What works today, and what doesn't yet

The honest list for the Amplify beta. It changes as the product does.

This is a beta. Amplify is built by one person, it changes every week, and some of it is unfinished. Until now its only daily user has been Evan; you are the first people to use it for real. This page is the honest list, so nothing surprises you. It takes about three minutes to read.

What works

  • Getting in. Your invite email sets a password; after that you can also sign in with Google or Apple using the same email address. There is no public sign-up: only invited people get an account.
  • Your calendar, tasks, habits and goals on the web, with two-way Google Calendar sync (changes you make in Google show up in Amplify and the other way round, including moving or deleting one occurrence of a repeating event).
  • The assistant — type or talk to it and it creates, changes and deletes events, habits and screen-blocking schedules for you. Anything that removes something or changes a whole series shows you a preview first and waits for your Confirm, and every change it makes has an Undo.
  • The scoreboard — the few things you hold every day ("lines"), your week's misses, and the days your first work block got started, the same numbers on the web, in the header and on your phone.
  • "Where am I going wrong?" — ask the assistant and it answers from your own data (what you planned, what happened), and it tells you what it can't see instead of guessing.
  • Plan drift — when you haven't followed a plan for a few weeks, it asks you to cut it or recommit.
  • The iPhone app (through TestFlight): today's schedule and marks, the check-in, the assistant (it changes events, habits and blocking schedules with the same preview, Confirm and Undo as the web, and answers "where am I going wrong?"), and screen blocking with Apple's Screen Time (apps and websites, in every browser).
  • Your data is yours: Account Settings › Download My Data gives you everything as a file; Delete Account removes it and disconnects Google, WHOOP and billing.

What's partial

  • The Mac app and its screen blocking. It works and it survives restarts, but we only call it done after 14 straight days of daily use with nothing breaking, and that count started again on September 22. Mac only (the current build is for Apple-silicon Macs); there is no Windows app.
  • Don't block YouTube on the Mac yet. Until Mac app 1.0.19 ships, a *.youtube.com entry in a Mac block list also blocks Google sign-in on that Mac (Google signs you in through a youtube.com address). The fix is being built; we'll tell you when the build is out.
  • The iPhone app is on TestFlight, not the App Store. You'll get it through a TestFlight invite, and builds expire after 90 days, so you'll update it from TestFlight.
  • The Sunday packet (a weekly summary you can share with one person) is built; sending it by email is still being checked.
  • WHOOP works, but WHOOP limits apps like ours to a small number of connected people until it approves us for production. If the connect button fails, that's why.
  • Voice works on the web and the iPhone. A faster "live" voice mode exists and is newer.
  • On the phone the assistant sees your next 7 days of timed events, your habits and your blocking schedules. For anything further out, or for standing rules like "never a gym block on a PT day", use the web.

What's known to be limited or broken

  • Screen blocking can be switched off by a determined person. On iPhone, Apple lets anyone remove an app's Screen Time access in Settings — unless you turn on locked-in mode, where Amplify holds your Screen Time passcode and only gives it back after a cooling-off wait (24, 48 or 72 hours) that we can't shorten, even in an emergency. On the Mac there's a local way around it for someone who goes looking.
  • Restarting the iPhone during a locked-in session may free the blocked apps until Amplify is opened again. We're testing the fix.
  • Google Calendar only. No Outlook or iCloud calendar yet.
  • Nothing alerts us automatically. If something breaks at 3 a.m., we find out when we look or when you tell us.
  • The status page runs inside the app it reports on. If Amplify is fully down, the status page is too, and we'll email you instead.
  • Security items we've accepted for the beta, found in our own audit: your sign-in session is kept in your browser's storage, and some request limits are soft. We'll tighten both before a public launch.

Your data

What we collect and why: amplifyproductivity.com/privacy. Every company that processes your data for us (database, hosting, payments, AI, voice, email, calendar, WHOOP) is listed at /privacy/processors. We don't sell your data, and those vendors can't train their AI on it.

What we measure during the beta. How many minutes a day you have Amplify open, which pages and features you use, and whether each assistant request ended in a change, a preview you cancelled, or a failure. We keep counts, not what you typed or said. Evan reads it per person to see where the product loses people; it goes when your account goes.

When something goes wrong

Check amplifyproductivity.com/status. We post there within 30 minutes of knowing about a problem and update it at least every hour for anything serious. If you were personally affected, we'll email you.

Reaching Evan

Press the Feedback button inside the app (beta testers see it on every page), email support@amplifyproductivity.com, or reply to your invite email. It all goes to Evan, who built this. Bug reports, "this confused me", and "I stopped using it because…" are all equally useful.