Let me start with the honest part, because it's the whole point of this post.
I am not an Android developer. Before this I had never written a lin...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
This is genuinely such a thoughtful idea! The home screen widget and countdown sound so simple but efficient. I like your attitude of what you built and what AI built. Going from 20 cigarettes to 5 is already amazing. Wishing you the best with the rest of the journey!
Thank you Sarah :)
Hey Ravi! as a smoker myself, I can relate to what you have written. I am glad you found your motivation to quit by developing an app to fix this problem. This is such a developer approach to do things :)
I had a look at your library, it reads well, and has all the convenient features. A time registrar for your smoking. And the widget that acts as a constant reminder with llm agent nagging you via notification makes it feel bit personal, a good addition.
I am going to fork and give it a try right away. I will post here, if this indeed helps me ;)
Good luck to you as well. Rooting for you and myself.
Thank Ryan :) To be honest, I would not have shared this, until after 10 days of trying I realized that it might actually work. And I agree, the whole motivation to quit started seriously after the app started taking shape. As, I am really trying to solve a problem affecting me, i get a bit more passionate. Hoping to cross the 22 day mark soon. I read somewhere, if you maintain a habit for 22 days or 3 weeks, then you sort of rewire your brain.
I am basically trying to rewire my brain to not accept smoke as a reward for task done, or for boredom. Granted few days its difficult, but the constant reminder of progress keeps me going. I hope you will find some use from this. Would be looking forward to hearing more about your updates :) Until then! Long live and propser
Kudos Ravi. Just wanted to share my immediate feedback: I downloaded your repo, and ran it on my android (pixel phone), works smoothly.
I created a pacing of 2h30min, and to be honest, I have only smoked 8 cigarettes yesterday (from 16 a day), so just wanted to tell you, it works. Good job.
The distractions are great, spent lot of minutes on the puzzle. I did not have cloud ollama, but i used the local ollama, and it works nicely. The periodic notification from the llm model. This is what it sent as notification yesterday, I was laughing:
This just made my day! Thanks Ryan. Good luck, keep at it.
You can also change the personality of the llm chatbot. Mine has a dry humor !!
This is honestly one of the most inspiring things I’ve come across on DEV in a while. ❤️
What makes this so ridiculously good is that you didn’t start with “I’m going to build an app.” You started with a real problem, built something specifically for yourself, tested it relentlessly in the real world, and then had the generosity to put it out there for everyone else.
Going from ~20 cigarettes a day to 5–6 is HUGE. And I absolutely love the honesty around AI here too. You’re not pretending Claude magically did everything—you had the idea, made the product decisions, identified what was broken, tested it every day, and used AI to turn your thinking into working software. THAT is such a compelling example of what AI-assisted development can actually look like.
The widget + countdown + distraction approach is brilliantly simple. No grand promises, no “one weird trick,” just a tiny feedback loop that helps you get through the next craving and gradually change the habit.
And the fact that you kept the data local, made it free, avoided accounts/analytics, and openly acknowledged the limitations of the code makes this even more impressive.
Honestly, Ravi, this is exactly the kind of project the AI era should be producing: personal, practical, humble, open, and genuinely useful.
20 → 5 is already an incredible achievement. I’m rooting ridiculously hard for 5 → 0. 🚀
What a fantastic project. Seriously. 👏👏👏
Thank you Frankie 🫠😍
Kawai
Smoking is one of those things that hooks every smoker in a different way. Some have chemical dependency, some are social smokers, and some have a hand to mouth habbit. Each person also has their "pain" points: health, financial costs, smell, disapproving family. Long story short, there is no single silver bullet. You clearly found something that might work for a certain category of people. Its good to see your solution working for you and therefore a lot of other people. Well done Ravi!
Thank you for the pleasant comment :) I agree with you on "no single silver bullet", just glad I found what works for me, and all i can do is hope that it may help someone else as well :)
It reminds me of Ricky Gervais's books on 'how to stop' and what it does, is actually encourage you throughout reading it to drink/smoke, essentially exactly what your app did, it told you incrementally 'time to smoke' and you keep telling yourself "I'm trying to quit", so when the book says drink/smoke, you choose not to. Keep reading and again... Again... Until the desire to drink/smoke is all but gone. Because you are training yourself to not smoke when told to and ignore your habit. Smart, I imagine alot of people would find it quite helpful
Thank you :) I have never read/heard of that book up until now. Thanks for sharing, I will try to read it ;)
You have potential to be a software engineer. You think about real problems and then apply it in the project. If you like, you can learn to code and make more awesome projects. Also I like your approach. You are honest about AI usage and also about your workflow. You did not oversell your product as if it's the perfect app out there. I also like the discipline to keep it all local for safety. Thanks for sharing this and I hope you can finally quit smoking sooner rather than later!
Thank you Elmar for the pleasant comment and message :)
Surprisingly, I am a software developer (or rather, scientific software developer: the kind that only does data science and inferences). Also, I have zero knowledge of Kotlin or android development. This is where AI has been super helpful for me. I still enjoy the critical thinking process, not the implementation part.
wow!!!! amazed! very cool - kudos to you, I need your app too :D
Thank you Katharina 🫠🐼