DoneThat vs FocusBuddy

The short answer

Focus Buddy is a free AI co-pilot that talks to you: it manages your to-do list, checks in during work sessions to head off procrastination, and looks for the patterns behind why you keep not doing the thing.

DoneThat watches the work rather than asking about it. Both aim at the same problem — attention that wanders — from opposite directions. One asks you; the other sees.

What Focus Buddy does well

It is free for general use. That removes essentially all risk from trying it, and it is the strongest thing about it.

It intervenes during sessions, not just afterwards. Check-ins while you are working are the right shape for an attention problem.

It manages the list for you. Most productivity tools fail because grooming the list becomes the work. Automating that is the right instinct — goal setting here is to-do focused rather than time-based, which suits people whose problem is a list they never process.

It looks for patterns, not just completion. Asking why you procrastinate is a more useful question than whether the task got ticked.

It clearly lands for people with ADHD, judging by its testimonials — a group that bounces off conventional productivity tooling for structural reasons, so a tool that works for them is doing something right.

Two things to check before relying on it

Real-time coaching is listed as coming soon, not shipped. If that is the feature you want, it is not there yet as of 11 August 2026.

The personalised version is limited. The site describes it as paid and "available to a select few" rather than openly purchasable, so plan around the free tier rather than an upgrade path.

Platforms are not stated on the site either, so confirm your OS is covered.

Asking versus seeing

This is the substantive difference and it decides most of the comparison.

Focus Buddy's accountability is conversational. It knows what you tell it during a check-in. That is enough to prompt a useful conversation, and it inherits the same limitation every self-report system has: what you report is filtered through what you noticed and how you would like to come across. The afternoon that fragmented across six things gets reported as "worked on the deck".

DoneThat's record is captured. The day is reconstructed automatically, including the parts you would never have mentioned. Don's nudges are based on what is actually happening — flagging low-value work while you can still fix it, rather than asking whether it happened.

Neither approach is free. Conversation costs your attention at check-in time; capture costs privacy. Precisely what ours costs: screenshots are never stored — processed in real time, immediately deleted, only the derived structured activity persists. Excluded apps are redacted on your machine before anything is sent. With your own Gemini or OpenAI-compatible model, raw activity never reaches our servers. The desktop app is open source.

What DoneThat adds beyond capture

• Goals with calendar time blocked for them, not just a to-do list.
• Mood tracked alongside the work, so burnout risk is a signal rather than a surprise.
• Meeting reminders and break suggestions.
• Work history AI tools can query through MCP and an API.
• Peer accountability — following others, shared summaries, Slack and Discord, accountability groups, all opt-in.
• A team dimension on summary-level dashboards with relative trends rather than per-person hours.

Where Focus Buddy is the better choice

• You want free. It is, for general use.
• You want to talk to something. Conversational check-ins suit some people much better than a dashboard.
• Your problem is a to-do list you never groom. It handles that directly.
• You rule out screen capture. Focus Buddy's ask is much smaller than ours.
• You have ADHD and conventional tools have failed you. Its testimonials suggest it is worth a try, and it costs nothing to find out.

Where DoneThat is the better choice

• You want the record, not the conversation. Captured beats self-reported every time.
• You want to know where the week went. Focus Buddy does not measure time.
• You want real-time intervention now, rather than when it ships.
• You want a defined platform and pricing you can plan around.
• You want AI tools to have your work history through MCP and an API.
• You want peer accountability, which Focus Buddy does not offer.

How we compared these

Everything stated about Focus Buddy comes from its public site, read on 11 August 2026 and linked below. Where the site does not say something — platforms, capture method — we have said so rather than guessing.

Claims about DoneThat are first-hand: we build it and charge for it, where Focus Buddy is free for general use. That is a real advantage on its side. The narrow claim we would defend is that an AI which asks you what happened and one which sees what happened are different products, and the second is harder to fool.

Questions people ask about FocusBuddy

Is Focus Buddy free?

Yes for general use. There is a paid personalised version, but the site describes it as available to a select few rather than openly purchasable, so plan around the free tier.

What does Focus Buddy actually do?

It acts as an AI co-pilot that manages your to-do list, checks in with you during work sessions to counter procrastination, and looks for the behavioural patterns holding you back, with weekly insights. Real-time coaching is listed as coming soon.

Does Focus Buddy see my screen?

The site does not say. What is clear is that the accountability is conversational — it works from your check-ins rather than from captured activity. DoneThat captures automatically, so the record does not depend on what you report.

Focus Buddy vs DoneThat?

Focus Buddy if you want free, conversational AI accountability around a to-do list. DoneThat if you want the work itself captured and reconstructed, coaching based on what actually happened rather than what you said, and history other AI tools can query through MCP.