The Fair Ninja manifesto

A letter from Fair Ninja

We are tired of software that requires constant vigilance.

Vigilance so that a trial does not turn into a bill. So that a monthly price does not turn out to mean a yearly commitment. So that your own work does not end up on the other side of another upgrade. So that the cancellation button does not disappear into a maze of screens.

We do not want to live in a world where every simple activity becomes an opportunity to charge for another subscription. Where even a timer or a shopping list needs a separate billing relationship, renewal dates to watch and another decision about whether it is still worth paying.

People have lives. They forget things, get tired and deal with things that matter more. If you knowingly build a business around people forgetting to cancel, you are doing something evil. If you deliberately make cancellation difficult, you are doing something evil. You are exploiting their fatigue, distraction and lack of time to collect another payment. It is a conscious choice to treat another human being as an opportunity to extract money.

What frustrates us most is the amount of ability and work that can go into this. An engineer can build something useful. A designer can make somebody’s day simpler. An understanding of psychology can help people cope better with their lives. We do not want to direct those abilities towards finding ways to make somebody buy something they do not need, or to make leaving harder.

Fair Ninja begins with the belief that we can choose differently.

If you need our app, use it. If you do not, we respect that decision. We will not chase you with ads, bury you in marketing emails or sell your data. Your time belongs to your life.

We do not want more capable people to spend their working lives trying to break through an ever louder machine competing for attention. We would rather they built something that helps. The pressure to grow and survive as a business does not justify knowingly exploiting people.

We believe people can step out of that machine and reclaim control over their time, data and decisions. We want to take part in that change.

We want to make small, well-built apps. Tools you open, use to do your thing, and close. Tools that work on your device. Tools that do not take your work away when the internet connection disappears. Tools that let you take your data with you and connect it to other tools.

We include all the bells and whistles from the beginning: changing colours, advanced statistics, API access, MCP and integrations. No subscription to unlock them, no premium tier and no upgrade buttons. If you can do something useful with a feature, you should be able to use it. Local features are free; hosted services use prepaid chips.

We also want to earn money fairly. Servers and maintenance cost money. That is why our sync service has a plainly stated price: one cent a day for keeping the server running. All our apps use one chip wallet. One shared balance for the whole family of tools. You can understand what you are paying for and decide for yourself whether you need it.

To us, that is what progress should look like: technology gives people more capability, more freedom and fewer things they have to keep an eye on.

If you believe a tool is useful, you can give somebody chips. We want a gift to help the person receiving it. Your relationships should not become an opportunity to push another subscription onto them.

We are starting with Tomato. More tools will follow.

We want to build a company whose apps people choose because they believe in them, and feel free to leave when they no longer help.

Nine convictions we want to build into the product

A manifesto matters when it changes the choices made in a product. These are the convictions behind ours: what we want to protect, what we refuse to exploit and how we want the business to work.

1. A person has a life outside the app

People have jobs, families, fatigue, distractions and things more important than supervising renewal dates. Their attention deserves respect. We believe knowingly exploiting its limits to collect another payment is morally wrong.

This is why the exit matters as much as the entrance. A price should be understandable before a person agrees to pay it. A decision to leave should be respected when they make it. We want to earn another choice to use the tool, without relying on somebody overlooking the bill.

Your forgetfulness should not be a business model. Read the argument and the evidence.

2. A tool should increase your independence

A good tool lets you do more. It should remain useful when the internet disappears or when you do not need a cloud service. Working locally is a practical expression of this principle: the work happens on your device, and a server adds a service you can choose.

An airplane, an unreliable connection or an afternoon away from the network should be ordinary situations in the design of a local app. The details of installation and storage still matter; we explain those on the product page so that you can make an informed choice.

Your tools should work on your terms. How Tomato handles local use.

3. Your work must remain yours

Tasks, notes and history represent hours of somebody’s life. The more work you put into a tool, the more control you should have over it. Export, import and a local copy belong in an honest relationship with software.

The account export gathers data from every space you can access into one ZIP. Individual apps also provide local exports: in Tomato, you can save the current workspace as JSONL or focus sessions as CSV.

Tomato can import supported records from an account ZIP or its own JSON/JSONL backup, with a preview before anything is added. That is different from restoring an entire account and its original spaces. We explain what is included, what is skipped and any hosted import cost before you confirm.

We want leaving to be a normal decision. You might prefer another tool. Your needs might change. You might simply want your own backup. None of those decisions should make the effort you have already invested into a bargaining chip for the company.

Your work should never become our leverage.

4. Your attention is not advertising material

Fair Ninja should help you use your attention for your own purposes. We do not want to turn your work and daily habits into a product for advertisers. Our commitment includes no sale of personal data and no advertising profiles built from your work.

Charts have a useful place here. They can show you your own recorded history and help you decide what you want to do next. The purpose of the information is your understanding of your life.

The charts are for you.

5. You are allowed to ignore us

If you need an app, use it. If you do not want it, we should respect that choice. No following you around with ads. No bombardment of marketing emails. Communication should help you make a deliberate choice.

You may want to read an article, ask for help or follow product news. We want to make those things available. Visiting a page does not give us a claim on the rest of your day, and finishing your work is a perfectly good reason to close an app.

Your time belongs to your life. Why the right to ignore us matters.

6. Human intelligence deserves better work

We do not want to direct engineers, designers and people who understand human behaviour towards traps, artificial pressure, aggressive campaigns and obstacles to cancellation. We want their work to go towards useful capabilities, reliability and helping people.

The race for attention is an ethical problem for us even when a company explains it as competitive pressure or a struggle to survive. We choose to build things that help people do what they themselves consider important.

Human intelligence deserves better work than exploiting human attention. Where money and talent go in the attention war.

7. Progress should benefit the person using the tool

Better tools, including AI, offer an opportunity to build better, more accessible apps. We want those benefits to be visible to the people using them: in price, available features and quality.

Changing colours, advanced statistics, API access, MCP and integrations are included from the start. We do not put them behind a subscription, a premium tier or an upgrade button. You can make the app your own and connect it to your workflow. Local features are free, while hosted services are paid for with prepaid chips.

Better technology should mean a better deal for you. Connecting your own workflow.

8. A fair business can earn money

Servers, maintenance and work have value. We want to charge an understandable price for a service we provide, and to keep improving it. Earning money by providing something useful is an honest ambition.

Our model pairs free local apps with optional hosted services. Cloud sync costs 1¢ a day: $0.01, or 30¢ for 30 days (the server maintenance cost). One shared chip wallet serves the whole family of Fair Ninja apps. You choose when to top up; other hosted services have their own usage rates.

Integrations (API, MCP, webhooks) are metered at a fraction of a cent: a request costs 0.001 chip. The daily server maintenance cost already covers the first chip of usage, so several hundred requests a day cost nothing extra; only a heavy day goes above it, by exactly what it used.

A new account receives a one-time welcome bonus after email confirmation. Those chips let you try the online services and see whether they suit you before deciding to top up.

The purpose is a relationship you can understand and choose. We want the service to support the work without requiring a collection of separate app subscriptions.

Fair software. Fair prices. No tricks.

9. Giving should help the person receiving it

Once you have bought chips, you can give some to another person. They land in that person’s own wallet, and the person decides which Fair Ninja services, if any, to spend them on.

A gift should express your belief in the tool and give the other person something useful. Nothing renews and no subscription starts.

Starting with something useful

These principles need a concrete beginning. Ours is Tomato: a focus app with tasks, useful statistics and ways to connect your own workflow. Habit, Todo and Board are on the horizon. Tomato comes first.

You can try the tool, read the reasoning, ask questions or decide this is not for you. We want all of those choices to remain yours.

Welcome to the Land of the Free.