How CLEAR Works

The Problem with To-Do Lists

Most task apps work like notepads. You add something, it sits there, you either do it or you don't. The app doesn't really care which. There's no friction when you push something to tomorrow for the seventh time, no signal that a pattern is forming.

CLEAR is built on a different premise: that the gap between what you intend to do and what you actually do is information worth seeing. Not to feel bad about it — to understand it, and over time, to close it.

It's not a to-do list. It's a commitment tracker. The difference is in what happens when you don't follow through.

Core Concepts

How the Score Works

The Patriot Score starts at 100 and moves based on what you do. Completing work earns points. Missing, skipping, and chronically snoozing items costs points. The math is calibrated so that a person doing a reasonable amount of work consistently — not perfectly, just consistently — stays comfortably in the 100–130 range.

Scoring is band-aware: the penalty for missing a task scales with the band it was in. A Mandatory miss carries the full penalty. A Suggested miss carries half. Radar and Backlog misses carry no penalty at all — the system only holds you accountable for work that was actually due. Completing something from Radar or Backlog before it's due earns a 1.5× bonus, rewarding initiative.

The score is private and local. It never leaves your device. No one else can see it. It exists entirely to give you honest feedback about your own follow-through.

Snoozed, Skipped, and the Snooze Ladder

CLEAR distinguishes between snoozed tasks (pushed to tomorrow — still a commitment) and skipped tasks (marked as not doing it this time — tracked, not erased). Neither is a moral failure. Both are data.

The snooze ladder tracks consecutive snoozes on a single item. At one snooze, the app notes it quietly. By six, the character voice has escalated to the highest severity tier. This isn't punishment — it's making visible a pattern that usually means one of three things: the timing is wrong, the task is too vague, or the commitment doesn't actually reflect how you want to live right now.

When a pattern like that surfaces, CLEAR gives you options: pause it (suspend without penalty — useful when life changes temporarily), convert it to an idea (preserve the aspiration without the commitment pressure), or set it to Tier IV. Tier IV is the "I want to be the kind of person who does this" tier — it tracks your aspirations with zero score consequences for skipping, snoozing, or missing. Your commitments should reflect your life, not guilt you into a version of it you haven't chosen yet.

Getting Started

1. Install CLEAR

   Open clear.bureauofcivicresponsibility.org on your phone or desktop. From the browser menu, choose "Add to Home Screen" or "Install App" to install it as a PWA. It runs fully offline — no account required.

2. Map your areas of responsibility

   Use the area creation wizard (the + button on the Areas of Responsibility view) to map out the areas of your life — work, health, family, finances, creative projects, whatever applies. For each area, add the routines, tasks, goals, and ideas that match your vision of what success there looks like. The app is built to help align your daily action with your actual aspirations, not to tell you what to aspire to.

3. Check in daily

   Open the app each day. The daily view shows what matters today — sorted automatically by urgency. Complete items as you do them. Snooze honestly — not to avoid, but to defer with intention. The check-in takes as long as it takes, which will vary depending on how much is on your plate.

4. Adjust over time

   Use the Insights view to review patterns. If something keeps getting snoozed, change the schedule, lower the tier, or convert it to an idea or Tier IV aspiration. A commitment that doesn't fit your life right now is worth understanding — maybe the timing is off, maybe the vision behind it shifted. Pause it, reclassify it, sit with it. The goal is alignment, not attrition.

5. Choose your skin

   Open the hamburger menu (top right) and select a skin under Appearance. The BCR theme is the default — surveillance state, patriot scores, communist threat levels. If that's not your vibe, other themes offer the same functionality with completely different vocabulary and aesthetics.

Your Data

Everything CLEAR stores stays on your device in localStorage. There is no server, no account, no sync, no backup cloud. This is by design — your commitment history is yours alone. Use the hamburger menu to export your data as CSV or JSON for backup or offline review. Importing from a previous export restores your full commitment list and history.