DevFocus

A focus timer and day plan for engineers working with AI. Sessions, real breaks, and a defensible end to the day — for the prompt → wait → review loop, not the old 9-to-5.

Today's plan	Focus	Break

Contents

• Why
• Screenshots
• Features
• Installation
• Getting Started
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Modes
• Settings
• Design Principles
• Cursor IDE
• License

Why

AI coding agents changed the shape of the work: it's no longer 25 minutes of typing, it's prompt, wait, review, repeat. The old risk was losing focus. The new one is never disengaging — agents remove the natural stopping points, so nothing tells you when to rest or when the day is done. DevFocus is the pacing layer for that loop: a plan for today, protected focus time, real breaks, and a defensible end to the day.

Screenshots

First run — pick your rhythm	A clean start

Break time	Wind-down — a good stopping point

Full history — every day since you started

Features

Focus, your way

• Three modes — Classic (25/5 min), Deep Work (50/10 min), and fully Custom
• Circular dial — a live countdown with session segments showing round progress
• Status bar — time, phase, and your current intent, always visible without opening the sidebar
• Sound & notifications — a cue and a desktop notification when a session ends, a break ends, and when a round completes; toggle either independently, calm single-line copy
• Persistent state — survives restarts, restored as paused, never silently loses time

Today's plan

• Day plan — write up to 5 tasks for today; the active one becomes your intent in the status bar and sessions count against it automatically
• Reorder & rename in place — priorities change; drag isn't required, hover reveals the controls
• Complete mid-session — check off the active task without stopping the timer; the next open one steps in
• Later tray — capture stray thoughts with Alt+Shift+A from anywhere, without leaving your code; promote them to today when their time comes

Real breaks, not just timers

• Daily goal & wind-down — set a session target and an evening hour; after it, DevFocus nudges you to wrap up with a day summary instead of another session
• Weekly rhythm — a 7-day strip of your focus history and the week's total — a fact, not a streak to maintain
• Full history view — a GitHub-style contribution heatmap of every day you've used DevFocus, opened from the rhythm strip's history icon
• Skip-break friction — skipping is always allowed, but the cost is visible, not hidden
• Break suggestions — a rotating, screen-appropriate nudge instead of a bare countdown

Installation

Requires VS Code 1.85 or later (or a compatible fork like Cursor).

VS Code

• From the Extensions view: search for DevFocus and click Install, or
• From the Marketplace: install DevFocus, or
• From the command line: code --install-extension akshayashokcode.devfocus

Cursor / other Open VSX editors

• From the Extensions view: search for DevFocus and click Install, or
• From Open VSX: install DevFocus

Getting Started

1. Install DevFocus (see Installation above)
2. Click the DevFocus icon in the Activity Bar to open the panel
3. Pick a rhythm, write down what you're working on, and press Start

Keyboard Shortcuts

Action	Windows / Linux	macOS
Start / Pause	Alt+Shift+D	⌥⇧D
Skip Break	Alt+Shift+B	⌥⇧B
Capture a task to Later	Alt+Shift+A	⌥⇧A

Reset has no default shortcut (it's destructive and rare) — run DevFocus: Reset Timer from the Command Palette, or bind your own key.

Modes

Mode	Session	Short Break	Long Break
Classic	25 min	5 min	15 min
Deep Work	50 min	10 min	30 min
Custom	your choice	your choice	your choice

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
devfocus.soundEnabled	true	Play a sound when a session ends, a break ends, or a round completes
devfocus.autoStartNextSession	true	Auto-start work session after break
devfocus.notificationsEnabled	true	Show a desktop notification when a session ends, a break ends, or a round completes
devfocus.defaultMode	"CLASSIC"	Mode applied on first launch
devfocus.longBreakMinutes	15	Default long break length for Custom mode
devfocus.dailyGoal	8	Daily session goal shown in panel and status bar (0 disables)
devfocus.windDownTime	"18:00"	After this hour DevFocus nudges you to wrap up (empty disables)

Design Principles

DevFocus is deliberately quiet: no accounts, no telemetry, no gamification. Streaks were built and removed — loss-aversion mechanics punish rest, which contradicts the point of the tool. Consistency shows up as facts (a rhythm strip, a weekly total), never as a chain to maintain. Everything stays local — your session history never leaves your machine, stored in VS Code's own extension storage, not synced to any server.

The full reasoning — strategy, interaction rules, and pixel-level spec — is written down, not just implemented:

• docs/UX_PLAN.md — strategy and roadmap
• docs/UX_DESIGN.md — behavior, vocabulary, copy
• docs/UI_SPEC.md — tokens, layout, motion

Cursor IDE

DevFocus is fully compatible with Cursor. It uses only standard VS Code extension APIs.

License

MIT © akshayashokcode