A side project tracker for daily momentum
Compound is a side project tracker for iPhone that asks one question a day: did you get closer to your goal today? Shipped a feature, talked to a potential customer, wrote for twenty minutes after work — tap ↑ Closer. Your answers build a trajectory chart of your progress on the side project or business you’re building, alongside whatever tools you already use to build it. Free on the App Store.
Why side projects stall without anyone noticing
Side projects usually die quietly — not from one bad decision, but from weeks of “I’ll get to it this weekend” that never get logged anywhere. Compound asks the one question that catches that drift early: did today, on balance, move the project forward?
A task board tracks what’s left to build; it doesn’t tell you whether you’re actually showing up for the project week over week. Momentum and task completion are different things.
Because the question is broad, it survives pivots — new idea, new direction, new co-founder. The project evolves; the daily signal of whether you’re moving it forward stays the same.
How Compound tracks a side project
Name what you’re building — “Launch the app,” “Get to 10 customers” — and answer one question each evening: did you get closer today? The chart accumulates your honest days into visible momentum across weeks and months, exactly the timescale side projects actually get built on.
- Shipped a feature or talked to a real user → ↑ Closer
- Busy day, kept a small task moving → → Same
- Didn’t touch the project at all → ↓ Further — noted, and tomorrow is new
Compound doesn’t manage tasks, sprints, or to-do lists — it pairs with whatever project tool you use, tracking only whether you showed up for the project today.
What a stalled week looks like in Compound
A shallow dip — a run of ↓ Further and → Same days — proportionate to the months of real progress around it. Nothing resets, no project gets deleted from view. The chart just quietly shows the stall, which is usually enough to prompt getting back to it.
Side projects thrive in the dark: no one’s watching, so a stalled week feels invisible until months have passed and the project is effectively abandoned.
A three-second nightly answer keeps a light on the project without adding management overhead — the cost of a stalled week is simply seeing it.
Pulse notices how you actually build
Pulse, part of Compound Pro, reflects your recent pattern back to you — when your real building sessions happen, and what tends to precede a stall.
“Your ‘Closer’ days come almost entirely from mornings before your day job starts. Weeks without a set morning slot for the project drift toward ‘Same’ and ‘Further.’”
Side project questions
Related ways to use Compound
Compound is a general goal & habit tracker — see everything it does →
See you tomorrow.
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