Orka
A chore app built like a job, not a reward chart. Real deadlines. Work that locks when you miss it. Pay they can actually lose. Because being paid to do something makes it an obligation, not a favour — and nobody has ever learned that from a sticker.
Not a mock-up. That is one of my sons, last week, on the system this is built from.
He argued. The payslip didn't.
They're reward charts. Do a nice thing, collect a star. It works brilliantly for about a fortnight — right up until your child stops caring about stars, which they will, and then the chart quietly becomes a lie you both ignore.
A job doesn't stop working when you stop caring about it. That's the whole difference. You're paid to do it, so it isn't optional; the deadline doesn't move because you were busy; and not doing it has consequences that turn up whether you're interested or not.
Nine o'clock means nine o'clock. Miss it and the job locks — they cannot quietly tick it off at half past and pretend. Only you can undo it.
Miss a job and you don't just forfeit that job's thirty pence — you forfeit the day. A day's work isn't a menu. You don't get to skip the bits you don't fancy and still count it as done.
Tomorrow. On top of tomorrow's work. It doesn't evaporate because the day ended, and it rolls forward until it's done.
Siblings alternate continuously — across days, across weeks, across the Sunday-to-Monday join. "I did it last time" stops being an argument, because the rota can prove it.
There are no stars. No badges. No streaks to protect, no confetti when they empty the dishwasher. Nobody gets a trophy for doing the thing they already agreed to do.
It's also stricter than a real job, and that's deliberate. At work, missing your deadlines costs you a quiet word, then a warning, then the job. You can't sack your child. The money is the only lever you've actually got, so this one uses it.
It doesn't hold your money, either. It keeps the books; you pay them, in cash, like a person.
Be honest with yourself before you give me your email.
Somebody has to set the deadlines, judge the excuses, and pay up on Sunday. The app holds the line all week — but it only means anything if you hold it too. If you won't, your child will work that out faster than you will, and you'll have quit another app by August.
If that sounds like more than you want, this isn't for you. I'd genuinely rather you knew that now.
I built this for my own two, and it's been running for months. Turning it into something you could install is a lot of work, and I'm not going to do it unless people actually want it. So — would you?