The story starts the way these stories always start. A founder who installed Apple Screen Time, smashed through the daily limit, tapped Ignore for today, and noticed. With a kind of quiet horror. That the sequence had become a ritual. Limit. Override. Repeat. The "consequence" of going over was a beige banner. The "cost" was nothing.
So we tried Opal. We tried One Sec. We tried ScreenZen, Brick, Roots, Forest, Jomo. Each of them solved a slice of the problem. The compulsive open, the deep-work block, the gentle nudge. Each of them, eventually, got bypassed. Either the friction adapted away or the willpower ran out, usually before the end of the second week.
The thing missing from every one of them was the same thing: a real consequence. The kind of consequence that changes behaviour not because you decide it should, but because the deal is already signed. A pre-commitment. A Ulysses contract. A bet you make against yourself when the rational version of you is in charge, redeemable when the 11:47pm version is.
That is what ScreenFine is. The whole product is a pre-commitment device for screen time. You set the limit. You agree, in advance, that going over locks the offending apps until you do 25 pushups, walk 1,000 steps, or sit through 10 mindful minutes. You choose the redemption type at onboarding. When the limit is crossed, the apps lock. There is no override button. There is no ignore for today. There is a notification from an AI villain who is unsparing about it.
And then there is a 1-week redemption window where you can clear the lock by walking 1,000 steps, doing a workout, 10 mindful minutes, or 25 camera-counted pushups. Because the goal is behaviour change, not punishment. Most lock events never make it past the redemption window. The ones that do, hold the apps locked until you complete the action. That is the trade.