Sklop now has two widgets for focused work and a period export for AI tools. Here's how they work and when to use which.
Focus: how much time went into what matters
The "Focus" widget is an ordinary stopwatch, but an honest one. Pick a task for today or work without one and press "Start focus". When you're done, press "Stop".
The server keeps the time, not the browser tab. If you close the tab in the middle of a session, it keeps running, and you'll see it when you come back. A forgotten timer won't record a full day of work: a session is capped at twelve hours.
Under the timer you can see how much focus you've built up today and over the period, and the list below breaks the time down by task. Handy when you want to understand where the week actually went.
Pomodoro: work in chunks, with breaks
The "Pomodoro" widget runs work intervals and breaks. By default that's twenty-five minutes of work, a five-minute short break and a fifteen-minute long break after every fourth interval. All the lengths can be changed in the widget settings.
A few details:
- Only a completed interval counts. An interrupted interval is recorded as focus, but you don't get a pomodoro for it.
- A break is timed from the planned end of work. If the tab was in the background, you'll see the honest time left on your break, not a fresh full one.
- A pomodoro interval is focus too. It goes into the total of the "Focus" widget, so two widgets on one board don't contradict each other.
- Only one session runs at a time. If you start a pomodoro during free focus, the free one closes, and the widget warns you about it in advance.
When to use which? Focus suits a long task with no natural breaks. Pomodoro helps you start when starting is hard: twenty-five minutes feels doable even on a bad day.
Export for AI
The "Export" button in the board toolbar turns the open period into text. You choose the sections:
- tasks and workload by day;
- recurring tasks with a day-by-day pattern and completion rate;
- diary entries;
- metrics;
- focus and pomodoro.
The text is built in Markdown, which AI tools read well. Paste it into any AI and ask it to find patterns: on which days tasks slip, how sleep relates to productivity, what keeps coming up in your diary. The same text is useful before a conversation with a specialist, so you don't have to recall the week from memory.
Nothing is sent automatically. Sklop only builds the text, and you decide where to paste it. The text contains no names from the world clock and no email address.
Where to find it
Focus and pomodoro can be added to any board through the widget picker in edit mode. Export is available on every board outside edit mode. All of it is free, like the rest of Sklop.