Task apps count checkboxes
Done doesn't mean easy.
Five completed tasks can be a great day, or the one that wrecked you.
Your tasks are tracked. Your hours are logged.
Nobody's counting what you paid.
EMRALD hands you the receipt.
The old way, examined
The missing column.
Every productivity app measures what you get done. EMRALD measures what it costs you.
EMRALD is an instrument. It sits beside the task app and timer you already use and adds the one column they can't see. Keep your system. Finally see the price.
Over time it builds a model of your effort from your own receipts. It compares you only to your own past, never to other people.
The receipt
It says how long the session actually took, then asks what the work took out of you. How hard it felt, where the effort came from, whether you spent the right amount, whether you hit flow, and how it felt, plus any notes you want to include.
If your good days leave you wrecked, that bill is arriving but nobody is reading it. A lot of people, ADHD and other neurodivergent brains included, just do the work. The cost never shows up anywhere until the crash. EMRALD is built for this time blindness: the space between intention and action has a cost, and EMRALD writes it down while it's happening, so the crash stops being a surprise.
Your existing tools count tasks and hours. EMRALD sits beside them and adds a layer that shows burnout risk before it hits you.
What you see
Open EMRALD in your browser. No install, no setup tax.
Get started
Ten seconds a session to build your record.
Capture the time block
Pick a project and its effort level. Start in the browser or in Obsidian, or keep running the timer you already use in Toggl. EMRALD records how long the session takes while you focus on the work.
How did it feel?
When you stop, the five-question receipt. Ten seconds, skippable if you're busy.
The record builds
Your receipts land in your numbers the day you start. Keep filling them in for a month and the full picture is yours: digests, metrics, and burnout trend, all automatic.
Backed by Science
Every metric maps to published research in effort science, cognitive load, and energy management.
Effort science
Effort isn't one thing: it has cognitive, emotional, and motivational dimensions. Each drains you differently and demands a different response.
Flow quality
Flow states aren't effortless: they're a specific kind of effort that feels positive. Tracking flow quality reveals patterns time logs never could.
Unified theory
Physical and cognitive effort follow the same perceptual mechanisms, validating a single framework that works across every kind of work.
Framework
A framework for tracking effort across every domain of your life, so recovery gets scheduled and burnout gets visible before it lands. EMRALD is the working implementation.
Learn more
Integrations
EMRALD sits beside the tools you live in and adds the cost column.
Available now
A free, MIT-licensed plugin. EMRALD lives in your sidebar and adds only frontmatter to your notes. Your notes stay yours.
Use EMRALD in Obsidian
Available now
Toggl keeps the ledger for the invoice, and EMRALD keeps the ledger for you. Stop the timer you already run and fill in the receipt in the extension or from the outstanding-receipts button in the EMRALD app. Entries sync hourly and on demand.
Use EMRALD with TogglWant EMRALD to work alongside another tool you run? Tell us which one.
Tell usPricing
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Quick answers
The receipt is quick, ten seconds: three sliders and a couple of buttons. Even that can feel tedious some days, so every receipt has a skip button. Skipped sessions still count toward your record, they just carry less detail. Sessions under five minutes record on their own with no receipt at all. And the receipt appears where you already work, in your browser, in Obsidian, or at the end of a Toggl entry.
Your receipts land in your numbers the day you start. The Burnout Monitor and the weekly digest are free and switch on with your first sessions. The full picture, your own effort profile, builds over about a month of receipts, and it compares you only to your own past.
EMRALD is built to manage effort and energy around time blindness: the gap between how long you meant a block to take and how long it took. A lot of people with ADHD and other neurodivergent brains recognize that gap on sight, and so do plenty of people without a diagnosis. EMRALD is a record of your own effort, not a diagnosis or a treatment.
EMRALD sees only what you hand it: your sessions, your receipts, and the daily check-in if you use it. The Obsidian plugin adds only frontmatter to your notes and never reads what you wrote. Your notes stay yours.