Emitter-type Quirks have the ability to either release certain substances, or alter materials around them in certain ways. Emitter-type Quirks usually require a conscious effort to activate (such as Electrification, Explosion, and Half-Cold Half-Hot), and some even require large amounts of concentration in order for them to remain active (such as Erasure).

Emitter-type Quirks can also have various ranges. While some users require physical contact to use them (such as Zero Gravity) others can have much longer ranges with no distance restrictions (such as Navel Laser). While most Emitter-type Quirks users generally have a handle on their own "emissions", it's also possible for users to hurt themselves from coming into too much contact with their quirk (Explosion). The emissions of Emitter-type Quirks can have a wide variety of properties and abilities.

While some substances produced by Emitter-type Quirks have common properties (Cement), some are unique to the user, and thus have special properties (such is the case with Pop Off). Those who alter the properties of materials around them can also widely vary in effects, from molecular alteration (Softness) to molecular destruction (Decay). Emitter-type Quirks are, by a wide margin, the most common type of Quirk.

Transformation-type Quirks cause the user to take on a temporary alteration of some kind. Transformation-type Quirks allow the user to temporarily "transform" their body in a variety of manners, sometimes enhancing existing features (Hardening, Gigantification) or perhaps adding new features to the body altogether (Dark Shadow, Tool Arms). Transformation-type Quirks generally affect the user exclusively, the only known exceptions being Recovery and Meatball.

Transformation-type Quirks usually require a close-range proximity in order to fully utilize them in combat due to them only affecting the user's body. Transformation-type Quirks are also the only known type of Quirk that can bestow the user attributes they do not normally exhibit by default. Transformation-type Quirks usually require a conscious effort by the user to "activate", though most users can be trained to initiate them reflexively (depending on the conditions required for activation). While Transformation-type Quirks are often quite powerful, their biggest weakness is that their effects are often temporary, and over-exertion usually leads to negative repercussions on the user's behalf.

Because this type of Quirk combines the activation time and mutant-shape aspects of the other Quirk types, it is also often known as Hybrid or Composite. Transformation Quirks seem to be the least common type of Quirk.

Mutant-type Quirks can have a wide variety of features and abilities depending on the individual, but the common similarity seems to be that these Quirks are a part of the user's physicality. As a result, these Quirks are passively active, but generally, allow the user the greatest degree of control.

Mutant-type Quirks cause the user to exhibit irregular features that generally have some sort of purpose to them. Whether it be bodily alteration (Vines) or enhancing pre-existing abilities (Engine) Mutant-type Quirks even have the ability to channel certain aspects of their user through them similarly to Emitter-type Quirks (Earphone Jack). While not necessarily a weakness, Mutant-type Quirks cannot be turned off, and sometimes cause the user inconvenience due to their malformations. Such is the case with Mashirao Ojiro and his Tail Quirk, (which makes it difficult for him to sit or lay down) as well as Toru w`f2fu2y and her Transparency Quirk, (which makes it impossible to see her reflection or show up in photographs). While Mutant-type Quirks aren't as common as Emitter-types, they are the most identifiable.

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Quirk is no longer being maintained.

Quirk started as a little thing I made for myself as I started doing CBT. As I got better, I needed Quirk less. But at the same time, lots of other people had discovered Quirk and started picking it up. That meant more bug fixes, more features, and just more work to be done. I really couldn't keep it up well, especially with my main focus at the time (my day job).

So in order to work on it full time, my brother and I tried to turn it into a company. That way we could continue to develop Quirk as a primary focus, even if we didn't need it anymore.

For awhile, Quirk was going quite well. Lots of people subscribed, we got backed by Y Combinator, and we were growing very quickly.

Unfortunately, in order for the business to work and for us to pay ourselves, we needed folks to be subscribed for a fair amount of time. But that wasn't the case and we honestly should have predicted it given my own experience: as people did better, they unsubscribed. Unfortunately, the opposite was true as well, if folks weren't doing better, but were giving it a good shot, they would stay subscribed longer.

So in order to continue Quirk, Quirk needed to make people feel worse for longer. We didn't want to do that, so we pivoted the company.

Quirk (the company) is now Room Service.

Now-a-days, we're making Room Service, which helps folks build multiplayer stuff, like what Figma or Google Docs have. Multiple cursors, CRDTs, sockets, lots of people editing the same thing, that sort of thing. We're still the same commercial entity and such, just making a different product now. If you think multiplayer systems are cool and want to join us, send me an email: evan @ roomservice . dev.

Make your own Quirk.

If you like Quirk and want it to continue, feel free to fork it. We'd ask that you change the name to avoid confusion. Just heed our warning, be careful about the way you keep yourself afloat.

If you want to fork Quirk, you should fork off of this commit, it's right before we added payments and when the code was the cleanest.

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Download iOS • Download Android • Contact • Newsletter

Quirk is a crossplatform, GPL-licensed, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) app built in React Native / Expo.

Unlike many CBT apps, it's fairly unbiased in what you use it for; it doesn't ask about you to do depression-specific CBT exercises. That makes it fairly quick and discreet to use, especially in a public setting.

In order for Quirk to support itself, it charges a small subscription fee. Currently it's $5.99 / month in the US, which is roughly the cost of a cup of coffee. This helps pay for a full-time developer to make Quirk not-dead and generally good.

To understand why we do a subscription, we can look to the Survival Law of Product Design, a fancy term I just made up. When you make a product, whatever keeps that product alive becomes the primary force of design.

For example, facebook.com is not Facebook's product, facebook.com/business/ads is Facebook's product. Because 0 dollars are made from Facebook accounts, only from advertisers that pay to get access to those Facebook accounts. The way you keep the lights on ultimately shapes the product you make.

So if you want to make a good product that helps folks, you should pick a model of sustainability where the financial incentives of the organization are aligned with the individual interests of the users.

After a lot of tries with other models, that ended up being a subscription. In a subscription, the primary metric is retention: are people still using this thing? If retention drops, people cancel their subscription and you no longer get to exist.

The only solid way to have good retention is to create something that is actively useful and good. Similarly, the only way to get any value from CBT is to consistently do it.

Some amazing folks have helped build the Quirk you see today.

• @devinroche for setting up translation and stepping up as a core maintainer 🔥
• @devilcius for the amazing Spanish translation 🇪🇸
• @idnovic for the amazing German translation 🇩🇪 (and the iPad support!)
• @kwierbol for the amazing Polish translation 🇵🇱
• @Walther for the amazing Finnish translation 🇫🇮
• @Jos512 for the amazing Dutch translation 🇳🇱
• @jinto for the amazing Korean translation 🇰🇷
• @briankung for the Chinese 🇨🇳 localization, internationalization support and helping guide the entire translation effort. 🎉
• @akinariobi for the Russian translation 🇷🇺
• @miguelmf for the Portuguese translation 🇵🇹
• @comradekingu for the Norwegian Bokmål translation 🇳🇴
• @micheleriva for the Italian translation 🇮🇹
• @Jolg42 for the French translation 🇫🇷
• @Buricescu for the Romanian translation 🇷🇴
• @thor123-tanuj for changing the top part of quirk and correcting the spelling mistake and grammar errors. A Great Effort!!! 👏👏

Quirk is built on React Native and therefore assumes you have node installed. Yarn is preferred over NPM as a package manager.

# clone the project and cd into it
git clone git@github.com:Flaque/quirk.git; cd ./quirk

# copy the sample .env (edit as required)
cp .env.sample .env

# install dependencies
yarn

# start development environment
yarn start

You'll then be in the expo development environment. If you already have XCode installed with a simulator, you can just press i to start it.

Of course!

If you like the app, go give it 5 stars! It helps more people find the app.

If you're a mental health professional, audit the descriptions of the cognitive distortions. If you have suggestions, let me know and we'll change stuff!

If you can draw and can make digital illustrations of the little blobs, let me know and I'll find a place to stick them in the app!

If you know a language other than English, help us translate the app!

Quirk's goal is to be both inviting and focused. It should be really easy to enter in a thought; people frequently enter these in public settings and need to do it fairly quickly. It also should not cause any increased frustration.

Quirk is built with two main goals in mind:

• Don't be bloated
• Don't be evil

Don't include features for one particular condition at the expense of other conditions. For example, don't couple mood tracking to thought tracking. If a user has to enter a mood in order to track a thought, then the entire app is ruined for people who use it for panic, OCD or another condition where mood isn't the primary focus.

Don't include non-CBT related treatments without good reason. No relaxation audio tracks or meditation guides. It's a CBT app, keep it focused on CBT.

Don't include things that could be better accomplished by another app. No one needs an in-app diary when a diary works just fine. No one needs an in-app heart rate tracker when a heart rate tracker works just fine.

Be quick and efficient. Thoughts shouldn't take 5 minutes to enter and you should be able to skip fields if it's reasonable. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Thoughts are more valuable than passwords, treat them that way. Most people would rather give over their passwords than their CBT thoughts. They're incredibly private, occasionally involve other people, and frequently are embarrassing.

Don't have $200 dollar in app purchases. I'm looking at you CBT Thought Diary. I get it, developers need to make money. It costs a lot to just keep the app on the app store. But you're preying on vulnerable people. Very few people of rational mind will purposely spend $200s for a dark mode.

Don't have dumb notifications. Scheduling is fine, abusing push notifications so your app has better traffic is scummy and gross.

Be open. Not every app has to be open source; it's a hard choice to make. But be clear and obvious within the app about what's going on with the user's data. Don't be sending it to some server without making that clear within the app, especially if it's not providing any extra utility to the user.

Don't push people to be unhappy. Do not purposefully or accidentally force people to be unhappy to use their app. Don't force people to state their unhappy in order to access a feature. It's easy for this to sneak up in the design, if a user has to rate their happiness below average in order to access the CBT features, you're asking them to be unhappy to use your app.

Be extremely cautious about making engagement your core metric. User engagement is fine to be concerned about. We all want people who need help to be actually engaging in the help. But holy moly be careful about this. You do not want to drive something that is for many people a treatment into a self-perpetuating engagement loop. A ruthless focus on engagement has caused many a product to become skinner boxes. No one should ever be addicted to your mental health app.

Quirk must not lose user data. The entire point of the app is to record your thoughts, so if you lost them it would be pretty bad. As stated in one study:

While an app failure in general can be inconvenient and annoying, it can have serious consequences in the context of mental health apps—someone who has come to rely on an app for emotional support can find a failure “devastating.”

Therefore, data management should be given a higher priority than any other part of the app.

The following is a list of extremely bad behaviors and states that could happen in order of severity.

All thoughts have been corrupted somehow. For example, the JSON format of every item is wrong. This is put at the top because not only can a user not access the data, but it may spiral out can cause continuing errors forcing the app to be "bricked."

All thoughts have been deleted without any hope of recovery.

A small amount of data has been deleted without any hope of recovery.

A small amount of data has been corrupted in a recoverable way. The user still has lost data, but the app does not crash, and this is potentially fixable via an update.

Quirk is licensed under the GPL, which guarantees end users the freedom to study, share, and modify the software.

Note that this license does not give free reign to redistribute the name and branding of quirk. So if you'd like to publish your own version, please rename it to avoid end-user confusion.