Axyom

The user picks which apps get a pause. Apple’s Screen Time shields them, and opening one hands off to Axyom first. Nothing is blocked and nothing is reported anywhere: the app the user chose still opens, a moment later, on purpose.

This is the whole architectural bet. An intervention that fires at checkout is arguing with someone who has already decided. Arriving before the storefront loads means arguing with nobody — there is no cart yet, so there is nothing to defend.

The flow starts by making the user say it out loud. What are you about to buy. How much. Which category. A purchase that stays vague is easy to make — one typed into a field and given a number is already harder.

One quiet question sits at the bottom: planned, or not. It blocks nothing. It just puts the honest answer on the screen before any money moves.

Then the screen goes black. A sphere, a slow breath, and the purchase re-priced in the only unit that stings: time. Not the amount — the hours of work behind it. The financial context that makes that translation possible is optional; without it Axyom simply says less.

Nothing here can be tapped through quickly. The breath has a duration the user sets once: thirty, sixty or ninety seconds, sixty by default. For that whole minute the product does exactly one thing, and it does it without a single notification.

When the breath ends, three outcomes appear: walk away, plan it, buy now. Identical size, identical weight, identical colour. No green for restraint, no red for spending, no default selection waiting to be confirmed.

That symmetry is the position, not a layout accident. An app that scores you for walking away has quietly decided that buying is failure, and users can feel the judgement. Axyom does not tell anyone which outcome is correct. It only makes sure a choice was made rather than skipped.

The pause, the breath, the three outcomes and the record, in ten seconds. No narration, no audio, no copy over the picture. The screen has to carry the argument by itself.

Plays muted on viewport. If reduced motion is on, the poster stays put — the still already tells the story.