Web app and iPhone app · Encrypted on device · Open source
The method asks for three things. Exactly ten goals, written out by hand. A single line from one to ten in which each entry genuinely comes before the one below it. And the top one broken down until a step is standing there that you could take this week. The list is read daily and rewritten on paper once a month. tenfold keeps that list and handles the logistics.
The method
A list of thirty things is not a list of priorities, it is a wish list. Ten forces you to lose something, and that is where the method starts working.
An hour, a sheet of paper, ten lines, and no editing while you write: no crossing out, no renumbering, nothing dismissed as unrealistic. Most people name three or four without hesitating and then slow down. What arrives after that slowdown is usually the most accurate thing on the page.
Ten is a limit, not a round number. Its work begins the moment you have eleven candidates and one has to go. A list that refuses nothing is a list of everything you have ever thought about, which is no longer a list.
Comparing ten things at once is beyond anybody. Comparing two is easy. The app shows two and asks which one you would keep if you could only have one. About twenty-five questions, two or three minutes, and you can stop whenever you like: the order you have reached simply stays.
A goal opens into the level below it, and that one into the next. The test at every level is the same: could somebody start this without a preparation of its own? If not, there is another level underneath. At the bottom there is usually a phone call.
After that the rhythm is short. Daily, one question about the goal that knows the least about itself: a minute of typing, then closed. Once a month, or whenever something in your life shifts, you go back to paper and write the ten out again.
Between rituals the list is left alone. You do not reorder it on a bad Wednesday, and you do not need to read the whole thing every day: that turns a decision into a worry. One look a week at the top three is enough.
Demo
A little over half a minute: the list sorts itself by comparing two goals at a time, then come the question of the day and the map.
Where it comes from
The handwritten list, the honest ranking and the regular rewrite come from Raymond Hull (1919 to 1985), a British-Canadian writer living in Vancouver and co-author of The Peter Principle. He set them down in How to Get What You Want in 1969. His observation was that most people are held back neither by ability nor by effort, but by never having settled what they want and in what order.
The book also carries exercises in self-suggestion that read differently now, and those stay out. What is taken is the list and the ritual. The limit of exactly ten is ours, as are the pairwise duel and the daily question.
This will not repair a life in an afternoon, and nobody should sell it as though it could. It does something smaller: it makes you decide what comes first, and it turns that decision into something you can start this week. The long version, with the paper ritual step by step, is at tenfold.kairatools.com/method.html, and it works on paper whether or not you ever open the app.
What it is
Both are the same code, so the method and the encryption are identical.
The web version opens at tenfold.kairatools.com, installs to the home screen if you want it there, and starts without a network. No store in between.
It adds the four things a browser cannot provide on iOS: local reminders, a home screen widget and badge, a share extension and Face ID unlock. It reaches the App Store shortly.
No sign-up, no email address, no password that ever reaches a server. You choose a passphrase and are given a recovery key. Put both in your password manager before you start.
No subscription, no pro version, no advertising, no feature behind a payment. The iPhone app takes voluntary one-off tips, and they unlock nothing, because nothing is locked.
What it is not. Not a task manager, not a habit app, not a calendar. No feed, no streaks, no points, no badges, no notification designed to pull you back in. tenfold does not tell you what to get done today; it tells you what you cannot get past this year. For the rest you already have tools.
The Today screen gathers at most seven steps, and when nothing is due it says so and goes quiet.
What you type is encrypted on the device with your passphrase: PBKDF2 with 600,000 rounds to derive the key, AES-256-GCM for the content. What is stored or transmitted is an unreadable block. Sync is optional and off by default; switch it on and the server is nothing more than a mailbox holding that block, with no idea whose it is or what is in it.
That is not a promise from us, it is how the thing is built: the key never leaves your device, so we cannot read your list, not even at a third party's request. It has a consequence we would rather say out loud. If the passphrase and the recovery key are both lost and no export exists, the data is gone. There is no reset link, because there is no account to reset.
No cookies, no measurement scripts, no tracking pixels, no advertising identifiers. The one outside component checks the tips and sees nothing of your list.
Show the code on the old device, scan it with the new one, type the passphrase. Alongside that there is the file export: encrypted, or deliberately in plain readable text.
The list, the comparisons, the unfolding and the daily question all run without a network. The app's reminders are local, with no push service in between.
Biometric unlock wraps your key in the device keychain. It saves you typing the passphrase; it does not replace it and it cannot bring it back.
Artificial intelligence
The app connects to no model. It writes the text, and you decide whether it leaves the device.
No API key, no server address, no switch to turn on. The app cannot call a model, not even by accident.
tenfold writes the prompt for one goal. You copy it, take it to whatever AI you already use, and decide again each time. Without an AI, tenfold stays fully usable.
The prompt holds the goal you are working on, the goals it hangs under and its direct steps, never the whole tree. A branch you keep away from models, cards you marked sensitive and the notes on any card never enter that text.
You paste the answer back, the app shows which steps it would create, and the only two buttons are apply and cancel. Nothing is ever applied blind.
Open source
Encryption nobody can read is only a claim. tenfold's sits in a public repository under the MIT licence.
The code lives at github.com/freshlabde/tenfold. You can read there how the key is derived and what leaves the device. If you want the encrypted mailbox to be yours as well, you can host the application on a machine of your own.
The iPhone app is a native shell around that same web application. The method, the encryption and the sync are the same code on both routes.
Support
Write to support@freshlab.es. We answer in English, German and Spanish, usually within one or two working days. Tell us the iPhone model or the browser, the system version and what happened, and we save ourselves a round of questions.
Never send us your passphrase or your recovery key. They are no help to us and we do not want them: they open everything, and that is precisely the point.
Ten goals in your own words, put in a single line from one to ten and unfolded level by level until a step appears that can be started without preparing anything first. The test at every level is the same: could somebody start this without a preparation of its own? If not, there is another level underneath. The list, the ranking and the habit of rewriting it come from Raymond Hull, How to Get What You Want, 1969. The limit of exactly ten is ours.
No. The method is half a century older than the app and works with a sheet of paper: write ten lines, order them by comparing two at a time, then break the top one down until a concrete step is standing there. What tenfold adds is depth and memory: it holds the levels under each goal, it keeps what you told it about your circumstances, and it does not stay behind in the other jacket. The long version is at tenfold.kairatools.com/method.html.
No, and that is not an oversight. The app talks to no model: there is no provider, no key, no address and no setting to switch one on. What it does is write a prompt for one goal; you copy it, carry it to whatever AI you already use, and paste the answer back. Before anything is applied you see a preview of the steps it would create, and the only buttons are apply and cancel. Without an AI, tenfold stays fully usable.
No. Sync is optional and off by default; switching it on is a deliberate act in settings. Once on, your device encrypts the list and sends a block the server cannot open, because the key never leaves the device. The server sees that a mailbox exists, how big the block is and when it last changed. It sees no title, no note and no owner.
The method and the encryption are identical, because it is the same code. The iPhone app adds four things a browser cannot provide on iOS: local reminders, a home screen widget and badge, a share extension and Face ID unlock. The web version runs in any browser, installs to the home screen, opens offline and can sit on a server of your own.
Settings offers two routes. "Wipe this device" leaves the synced copy untouched. "Delete everywhere" removes the server copy first and stops if that fails, rather than half-deleting quietly; then this device, the keys and the biometric enrolment go. On the server not even a marker that the mailbox existed is kept. You can export your data first, either encrypted or as readable text.
The web version is there already, free. The iPhone app reaches the App Store shortly, running the same code and the same encryption.
Updated: