01/ 06The promise
What the catalog commits to.
The Deskrune catalog makes a small number of commitments and writes them down in one place so they can be checked. The promises below are the only ones the catalog makes. Anything not on this list is not promised, and a reader should treat anything that sounds like a promise but isn't on this list as marketing copy that escaped the editor.
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A kit names the failure mode it's built for.
The cover of every kit says, in plain language, the moment it handles. Re-Entry Collapse. Hyperfocus Tunnel. RSD Feedback Loop. A reader should be able to tell in one sentence whether the kit fits their week.
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Every clinical claim is cited or labeled as a pattern.
Mechanism claims point to a paper, with a PMID where one exists. Where the literature is thin, the claim is labeled as a pattern observation rather than dressed up. The full citation block is at /research/.
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AI use is disclosed on the last page of every kit.
Drafted with AI; edited by an ADHD adult. The disclosure is plain, and it isn't a footnote. The team uses AI for the parts AI is good at and uses human judgment for the parts AI isn't.
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Readers get every quarterly update for free.
Open it once, every revision included. No second purchase, no email gauntlet to claim the update. New PDFs land on the same public paths as the original.
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Tip support is fourteen days, no questions, no form.
A reader can use the kit for free. If a tip was a mistake, email [email protected]. There is no exit-interview survey because optional should mean optional.
If you tip, thank you. If you do not tip, the work still needs to help.
— The Deskrune promise
02/ 06Who builds it
Faceless. Not anonymous.
Deskrune is built by an ADHD adult. There is one operator. There are sometimes contractors for art and proofreading. There is no team of forty-seven, and the catalog will never pretend there is.
The brand is faceless on purpose. The reasoning is not mysterious: the productivity-tools market has been flooded for years with founder-face content where the founder is the product, and the rest is decoration. The Deskrune team made a different bet. The work is the product. The face would only be a distraction. Faceless ≠ anonymous, though, and that distinction matters: the voice on every page is a specific person's point of view, and a reader who reads carefully should be able to tell. KDP titles publish under the pen name A.J. Porter; the brand voice is consistent across both.
The other reason the brand is faceless: an ADHD adult who has opened and abandoned five productivity systems doesn't trust founders any more. They trust the work. The work is what's on the page. The team made the brand match.
The work is the story. The face would only be a distraction.
— Why faceless
03/ 06Who it's for
Four audiences. One language.
The primary audience is ADHD adults navigating modern systems — work, money, relationships, sleep, AI tools, the late-diagnosis re-frame. Around them are three secondary audiences who need the same language: the partner who's trying to help, the coach or clinician working with the same patterns, and the boss who has to decide what reasonable accommodation looks like in practice. Every kit ships with hooks for all four.
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Primary
The ADHD adult.
Has opened and abandoned five productivity systems. Tired of being sold tools that punish them for missing days. Wants the smallest amount of paper that handles the moment.
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Secondary
The partner.
Wants to help and doesn't have the language for what's actually happening. Reads the same kit chapter, comes to the same Re-Entry Card. The vocabulary becomes shared.
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Secondary
The coach or clinician.
Uses the kits as between-session protocols. The citation block is for them; the pattern names are for the reader. Both audiences read the same page.
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Secondary
The boss.
Trying to figure out what reasonable accommodation looks like for a direct report. The kits make the failure mode legible without pathologizing it.
What the catalog isn't for: side project-culture audiences, motivation-content readers, anyone who needs every product to be forty-seven steps of onboarding. The team isn't trying to win those readers. The catalog is built around the version of an ADHD adult who's already skeptical, and the writing assumes that.
04/ 06In scope vs not
What's in the box.
The catalog is three things: kits, free tools, and a library of writing. The kits are PDF protocols that handle a specific failure mode. The tools are diagnostic instruments and worksheets that work in a browser, no signup. The library is the writing the team puts out for free — pattern essays, AFM deep-dives, the occasional teardown of something the productivity industry got wrong.
In scope
- Diagnostic kits (PDF + DOCX + Notion)
- Free instruments and quizzes (browser-based)
- The pattern library — essays, AFM deep-dives
- The audit cycle that keeps everything current
- The four-line Re-Entry Card on every chapter
- Citation blocks, with PMIDs, on every kit
- One inbox a human reads ([email protected])
Not in scope
- Coaching — the kits do the work; the team isn't on the call
- An app or a mobile install — the work is paper, on purpose
- A Discord, forum, or moderated community
- Streak counters, XP, gamification of any kind
- Habit trackers — they hurt the people the kits are for
- Personality tests or reader archetypes
- Affiliate spam or cross-sells inside kits
The exclusion list is as load-bearing as the inclusion list. A reader who lands on this page and sees that the team has chosen, deliberately, not to ship a habit tracker is reading a piece of evidence about who the catalog is for. Streaks, gamification, and tracker scoring are banned across the catalog on a hard rule because they hurt the people the catalog serves. A kit that wraps a streak in a Fraunces typeface is still a streak.
05/ 06The economics
Why free works.
Deskrune is free because the first job is trust. ADHD adults have already opened and abandoned enough systems. The catalog should prove itself before it asks for anything.
Tip later only if it helps. Optional tips fund maintenance, new kits, accessibility passes, and the weird unglamorous work that keeps old pages from rotting. No paywall sits between the reader and the useful part.
No discount codes, no exit-intent overlays, no countdown timers. There is no fake urgency and no hidden tier. The public page is the page.
The economics of running this catalog as a small operation are straightforward: low overhead, no VC, no funded burn rate to defend. That is why the catalog can stay specific, weird, and honest.
06/ 06The address
Tip support. License. Inbox.
Below: the operational facts a reader needs to make the call. Each one is also linked from /honest/ in case a reader prefers a single page of disclosures.
- Tip support Tips are optional. If a tip was a mistake, email [email protected]. We fix it without a form.
- License Single-user license. Open once, use it. Quarterly updates stay free for the lifetime of the kit. Sharing a kit with a clinician or partner working through it with the reader is fine; reselling or rehosting it isn't.
- AI use Drafted with AI. Edited by an ADHD adult. Disclosure on the last page of every kit. Detail at /honest/.
- Audit Every kit revalidated every quarter. Citations, AI behavior, voice canon. Revisions logged at /changes/; readers get the new version free.
- Payments Optional tips are processed by Stripe. The team never sees a card number.
- Inbox [email protected]. Reply window under 48 hours, usually faster. The reply is from the person who built the thing.
If a reader is on the fence, the team would rather they read /methodology/ and /research/ first. Those pages do more selling than this one does, and they do it with citations.