hæl: fasting, observed

hæl is a fasting timer that observes instead of coaching. the app watches the hours, reads the cycle, and reflects what it sees in prose. no prescription. no congratulation. most fasting apps count down and celebrate. hæl counts and stays quiet. the interface is a single ring. the language is literary. the body’s rhythm shapes what the app says and when. THE FIRST ENTRY hæl opens like a book: a title page, a note before the text, then a first entry written in your own blanks. fill what you like, leave the rest. THE FAST an ensō ring marks the hours. turn it to choose a duration, from eight hours to seven days, or tap the number to write any length: in hours, or by the time you will eat. tap to begin. the timer carries a name that changes as the fast deepens. lauds, prime, terce, vespers. names borrowed from the canonical hours. prose arrives about what the body is doing, not what it should do. overtime continues past the goal without comment. on longer fasts, the inner rings breathe. a day can be marked as rest instead, held without penalty. the fast itself is free and complete. THE CYCLE hæl reads the menstrual cycle through Apple Health, or from the dates you set. the ring tint shifts with the phase, and suggested windows follow it: shorter during menstruation, longer in the follicular days. cycle tracking is optional. non-cycle users receive their own prose register, rotating by month. THE BODY LEDGER weight is read against the cycle, on a ring that holds it. each morning is a bead on a thread. the ring swells where this body usually carries water, so a luteal rise rides inside the swell instead of reading as a gain. last cycle runs beside it as a faint thread: inside it, lighter than then. one line of prose says what the mornings show. the numbers can stay out of sight entirely. THE LETTERS weekly letters arrive on mondays: the fasting, the weight, the cycle, in the same quiet voice. monthly readings take the longer view. quarterly readings mark the turn of each season. once a year, a year-in-review colophon gathers the whole arc into one page. in the ledger, a correspondence appears one letter at a time, on the ensō, the canonical hours, the luteal phase, autophagy. a finite pool that goes quiet when the last page turns. THE COLOPHON when a fast ends, a page stays. the date spelled out, the hours witnessed, a line composed from what happened. a small ceremony, shareable. THE LEDGER a bound record of every fast, grouped by cycle or by month. past groups fold to a spine; tap one to unseal the colophons beneath. THE PRACTICE hydration tracking with eight water drops. notifications that observe the season, the morning, the phase. never demanding, always noticing. live activities on the lock screen and dynamic island. siri shortcuts for starting a fast or checking the hours. Apple Watch companion with a complication that carries its own witness line. iPad support. on iPhone Duo, open the fold and the pages lie open as a book. buttons and settings in eight languages. the prose stays in english. THE FULL WITNESS (one-time purchase) the free app sees the fast. the full witness sees the cycle. the ring becomes phase-aware. the body ledger reads the water and the last cycle. the letters and readings arrive in full. the ledger keeps its whole history, and its letters appear. milestone ceremonies mark the long stretches, seven days, thirty, ninety, a year. one purchase, nothing recurring. PRIVACY all data lives on-device, in Apple Health, and in your own iCloud. no account. no server of ours sees it. purchases are verified by Apple and RevenueCat; usage and purchases are counted anonymously by TelemetryDeck. neither sees your records. hæl is not a medical device. it does not diagnose, treat, or prescribe. fasts beyond forty-eight hours should be medically supervised. the app says so every time. settings links to eating disorder support.