Earnest: True accountability

Earnest is a step-challenge app: it reads your daily step count from Health Connect to check whether you hit the step goal you committed to. You back the goal with your own money, and you only pay if you miss it. Create a challenge or join one, stake an amount, and get on with it. Hit the goal and you pay nothing - the stake is never taken. Miss it and you are charged what you staked. That is the whole idea: money that says you mean it. HOW IT WORKS - Read the rules before you commit: what the goal is, how long it runs, and exactly what you are charged if you miss. - Your progress is checked against something outside the app, not against your own word for it. Today's challenges are step goals, read from Google Health (FitBit, Google Pixel Watch) or Health Connect (Android phones, Oura Ring). - Review a week of your own data before any money is involved, so you can see what your tracker actually reports. - Each week is scored day by day. A countdown tells you when a challenge starts, and daily progress once it is running. STEP DATA Earnest reads one thing from Health Connect: your step count. When you join a step challenge it shows your steps for last week, so you see what your tracker really records before you commit; while a challenge runs it reads your daily total for each day to check it against your goal. The benefit: your goal is checked automatically and fairly from the tracker you already use, with nothing to log. Steps are read only while the app is open - when you open it or tap Update now - never in the background. Nothing else is read, and step data is never sold or used for ads. You can turn off access in Health Connect at any time. BEFORE YOU JOIN - There is no entry fee. You are charged only if you miss. - Once you join a challenge you cannot leave it. The commitment is the whole point, so pick a goal you mean to hit. - Your card stays on file until the challenge finishes. That is what the promise is made of: there has to be something to charge if you miss. Earnest is for the goal you have set before and quietly dropped. Nothing is charged while you are keeping it.