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hourbrook
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Breaks count. Nobody gets a score.

Time trackers tend to end up as a way to watch people. Hourbrook is built the other way round: it counts your time the way you'd count it yourself, and keeps what it sees to itself.

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Breaks count as work up to

One entry, 13:00–16:15

Picked 2h 10m → logging 3h 15m (+10m rounding, +55m joined gaps)

Why it matters

A tracker that is fair to the person using it is also the one whose numbers you can trust.

When a tool docks you for thinking, people learn to look busy. When it counts the coffee between two pieces of work as part of the work, they stop gaming it, and the hours on the invoice are the hours that were worked.

The rules

The rules Hourbrook counts by. The break limit, agent waiting, calls and full screen are switches in Settings › Tracking, yours to change; the rest is how it's built.

Breaks count as work

A coffee or a think between two pieces of the same work stays in it. You choose how long a break may be: 15 minutes, half an hour, 45 minutes or an hour. Longer time away ends the stretch.

Waiting on your agent counts

While Claude Code, Codex or something in a terminal is busy, sitting still is still work, for up to three hours. Hourbrook judges this by the CPU time those processes use, never by what they do.

Calls count, however still you sit

Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Slack huddles are never time away, however long the call. A call window left open afterwards keeps counting for up to three hours.

Watching and presenting count

A full-screen video or slideshow in QuickTime, VLC, Keynote, PowerPoint or a browser keeps counting for up to an hour.

Rounding goes your way

When you log picked memories, the entry is rounded out to the quarter hour: 13:10 to 15:46 logs as 13:00 to 16:00, and the log card says how much was rounding. Drafted entries round to 5 minutes and timers don't round. Rounding isn't a setting yet.

No score, no deductions

No productivity score, no activity percentage, no ranking, no idle time taken off. Nothing on your day is graded, by Hourbrook or by anyone you work for.

Settings › Tracking, where the rules live.

The sum, shown

Every time you log picked memories, the card spells out where the number came from: what you picked, which breaks were joined, and how much was rounding.

You can take any of it out before you log. Nothing is ever added afterwards, and nothing is taken away.

Time away, asked kindly

After a longer break, Hourbrook can ask what it was. A call on your phone, a whiteboard session, a walk to think: say so and it's logged. A break is a break, and that's the end of it.

Don't want the question? Turn it off in Settings › Tracking.

What we won't build

Some features would make Hourbrook easier to sell to managers. They're not coming.

Not in Hourbrook

  • Screenshotsor screen recordings
  • Keystroke loggingor mouse tracking
  • Productivity scoresor activity percentages
  • Idle time deductedfrom your hours
  • Rankings of peopleagainst each other
  • A who's-behind dashboardfor chasing people

In Hourbrook instead

  • Memories only you seeon your Mac, deletable one by one
  • Entries you choose to logthe only thing a team sees
  • A day that fills itself inso nobody chases anyone
  • Plans and budgetsabout work, not people
  • Breaks and waiting countthey're part of the work
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