Circa

Circa is a daily planner that schedules demanding work when you have the energy for it. It learns when that is from your own check-ins. It is on TestFlight.

Chronotype from your own data

Most planners ask you to pick “morning person” or “night owl”. Circa does not ask. It records how you feel through the day, and after 30 check-ins the server computes your chronotype from them.

The calculation runs on the server so every client gets the same answer and I can improve it without shipping an app update. Until there are enough check-ins, the app uses a neutral default and says so.

Calendar access is write-only

Circa adds focus blocks to your calendar. It does not need to read your meetings to do that, so it does not ask to. The permission is write-only by design, which means the app cannot see what is already there.

A privacy manifest from one source

Apple wants a privacy manifest and matching store answers. Keeping those in sync by hand goes wrong, so I generate the manifest from a single table of what the app collects and why. When the data changes, the table changes, and the manifest follows.

The trade-off

Waiting for 30 check-ins means the first weeks are not personalised. Asking a quiz on day one would be faster, but it measures what people think about themselves, not how their days actually go. I chose to wait and be honest about it in the app.

Write-only calendar access has a cost too: Circa cannot avoid placing a focus block on top of a meeting it cannot see. The app asks you to confirm each block instead, which keeps the privacy promise simple and true.

Where it stands

Circa is iOS only and in TestFlight, with a waitlist at joincirca.app.