Restoring our agency and attention

Three years ago I started building an AI tool called Intent. It’s “executive function assistance software” — essentially a second brain for your brain — that runs on your devices, alerts or stops me when I break my rules and is invisible when I’m healthy. Our goal is to build more tools that help you feel sane and healthy without relying on you to operate them, or even care. If all you do is sign up and turn it on, you can feel 40% better.

We’ve found that once you feel 40% better you have enough attention and energy to do the rest. This is ideal for people with ADHD or ASD who simply can’t rely on willpower, but the principles work for anyone

We do this by leveraging the very same behavioral engineering techniques that work against you in nearly every interaction with the modern world, digital or otherwise. Our devices became tools, not for us, but to be used against us. Portals to hell that leave us with few options between mindless, over-stimulated, collective loneliness and living in the wilderness. But these predictable patterns of human manipulation can be for us too. In truth, as I’ve seen time and time again over three years, you can do a lot better than 40%.

Impossible Laboratories Early Access is me throwing open the doors of my garage and sharing the tools that, until now, I’ve built for myself and a small community. This is way bigger than our initial tool and now we’re developing or exploring tools for emotional management, motivation, impulse control, self-care, smothering vices, habit formation, mindless spending, restlessness, anxiety, and uncertainty over what to do.

I’ll keep going alone if I have to, because I build every one of these for myself, but we stand a better chance with your energy and support behind us. Help us free humanity’s minds and unburden our souls. You can help restore hope in a positive future by deciding who technology is actually for: you.

The best part about this approach is that you don’t have to wait for corporations, or lawmakers, or society to do anything. We don’t need their help, or their permission. You can create relief, stability, control, and eventually peace in your own life. Right now. Without disconnecting from the modern world. Without trying so hard all the time. I’ve experienced it personally many times already. There’s something here.

I hope you’ll sign up to join the early access program below, take action on the weekly at-home experiments, and test our software as it becomes available.

By clicking the button above, we are committing to sending you weekly emails with:

• The current status of our plans, prototypes, and test group recruiting needs. No fluff. Links to interviews or events

• One at-home experiment meant to test some of our assumptions and inform our designs. Trying it out and reporting back every week is the single most important thing you could do to help us realize these tools

• A way, in 10 seconds or less, to objectively measure whether the research tasks are helping (or not!) week over week

Only regular respondents to the research tasks are considered for inclusion in early access test groups.

Tools may be non-software and/or rough software and testing is always free of charge.

Participants in the testing and development of a tool may receive substantial discounts or other benefits upon public release and may be able to continue using pre-release versions, possibly indefinitely with conditions

Any data from at-home experiments and test groups will be kept confidential, internal to the company, and used purely for product development. We don’t sell or share any of your data without your direct permission.