Concept · 2026
A concept for a small pastel keypad and a companion app: press the key that matches today, and watch the year fill in as a coloured grid.
Concept stage — an idea document and concept illustrations, not a shipping product.
The idea
Every year-in-pixels app — 1 Second Everyday, Daylio, Year in Pixels — asks for the same daily discipline: open it, think for a second, tap a colour. Tally Keys moves that half-second onto a physical object instead of a screen.
Four keys, one per state — mood, health, sleep, training, whatever the tracker is this month. Press the one that matches today, wherever the keypad already is: desk, bag, keychain. Nothing to unlock, nothing to open.
The ritual
Pick a tracker
Mood, health, sleep, training, work — four states, one per key.
Press once a day
The nearest key logs today over Bluetooth Low Energy, with a small flash to confirm.
Watch the year fill in
Open the app whenever you like to see the grid — or don't. The pressing is the ritual.
The signature device
Twelve months across, thirty-one days down — the exact grid 1 Second Everyday, Daylio and Year in Pixels already use. Each cell here fills in order, day by day, coloured by a demonstration pattern rather than anyone's real log.
Day 0 of 365
Four keys, four states
The key that colour belongs to presses as its day fills in.
The companion app
Tap a month to open it into a 4×7 grid of just those days. Tap a day for the entry itself, with a note you can edit after the fact. None of this is a running app — these are concept mockups of the interaction the idea document specifies.
The default screen — twelve months of coloured squares, at a glance.
One month, larger — the same colours, easier to read day by day.
Timestamp and an optional note, editable after the fact.
Loop Habit Tracker, a mature open-source Android app (10,000+ stars, GPL-3.0), is one option under study as a base for the companion app rather than building the whole thing from scratch.
The hardware — concept stage
DR · 2026 · 014
Nothing here has been prototyped. These are the idea document's own working assumptions — where it names a part, this sheet does too; everywhere else, it says so.
Processor
Low-power Bluetooth microcontroller
Bluetooth Low Energy, chosen for six or more months of battery life on a coin cell.
Switches
Low-profile, silent tactile switches
Quiet enough to press in a meeting.
Case
≈70 × 25 × 15 mm
White ABS or recycled PETG, soft-touch, sized to sit in one hand.
Keys
4, expandable to 8
One RGB LED per key confirms a press; a second unit snaps on for more states.
Charge / pair
To be specified
USB-C or magnetic pogo pins — undecided in the idea document.
Strap
Removable wrist loop / keyring
Carrying a tracker should feel friendly, not clinical.
Concept board
These three images were generated for this page's own palette — not screenshots of something built, not product photography, and not sketches from the idea's first pass. The exploded view and carry diagram beside the illustration are ours too: simple CSS/SVG drawings of what the spec sheet already says in words.
Plate 01
The concept illustration
The keypad and the year grid it feeds, generated together for this page — not a photo or a screenshot of something built.
Plate 02
Exploded view
Keycap, switch, MCU and case, drawn apart the way the spec sheet already lists them — not a real teardown; nothing has been built yet to take apart.
Plate 03
Desk, bag, or keychain
The idea document's own three places to keep it, drawn here as a working sketch, not a product shot.
Design review
No. 2026-014
Tally Keys is a concept, not a product: an idea document, concept illustrations and this page. Nothing has shipped, and nothing here should be read otherwise.
Enclosure & keycaps
Concept
Dimensions and materials proposed; no CAD or prototype yet.
PCB, MCU & firmware
Concept
A low-power Bluetooth design proposed; no board has been designed.
Companion app
Concept
Year / month / day views specified; Loop Habit Tracker studied as a possible base.
Naming
Open
"Tally Keys" is a working title — Trace, Pip and Knack are also on the table.
What Sapience would build next
Working firmware on off-the-shelf Bluetooth hardware, paired to a small app doing only the year view — proving the one-press ritual before any tooling is cut for a custom case.
Stage Concept · Year 2026
One more concept
Whether it's hardware, an app, or both — let's talk.
