Business & Finance
Show HN: Kadō – open-source habit tracker, with non-binary habit score, for iOS
Key Points
A privacy-first habit tracker for iPhone and iPad. Non-binary habit score · Offline-first · Open source (MIT) · No account, no subscription, no telemetry.
A privacy-first habit tracker for iPhone and iPad.
Non-binary habit score · Offline-first · Open source (MIT) · No account, no subscription, no telemetry.
Kadō is an iOS habit tracker with three commitments:
- A score, not a streak. The habit score — inspired by Loop Habit Tracker on Android — is a non-binary exponential moving average of your completions. One missed day doesn't wipe your progress. You see a trend, not a fragile chain.
- Your data stays yours. No account, no analytics, no third-party
SDKs. Storage is local (SwiftData), sync is optional through your
own iCloud (CloudKit private database). Export is lossless, in JSON
or CSV, whenever you want it. See
PRIVACY.md
. - Native to Apple. SwiftUI,
@Observable
, SwiftData, CloudKit, WidgetKit, App Intents — no cross-platform layer, no third-party dependencies.
Why another habit tracker? The market gap is spelled out in
docs/PRODUCT.md
: the reference open-source
tracker (Loop) is Android-only; the reference iOS tracker (Streaks)
is closed source and uses a binary streak; the most visible modern
iOS open source attempt (Teymia) is freemium. Kadō takes Loop's
algorithm to native iOS — MIT, free, no account, no subscription.
- Today view — habits due today, tap to complete, long-press for partial / note / timer, drag to reorder (the order syncs via iCloud).
- Habit detail — monthly calendar with month-by-month navigation, current streak, best streak, habit score with an info popover explaining the math. Edit any past day straight from the calendar, including days before the habit existed.
- Per-day notes — a short note on any day's completion, carried through export and import.
- Overview — habits × days matrix with score-shaded cells, the Loop / Way of Life pattern with Kadō's score DNA. Completions logged off-schedule show up too, instead of hiding as rest days.
- Flexible schedules — daily, N days per week, specific weekdays, every N days (the cycle re-anchors on each completion, so finishing early never costs you a day). Binary, counter, or timer habit types.
- Day starts at — push the day rollover as late as 6 AM, so late-night logging still lands on the day you mean. Changing it never re-buckets history.
- Widgets — Home Screen (small / medium / large) and Lock Screen
(rectangular / circular / inline). Quick-complete via
AppIntent
. - Siri and Shortcuts — complete a habit, log a value, or ask for a score and streak, hands-free. Also available as Home Screen actions and Shortcuts automations.
- Reminders — per-habit local notifications with recurring schedules and check / skip quick actions.
- iCloud sync — optional, opt-in, goes only through the user's private CloudKit database. Settings shows live sync state, including when sync isn't working.
- JSON and CSV export / import — lossless backup of your data, in both formats, round-trip tested. Open a CSV backup in Numbers or Excel, edit it, bring it back in.
- Tip Jar — entirely optional, unlocks nothing. The whole app stays free, with no ads, no subscription, and no tracking.
- Accessibility — Dynamic Type up to XXXL, VoiceOver labels on every surface, full Dark Mode.
- Localization — English and native French (not machine-translated).
Shipping on the App Store — current version 1.7.
| Version | Highlights |
|---|---|
| 1.0 | First public release — score, Today / Overview / Detail, widgets, iCloud sync, reminders, JSON export, EN + FR |
| 1.1 | Siri and Shortcuts; edit past days from the calendar |
| 1.2 | Per-day notes; backdated completions; month navigation |
| 1.3 | Drag to reorder habits; a gentle, one-time review prompt |
| 1.4 | iCloud sync reliability — iPad crash fix, honest sync status |
| 1.5 | Tip Jar (StoreKit 2), optional and unlocking nothing |
| 1.6 | "Day starts at" hour; days-per-week scoring fix; off-schedule completions in Overview |
| 1.7 | CSV export / import round-trip; "every N days" re-anchors on completion |
Not planned. A native Apple Watch app and HealthKit
auto-completion were scoped for v0.3 and have been descoped — no
user has asked for either since launch. Both stay listed in
docs/ROADMAP.md
under "Descoped", and would be
reconsidered on real demand.
Next — Live Activities and Dynamic Island for timer habits, then
the remaining v1.x polish (themes, biometrics, categories, backup
files). Full roadmap in docs/ROADMAP.md
.
- SwiftUI with
@Observable
(iOS 17+) for state — no Combine. - SwiftData for local persistence, with
VersionedSchema
+SchemaMigrationPlan
wired from day one. - CloudKit via SwiftData (
cloudKitDatabase: .private(...)
) for multi-device sync. - WidgetKit + an App Group JSON snapshot for extension surfaces
(the widget process never opens SwiftData — see
CLAUDE.md
for why). - App Intents for widget quick-complete, Siri, and Shortcuts.
- StoreKit 2 for the Tip Jar.
- Swift Testing for unit tests, XCTest for UI tests and for the App Store screenshot run.
- Zero third-party dependencies.
Target: iOS 18.0+, Xcode 16.0+, Swift 5.10+.
Architecture notes, conventions, and toolchain quirks (SwiftData
edge cases, CloudKit-shape rules, concurrency under Swift 6, etc.)
are documented in CLAUDE.md
.
Kado/ # Main iOS app target
Packages/KadoCore/ # Shared Swift package — @Model types,
# domain types, calculators, intents,
# widget snapshot types
KadoWidgets/ # Widget extension target (reads an
# App Group JSON snapshot)
KadoTests/ # Unit tests (Swift Testing)
KadoUITests/ # UI tests (XCTest) + the App Store
# screenshot run
Scripts/ # Screenshot capture, framing, and the
# dependency-free App Store Connect client
site/ # getkado.app — static marketing site
branding/ # SVG marks and wordmarks
docs/
├── PRODUCT.md # Product vision, competitive analysis
├── ROADMAP.md # Versioned feature roadmap
├── habit-score.md # Score algorithm spec
├── streak.md # Streak algorithm spec
├── app-store/ # Listing copy, captures, framed images,
│ # and how they are pushed
├── app-store-connect.md # Store metadata, copy, checklists
├── plans/ # Per-feature research / plan / compound
│ # artifacts from the conductor workflow
└── screenshots/ # iPhone 6.7" set (EN + FR), also the
# source for the marketing site
PRIVACY.md # Privacy policy (repo-hosted)
- macOS 14.5+
- Xcode 16.x+
- An Apple Developer account is only needed to build to a physical device or TestFlight; the simulator does not require one.
git clone https://github.com/scastiel/kado.git
cd kado
open Kado.xcodeproj
Select the Kado
scheme and an iOS 18 simulator (iPhone 17 Pro is
the project's practical default on Xcode 26 toolchains).
From Xcode: ⌘U
on the Kado
scheme.
From the command line, the Makefile
wraps the common loops:
make test # unit suite (Swift Testing) — a couple of seconds
make e2e # UI suite (XCUITest), minus the screenshot run
make build # compile the app for the simulator
make help
lists the rest, including the App Store targets
(make screenshots
, make frames
, make listing
) documented in
docs/app-store/README.md
.
If you use Claude Code with the
XcodeBuildMCP server,
prefer test_sim
/ build_sim
over shell xcodebuild
— see the
"Tooling" section of CLAUDE.md
.
Settings has a hidden dev-mode toggle that swaps the SwiftData
container for a seeded local sandbox. Useful for playing with
historical score / streak behavior without affecting your real data.
See docs/plans/2026-04/dev-mode/
for the design notes.
Issues and pull requests are welcome. A few notes:
- Read
CLAUDE.md
first — it is the project's working agreement (architecture, conventions, testing expectations, toolchain quirks). It is written for Claude Code but applies equally to human contributors. - Business logic (score, streak, frequency, import/export) is test-first. New behavior needs a test; regressions need a test that would have caught them.
- One PR per feature or logical fix. Commit message format follows
a lightweight Conventional Commits convention —
feat(scope): description
,fix(scope): …
, etc. - No third-party dependencies. The Tip Jar is built directly on
StoreKit 2, and the App Store Connect client in
Scripts/
signs its own JWT withopenssl
, precisely so that stays true.
Kadō collects nothing. No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporter. iCloud sync is optional and goes through the user's own private CloudKit database.
Full policy in PRIVACY.md
.
MIT © 2026 Sébastien Castiel.
- Loop Habit Tracker (Álinson S. Xavier, GPLv3) — the source of the non-binary habit score algorithm. Kadō reimplements the idea natively in Swift; no Loop code was copied.
- Streaks (Crunchy Bagel) — the iOS UX reference for how this kind of app should feel.
- Teymia Habit (MIT) — reference point for a modern SwiftUI + SwiftData + CloudKit + WidgetKit stack on iOS.
- XcodeBuildMCP (getsentry, MIT) — the MCP server that makes an autonomous build / test / screenshot loop possible with Claude Code.