days & salvageRaccoon
Overwhelm & griefRootkeeper
The late-night hoursLantern Keeper
Leaving & arrivingHarbor Captain
Boundaries & guiltMirror Knight
What you already decidedArchivist
The first two secondsSpark Runner
The middle of the workAxel

Symptoms

What, and when. Never what it means.

Tap what happened. Helm records what and when — no severity scale, no pattern-finding, no interpretation. The payoff is an appointment summary you can hand a doctor: every occurrence, with its date and time. It finds nothing, suggests nothing, concludes nothing.

The log

The last 72 hours, quarter by quarter.

Doses, food, drinks, symptoms, journal entries, appointments, and movement — on one grid at fifteen-minute resolution. Not "was Tuesday hard," but what was actually in Tuesday. A gap means nothing was logged then, not that nothing happened. No totals, no score.

Say it out loud

“Hey Siri, took my meds.”

Logged, with the time you actually took them — not the time you remembered.

A body that changes

Meds, food, water — and the readings behind them.

The quiet maintenance a hard day erases first, kept in one place and easy to log after the fact — which is when most of it actually gets recorded.

One tap from the Home Screen

A widget for a drink, food, meds, or a symptom — the whole app in one square, because the moment worth recording is rarely a moment you can unlock a phone, find an app, and get to a screen.

It works with no signal

Helm opens and records with no connection at all; everything but the conversations lives on the phone. There's a Mac companion too, for writing and planning on a bigger screen — the sensor features stay on iPhone.

Access is not an afterthought

It works when words don't.

A speech-free mode that removes every prompt to talk. A tap-to-speak board for when speaking isn't available — tap a word, and the phone says it. A dyslexia-friendly font and a simplified view come with it, not as an apology.

Try it — tap a word to hear it out loud.

What it will not do

The constraints are the point.

No other app in this category can say all of these. They aren't features left out — they're the promise.

Nothing counts up

No streaks, no scores, no progress rings, no "3 of 5 done." A day with two things done is not a worse day.

Nothing is a limit

Capacity is a forecast of cost, never permission. Helm never stops you doing anything — it just tells you the truth about what it'll take.

Never medical

No diagnosis, no symptoms, no clinical framing. It notices a change from your own baseline — nothing more, and it says so.

It never claims to know how you feel

Helm reads signals and asks. What you say always outranks what the watch measured.

The shipmates aren't parts of you

Nine animal supports you can talk to — external company, not an inner critic and not fragments of a self.

No good days and bad days

Nothing is shaded as a warning. A low reading is a floor to plan from, not a fault to fix.

Appearance

Wear it the way that's easiest on your eyes.

Helm ships in six looks — four dark, two light. This page changes with them, so pick whatever's kindest right now. It'll remember.

Where Helm comes from

Helm was built by and for a plural, autistic, ADHD system in Ogden, Utah. The AAC board, the parts-aware access mode, the shipmates, the refusal to ever score you — none of them came from a workshop. They exist because the person building Helm needed them to.

The rest of this is Tanner's to write, in his own words — left open here on purpose.
More at durrantula.com/about →

Join the waitlist

Want it on the day it ships?

Helm is in development for iPhone. Add your name and you'll hear when it's ready — no countdown, no launch-hype, and nothing else sent your way.

No spam. No pressure. Leave whenever you like.

Support the build

Help it exist.

Building this costs time, energy, and money a one-person disabled shop doesn't always have. If you want to see Helm reach people, you can chip in toward the work.