Summary
- Built in one sitting with Cursor
- An Obsidian plugin that sends periodic reminders to check in on what you’re working on
- Skills: TypeScript, Obsidian API, Cursor
- GitHub
The Story
Context
I was deep into building something when I realized I’d spent 30 minutes reading about a tangentially related topic. Then another 20 minutes on something else. Classic rabbit hole syndrome.
This kept happening. I’d start working on a feature, get curious about something, and boom - 2 hours gone exploring things that weren’t my original task.
Problem
- Getting distracted by rabbit holes while researching, coding, or working
- Losing track of what I was supposed to be doing
- No accountability mechanism to check in with myself
- Needed something that would gently pull me back to the main task
Solution
Focus Check-in - an Obsidian plugin that sends periodic reminders to log what you’re working on.
Simple concept:
- Set an interval (15 min, 30 min, whatever)
- Get a system notification when it’s time to check in
- Log what you’re doing in your daily note
- Get back to work
The act of logging forces you to be honest with yourself. If you find yourself typing “still reading about X” for the third time, you know you’ve gone down a rabbit hole.
Execution
Built this in one sitting using Cursor. The whole thing just flowed.
Key features I added:
- System notifications that work even when Obsidian is in the background
- Customizable intervals (because everyone’s focus window is different)
- Pre-alerts to give you a heads up before the main notification
- Status bar indicator showing time until next check-in
- Optional auto-opening of daily notes
The Cursor workflow made this incredibly smooth. I’d describe what I wanted, review the code, and boom - working feature.
Learnings
- building personal software is stupidly easy now. like, ridiculously easy.
- you can go from “this annoys me” to “I have a solution” in a few hours.
- Cursor + clear intent = shipped product
- the best tools are the ones you build for yourself. you know exactly what you need.
- shipping something that solves your own problem feels great. using it daily feels even better.
- small tools that nudge behavior can be surprisingly effective. I catch myself way earlier now when I start drifting.
The plugin is live on GitHub and I use it every day. If you also struggle with rabbit holes, give it a try.
Hope you had fun reading this :)