Blog
Notes from the team behind ConKarma.
Design choices, ethics calls, and the small craft decisions that add up to a private, family-first habits app. Two posts a month, written by humans, without AI fluff.
by ConKarma team · 2026-06-15
The roadmap is live, and your vote shapes it
ConKarma's public roadmap shows everything we're working on, everything we said yes to, and everything we said no to — with the reasons. This post is the short tour, plus how to vote.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-06-02
What we shipped — After Dark on the Microsoft Store, three stores at v1
Following yesterday's Windows + Google Calendar + zone split, today's shipment lands the After Dark companion app on the Microsoft Store as its third store listing — alongside the App Store and Google Play. Distinct MSIX package, distinct Adults Only / 18+ IARC rating, distinct subscription. The tasteful-UI store-listing copy, the /platforms After Dark Windows row, the /help/windows After Dark sections, and the Promise #15 update all land in one commit.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-06-01
What we shipped this week — Windows desktop, Google Calendar two-way sync, and ten After Dark help articles
A platform-expansion week. ConKarma for Windows landed as a native Microsoft Store app, Google Calendar joined the two-way calendar sync integrations alongside Apple and Outlook, and the After Dark zone gained ten in-app help articles covering the surfaces couples were asking about — Activity Catalogs, Touchplay Dice, Pleasure Discovery, Body Mapping, Sensory Headphones, Massage Pathways, Anticipation Builder, Long-Distance Mode, Reconnection, and Sensory Deprivation. Documented here in the same posture as the rest of the build-in-public log.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-05-31
What we shipped this week — the discouragement architecture, Honest Letters, a bounded Ember carve-out, and voice/video calls
Three brand-load-bearing primitives went public this week: the discouragement architecture as a meta-commitment on /promises, Honest Letters as the surface for the hard message, and a tightly bounded Ember carve-out for couple-authored playful consequences. The plumbing — WebRTC calls and the MCP integration grants — closes out the entry.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-05-31
Twelve public commitments — and what each one explicitly doesn't do
Twelve commitments landed on /trust and /build-in-public today, each one paired with the list of what we deliberately are not. Allergens, accessibility, crisis routing, topic avoidance, recovery, communication style, pronouns, heritage language, quiet hours, household composition, co-parenting, and pets — twelve declarations, each one as much about the boundaries we won't cross as about the help we offer.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-05-30
What we shipped this week — a bounded AI coach, field-encryption, the Compound #1 reaction window, and the Ember mutual deck
Four shipments. Each one was a chance to add an engagement primitive we deliberately didn't. The bounded AI coach is the headline — a connection-and-reflection tool that is explicitly not a therapist. Field encryption, the 15-second grandparent-reaction window, and the consent-first mutual deck round out the week.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-05-28
What we shipped this week — the cohort-aggregation guarantee, Craft as a discipline, and Leagues without the FOMO
Three privacy-and-quality commitments made public this week: a 50+-family floor on every number we report, experience quality treated as a retention discipline instead of a lock-in, and our one competitive feature built so it can never shame anyone. What we did, what we deliberately didn't, and why.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-05-27
What we shipped this week — Cell Sparks Pool, Hearth addresses, persona onboarding, Q2 transparency report
Six interconnected changes across the AI-credit economy, Family subscription handoff, optional Hearth addresses, persona-aware onboarding, and the public quarterly transparency report. Documented here in the same spirit as the rest of the site — what we did, what we deliberately didn't, and why.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-05-23
Anti-dark-pattern as competitive strategy — how ConKarma turned 14 things we won't do into a moat
Most subscription apps grow by extracting more attention from each user. We bet on the opposite: codify what we won't do, audit the commitments annually, and let trust become the brand moat. Here's the math, the research, and the rollout — written for parents tired of being engineered against, and for builders curious what the trade-off actually looks like.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-05-22
Why ConKarma never uses FOMO — the anti-attention-economy family OS
FOMO is the load-bearing wall of the modern consumer app. Notifications that pulse with urgency. Streaks that become hostages. Feeds engineered to never end. We refused all of it for ConKarma, and we want to explain why — both as a product choice and as a brand commitment we will not unwind.
by Stas (PM, ConKarma) · 2026-05-22
Bridging the digital generation gap — the research behind ConKarma's connection features
We didn't set out to build a research-backed family app. We set out to build something families would actually use across generations. Then we kept noticing the same patterns from the literature show up — co-engagement beats parallel use; ask-not-tell beats lecture; shared creation beats consumption; ritual beats novelty. Here's what we read, what we built, and what we're still uncertain about.
by Stas Goshtein · 2026-05-21
How board games shaped ConKarma's family rituals — and why slot machines didn't
A long answer to why ConKarma's gamification is built from the board-game canon instead of the slot-machine playbook the wider app ecosystem normalised. Ten design principles, with examples per persona.
by ConKarma team · 2026-05-16
Why every family app needs a Daily Question — the loop that ConKarma built around
Most family apps optimise for tasks. The richer surface is the one Paired and a few others got right: a short, curated question every day that asks people to actually talk. Here's why we made it editorial-first, not AI-generated, and why it lives in both couple and family cells.
by ConKarma team · 2026-05-15
Why ConKarma's conflict tools aren't AI-mediated
We built sibling, couple, and cross-generational repair flows out of curated content and structured forms — never an AI in the middle. Three reasons: privacy, calibration, agency. Here's the long version of each.
by ConKarma team · 2026-05-15
Limits, safewords, aftercare — how Ember handles consent infrastructure for adult couples
Adult relationships include adult content. The market either pretends that's not the case or builds it badly. Here's how Ember treats limits, safewords, and aftercare as load-bearing infrastructure, with the privacy posture to match.
by ConKarma team · 2026-05-14
Sign in safer: two-factor authentication is now standard
A 6-digit code at sign-in, new-device alerts for you and for parents of kids under 18, and 8 backup codes if you ever lose access to your email. The plainspoken version of what changed today.
by ConKarma team · 2026-05-11
Welcome to ConKarma — a household OS for the way modern families actually work
ConKarma isn't another gamified family chore app. It's a household operating system: routines, money, calendar, journal, and intimate-relationship tools, all on one private spine — designed for the way real households are shaped today, not the 1995 nuclear-family default.
by ConKarma team · 2026-04-27
Why we built a family habits app without feeds
Habit-tracking apps usually evolve toward leaderboards, public quests, and feeds. We deliberately walked the other way. Here's the design call — and what we lost by making it.
by ConKarma team · 2026-04-26
Shared rituals that survive a bad week
The most useful family habits aren't heroic. They're the small ones that hold up when somebody is tired, sick, or quietly miserable. Designing for that constraint changes a lot.