On iPhone, Windows and Linux now · Full release 21 October 2026
A personal log for pain, medication and chronic conditions, built for the days when filling in a form is the last thing you want to do.
It never phones home. No account, no server, no analytics. What you log stays on your device. It's free everywhere and there's no paid version.
iPhone, Windows and Linux, early access. Android on 21 October 2026.
Sunday, 20 September
Good evening.
Your pain has averaged 4.9 out of 10 across the last seven days.
Pain has averaged 1.1 points lower on entries logged after a rest day.
There's no account to make and no server to sync with, so nothing you log ever leaves your phone. I don't collect anything, which means there's nothing to sell either.
Chronic pain is hard to describe from memory and appointments are short. Rootwork keeps the record so you can point at something real.
Tap where it hurts on a body instead of picking "lower back" from a list. Each spot keeps its own intensity, and after a few months you get a heatmap of where the pain actually is.
Front / back · 40 regions
Per-region intensity
Heatmap over any range
Time a flare while it's happening. Start it when it starts, update the number as it changes, and stop it when it's over. Much easier than trying to piece it together hours later.
Live elapsed time
Checkpoints as it changes
Sits in the taskbar on Windows
Doses, schedules, and how often you actually take them, including the ones you miss. A medication only counts from the day you first log it, so adding one today won't show a year of missed doses.
Scheduled and as-needed
Adherence, honestly counted
Interaction-free, no cloud lookup
Proper tools for specific conditions: a stand test for POTS, a joint map for EDS, the ACR criteria for fibromyalgia, trigger logs for migraine, morning stiffness for arthritis and tolerance tracking for disc problems. You can also make your own.
POTS · EDS · Fibromyalgia
Migraine · Arthritis · Disc
Or your own
A one-page summary you can print and hand to your doctor, with your ranges, patterns and meds. There's a CSV export too if someone wants the raw numbers.
PDF, Letter, print-ready
CSV · daily, entries, doses
JSON for a full move
Slow breathing exercises for days when getting up isn't happening, plus a few short brain fog tests that give you a number to put next to your pain score. You can't fail them, and a low score on a bad day is still worth knowing.
Five breathing rhythms
N-back · digit span · Stroop
Scored, never graded
Free (most apps charge for this)
Check in once a day with your sleep, energy, mood and stress, and Rootwork compares each one against your pain. It's all based on your own history, not averages from a study.
Across 70 days, your pain is associated with being 2.0 points lower after a long night than after a short one.
Across 62 days, 0.9 points higher the day after a wired one.
Across 58 days, this doesn't seem to affect your pain either way. The app tells you that too instead of hiding it.
Results are shown as points on your own 0–10 scale, like "1.8 points higher after a short night", instead of statistics you'd need to look up.
Sleep, stress and activity are compared against the next day's pain. Comparing last night's sleep with last night's pain mostly just shows that pain ruins sleep.
It won't show anything until it has 14 days to go on, and if something isn't affecting your pain it'll say so. I'd rather it gave no answer than a wrong one.
You can export it all as a spreadsheet, one row per day. It's the same data the app uses to work these out.
A small 3D farm inside the app. Clear a plot, plant things, keep bees, and watch the weather and light change through the day. Logging earns you a few coins to spend there.
Nothing times out, nothing dies because you were too sick to open the app, and there's no streak to lose. Come back after a month and it's exactly how you left it. That was the main rule going in.
It follows real daylight, with lanterns at dusk and fireflies at night. The weather comes from the date, so everyone gets the same rain on the same day without needing a server.
Written for the clearing by Clowntown. There's a theme for the garden, another for the barn and one for when it rains, and the game moves between them without the song ever stopping.
Twelve colour themes, each with its own little animations, like fireflies at midnight or petals in spring. Tap one and this page switches to it. There are a few more in the app that you unlock or stumble on, but I'm not going to spoil them here.
A small blog inside the app with good news from medicine, for when everything else you read about being sick is bad. The posts are here too, so you can send one to someone.
It's off by default in the app. If you turn it on, it downloads one public file a day, with no account, cookies or tracking.
Most symptom trackers put their best features behind a subscription. Here's how that usually compares:
| Feature | Rootwork | Typical tracker |
|---|---|---|
| Correlations (what affects your pain) | Free | Paid tier |
| Unlimited custom measurements | Free | Paid tier |
| Full history, no cut-off window | Free | Paid tier |
| CSV and PDF export | Free | Free or paid |
| Themes and appearance | Free, all of them | Paid tier |
| Your data on someone's server | Never, there isn't one | Usually, by default |
| Account required | No | Almost always |
| Analytics, ads, crash reporting | None of it | Commonly all three |
I'm one person making this and I'm not charging for it. It doesn't make money, so it has no reason to want your data.
It's on iPhone first so people who actually deal with chronic pain can find the problems, then everywhere else on the same day.
Running now · iPhone, Windows and Linux
It's out now as early access, on iPhone, Windows and Linux. Things are still getting fixed, and feedback comes straight to me.
21 October 2026
The same app on everything else, still free, and your data still stays on your device.
Rootwork is a personal record-keeping tool, not a medical device. It doesn't diagnose, treat or give medical advice. It only shows what you logged, which isn't the same as a clinical finding. Talk to a doctor about your symptoms and treatment.