A short guide to using the app, written for the people I’m letting in early.
Daily OS is something I built because a friend told me I didn’t know how to lead. He was right. Not because I was a failure but because I had so much on my plate I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t have a tool that helped me face that honestly every day, so I made one.
It’s a daily operating system. Each morning you name what matters and what you won’t do. Each night you answer one question: did you win? Over time, the small daily honesty changes you.
It’s not a productivity app. It’s not a habit tracker. It’s a place to be honest with yourself daily, and to invite a couple of people to walk with you.
Sign up at mydailyos.app with email + password or Google. The first time, you’ll accept the current terms and privacy policy, then walk through the profile questions Daily OS uses to understand your season. Most of it is optional.
After onboarding, the Setup Assistant can walk you through what Daily OS is, how to add it to your Home Screen, and how to turn on notifications. On iPhone Safari, tap the Share button in the toolbar, then View More → Add to Home Screen. On newer iOS layouts, open the bottom toolbar menu first if Share is tucked away. Then leave Safari and open Daily OS from the Home Screen before setting up notifications.
You can update any of this anytime — there’s a “Check in” button at the top of the dashboard that walks you back through the questions.
Every time you open the app, it says something to you. Not a generic “Good morning.” Something that knows your name, your faith, your priority for the day, and where you are in the day. Morning, afternoon, evening, late night — it shifts with you. The OS is paying attention.
A Note You Left
Some mornings, before the dashboard opens, you find something waiting. It’s a note. Short. Written in first person. Signed by you.
Daily OS builds it from what you actually recorded — your priority yesterday, whether you won, what you said you wouldn’t do, how the weather in the room has been running. It reads those things back to you the way you’d want to hear them. Not a summary. Not a report. A note from the person who was in this room yesterday, to the person walking in today.
It doesn’t touch your journal. It doesn’t pull in anyone else. It’s just you, talking to yourself, with enough honesty to be useful.
Flip it over. Read it. Then walk in instead of standing in the doorway waiting on yourself.
Every morning starts with Your Weather. Before you name the day, you mark the day you’re actually in: sunny, clear, cloudy, rain, storm, or thunderstorm. That context stays private, but it helps the app speak with the right amount of weight.
Family / Work / Health / Faith — pick one. This is your priority for the day. Not a to-do; a posture. It tells the rest of the day what frame to operate in.
Not today, I won’t… — write what you’re not going to do. Doom scroll. Skip the workout. Eat out. Get into a stupid argument. Naming it makes it harder to do.
When you hit Commit, you commit to both things: what matters most and what you won’t do. They lock for the day. After that, the morning inputs collapse into a short summary so you can carry the commitment instead of keep editing it.
Word for today — the app generates one longer word based on your priority, your context, your weather, and your feedback style. Read it once and let it sit.
One way to lead better — generated from the same read of the day, but shorter and actionable. Something you could actually do today.
You get one Daily Word and Lead each day. That is intentional — formation comes from receiving the word for the day and responding to it, not slot-machining for variety.
Below the morning card is a list of three things. Just three. You don’t get to add a fourth.
These aren’t your full to-do list. They’re the three things that actually have to happen today for you to feel like the day went somewhere. Type them in. Check them off as you go.
Most apps let you add 47 tasks and then make you feel bad about not doing 47 things. Daily OS makes you choose three. The discipline is the point.
There is no Night toggle anymore. From 4am until 5pm, Daily OS keeps the surface focused on the morning commitment. From 5pm until 4am, the app shifts into evening mode automatically. The day itself turns over at 4am, not midnight.
Your morning inputs stay visible as a compact Today’s commitment summary: your priority and your Not Today. The full editor is gone because evening is for review, not renegotiation.
Did you win today? Yes or no. Not “kind of.” Not “mostly.” Yes or no. Be honest.
What threw you off? (Optional.) If you didn’t win, what got in the way? If Your Weather shifted during the day, the prompt may name that pattern so the reflection starts closer to what actually happened. No one sees this but you.
One sentence. What do you take from today? Not a journal entry. One line. Make it true.
This is the feature most people don’t have anywhere else. Up to 5 people you trust can be your partners.
What they see: whether you won or lost today. That’s it. Not your priority. Not your journal. Not your private thoughts. Just a flag: ✓ or ✗.
What they can do: send you one short message a day. They pick a tone — encouraging, direct, or firm — and the app generates 3 messages for them based on how you want to be talked to. They pick the one that feels right and send it. You see it in For You.
Adding a partner: two ways. In Connections, type your partner’s email directly — they need a Daily OS account already. Or generate a shareable invite link and send it however you want — text, WhatsApp, in person. The link is single-use and expires in 72 hours. Anyone who clicks it and signs up (or signs in) becomes your partner automatically.
Thanking a partner: tap the heart (♡) next to any active partner. Pick from three short messages. One thank-you per partner per week. Because gratitude should be intentional, not cheap.
Stepping away: if a partnership runs its season, you can step away from it. The other person gets a brief notification. You can optionally include a thank-you — a fixed message that says you’re grateful they walked with you. If the situation calls for it, you can also remove silently — no notification, no trace. That option exists for safety.
Why this works: because real accountability isn’t an algorithm. It’s another human being who knows you, who said yes when you asked them to walk with you, and who shows up on the days you didn’t.
Your Person, For You, and accountability partners now live in Connections. Today stays focused on the day in front of you, while Connections holds the people walking with you.
The Today dashboard can still show a small Connections summary: Your Person, active partners, invites, and For You count. Tap it to open the full Connections space.
The Partners area brings everything together in one place:
The + icon opens the add-partner form. When you have no partners yet, the form opens with a simple question: “Who’s walking with you?”
This is your inbox from your partners. Today’s encouragement messages and thank-yous land here. It resets at midnight — yesterday’s messages are gone, today’s are fresh. Nothing accumulates. Nothing demands your attention. It’s just what your people sent you today.
If someone steps away from a partnership, you’ll see a brief notice here too. Dismiss it when you’re ready.
If your partner is on Daily OS, you can link with them as Your Person. One slot. Mutual consent. A different relationship than accountability partners — not your team, your home base.
When you’re linked:
You see each other’s priority for today. That’s it. Nothing else crosses the link — not your journal, not your win/loss, not your reflection. Just the priority.
Each of you gets a short daily prompt oriented toward the other. Not “cheer them on.” More like: “Paul is leading with Family today. Be present for what might come.” Awareness, not instruction.
Your Person and your accountability partners can’t overlap. If someone is one, they can’t be the other. These are different relationships and Daily OS treats them that way.
I built this feature for a specific reason. On my own journey, the person closest to me sometimes couldn’t see the change I was trying to make — not because they weren’t paying attention, but because they had no frame for it. This gives them the frame. It doesn’t tell them what to do. It just says: something intentional might happen today. Be present for it.
To link: open Connections → Your Person → enter their email. The user you’re adding must be a Daily OS user. Have them request access or generate a shareable invite link, then remove them from your accountability if they are already a partner. This will allow them to be added as “Your Person”. Clunky for now, update coming soon.
Every Sunday evening, Daily OS sends you a personal letter.
Not a report. Not a summary with stats and percentages. A letter — written from your week’s reflections, using your own words, that shows you what your week actually looked like in the things that matter.
It reads your journal entries. It reads what threw you off. It can notice Your Weather shifts when they help explain the shape of the week. It notices the gap between the day you said you lost and the day you said was better. And it tells you the truth about your week in a way that’s harder to see when you’re living inside it.
It arrives Sunday night when the week is done and the next one hasn’t started yet. That’s the moment it’s meant for.
You don’t have to do anything to receive it. Just show up during the week. The letter takes care of the rest.
The Today dashboard is a single focused flow now. Weather and Daily Priority stay pinned near the top; the rest of the supporting widgets can be arranged below them:
The Weather shows your local weather and a small tomorrow glance. Enter or update your zip code directly in the card.
Your Weather is a quick read on your internal day — sunny, clear, cloudy, rain, storm, or thunderstorm. It’s private. Partners and Your Person don’t see it. Daily OS can use it, along with the outside weather, to tune the tone and friction level of your word and lead-better prompt. If you change it during the day, the card keeps a small trail and asks one quick “what changed?” so the shift is not lost.
You can customize your dashboard by clicking the grid icon (⊞) in the top right. Weather and Daily Priority stay pinned. The customization sheet lets you reorder the remaining Today widgets, hide what you do not need, and save the layout with Done.
The History tab shows you over time. On mobile, Today, Connections, History, and Settings stay close in the bottom navigation.
History is for you. Partners don’t see it.
Settings is its own page now. It holds the Setup Assistant, notification controls, display/readable mode, password tools, Your Person and partner management, and the account deletion danger zone.
If you enable notifications, Daily OS can send morning and evening reminders, plus partner activity alerts when someone sends encouragement or thanks. Notification settings include category toggles, reminder times, quiet hours, and your timezone.
On iPhone, notifications need Daily OS to be opened from the Home Screen app, not Safari. If you skipped that during setup, open Settings → Setup Assistant to resume.
Partner notification copy stays generic on purpose. The notification tells you something is waiting; the private content stays inside Daily OS.
Your journal entries, your priorities, your Not Today commitments, Your Weather, your shift notes, and your “what threw you off” reflections — those are yours. Partners only see win/loss flags. Your Person only sees your priority. Your first name is visible to partners in messages. A Note You Left is assembled inside Daily OS from structured fields before any optional AI polish is applied. AI generation sends limited context to Anthropic to produce your daily word, lead better suggestion, Sunday letter, partner messages, and A Note You Left. Daily Word, Lead, partner messages, and A Note You Left never include your journal content. Read the full privacy policy at /privacy.
You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Danger Zone. Everything goes. No “deactivated” middle state.
Thanks for being one of the first.
Paul