I Built the App My Wife's Doctors Never Thought to Make.

I Built the App My Wife’s Doctors Never Thought to Make

Background

After years of seeing my wife deal with chronic illness, I knew it was time to do something. The exhaustion comes not only from doing too much, but also from missing your limits until it’s too late.

If you live with TBI, ME/CFS, Long COVID, fibromyalgia, POTS, dysautonomia, or any condition where your energy is limited but not obvious, you know what this feels like. Some days begin well, but a sudden crash can come later and hit harder than you expect.

I’ve watched my wife face this uncertainty year after year, always trying to find the balance between “I can manage this” and “this will cost me.” She has to make tough choices and sometimes faces setbacks when her energy unexpectedly runs out.

Doctors are important, but they only see a small part of your experience. Appointments are often short, symptoms change over time, and it’s hard to explain the patterns after the fact.

Most wellness apps today are made for healthy people who want to move more, not for those with chronic illness. For people with chronic illness, the goal is to do enough and stop before a crash, not to keep pushing for more. That’s why I created SteadyDay: Pace.

What it Does

**SteadyDay: Pace** uses health data from your Apple Watch, Hume, and iPhone, such as heart rate and activity levels, to create a personalized energy baseline just for you. You can use the app with just your iPhone, but connecting an Apple Watch or Hume unlocks additional insights based on more detailed health data. Unlike most health apps, this one helps you understand your own limits and patterns instead of pushing you toward general goals.

Instead of tracking benchmarks or pushing you to be more active, SteadyDay: Pace monitors your health signals in real time and sends a gentle notification when you are nearing your personal energy limit. This way, you get a clear alert before your energy drops, helping you make choices that prevent crashes. Most other apps don’t give this kind of timely, personalized support.

• No guilt.

SteadyDay: Pace changes the focus from trying to achieve more to keeping your balance. It helps you stop before you get exhausted, supporting a daily routine that works for people with chronic illness.

What it Is Not

I want to be very clear, because the chronic illness community has seen too many false promises. SteadyDay is not a cure or treatment. It won’t fix dysautonomia or bring back your old life. But it can give you the information you need to spot patterns sooner and make better choices. With SteadyDay, your data stays private on your device. There are no hidden fees, no data selling, and no account is needed. Your privacy is protected. To make sure SteadyDay is as helpful as possible, it also supports accessibility features such as voiceover and large text, so people with additional needs can use it comfortably. I built SteadyDay for my wife so she could live fully, even with limits. I’ve seen her manage her energy, symptoms, and hopes for a real life. Chronic illness drains both energy and certainty. Ordinary tasks, like running an errand or having a chat, can quickly become too much if you can’t see the cost ahead of time.

I intended to offer my wife something gentler than a fitness app and more valuable than guesswork — an instrument which respects her limits without defining her by them. A tool created not for optimization but for stewardship. The main goal isn’t to push harder. It’s to live better. SteadyDay: Pace stands out by gently supporting you if you overexert yourself and guiding you to safely expand your activity range. This makes progress realistic and possible for people whose energy changes from day to day.

Why This Matters

People with chronic illness know something that many systems still miss: pacing is essential. Energy is limited, recovery isn’t guaranteed, and it’s easy to overdo it without realizing it. Often, a crash comes after a small mistake. As medicine and technology change, people need tools that help them right now.

**SteadyDay: Pace** will be available on the Apple App Store in about two days. It’s free, and you don’t need an account. Look for it soon and let me know what features you’d like to see. I’d love to hear your feedback so I can keep making it better for the community.

You can also find more upcoming tools for energy management at https://steadyday.health.

SteadyDay: Pace — Features

• Currently, it is only available on Apple devices, but if there is interest, Convergent Systems will update it to support Android Phones.
• Adaptive coaching — daily one-line nudge on the Today screen (hold budget after a dip, sleep-first when short, cautious progression after a steady week).
• Crash risk warnings — multi-signal predictive flags at “watch” and “elevated” levels before an energy dip hits.
• Pattern insights — correlations between your check-ins (stress, pain, mood) and capacity in the days that follow.
• Menstrual cycle insights — capacity mapped per cycle phase, read from Apple Health with no manual entry.
• CPET (6-minute walk test) — self-administered aerobic threshold test, repeatable over time to track how your threshold drifts.
• Full trends history — month and year ranges (free tier is 7 days).
• Score change log — intra-day timeline of what moved your capacity score and when.
• Clinical report PDF — one-page summary (capacity averages, sleep, RHR/HRV, energy-dip days, CPET threshold) to share with your doctor, OT, or PT.
• Data source overrides — choose per-metric which device feeds each signal (e.g., Hume vs Apple sleep, Apple HRV).
• CSV/JSON data export.
• Caregiver sharing — read-only view for a partner or caregiver (code complete, shipping in v1. x).
• Full control over alerts, notifications, and check-in times.

Support

Currently, support is via email at thomas@convergent-systems.co, but we will be adding a form for issue submissions very soon.