THE GUY WHO HANDS YOU THE CAMERA

Alejandro Carbajo

I build apps that help you take your life back. Small tools for the ten seconds between the impulse and the action — the moment your hand moves before you’ve decided anything.

Base

Madrid, Spain

Occupation

Founder and product builder. Builds apps that help people notice automatic patterns and recover their choice.

Working on

Cohesive and Agent Life, plus four Out of Autopilot tools in the lab.

Method

Awareness over blocking. Patches are for software; people get explanations.

Aiming at

Not less behavior. More of you present while it happens.

Watches

Only his own footage. Yours is yours.

Is not

A clinician, therapist, neuroscientist, or guru.

Writes in

English and Spanish. Both authored, neither machine-translated.

The two gaps

I study two gaps, and everything on this site comes out of one or the other.

The first is the gap between what you meant to do and what you actually did. You said one message. The footage shows three apps and no message. Nobody decided that — your thumb just went. That’s autopilot, and I don’t think it means you’re weak. A behavior that shows up that reliably is doing a job: relief, escape, stimulation, certainty, a small hit of control. Find the job before you fire the habit.

The second gap is the one almost nobody counts: the distance between doing something and being there for it. The scroll rarely arrives alone. It lands on top of dinner, the set between reps, the film you chose, the person across the table — and takes that down with it. You paid for both and got neither. No screen-time report has ever shown you that column. It’s the one that costs.

Between the two sits the place I actually build: about ten seconds between an impulse and the action it triggers, wide enough to fit exactly one question — what am I actually after? That’s the missing frame. Make it longer and you get a vote you didn’t have a second ago. The vote isn’t always “stop.” Doing it on purpose, knowing what it gives you and what it costs, counts as a win here.

What I build

Not a super-app. Not an AI life coach in a beige sweater. Each tool works one specific moment where intention and behavior stop speaking, without trying to own the rest of your day. The app is support; your agency is the point.

• Cohesive · LIVE

  A journal for writing down the moment while you still remember it, currently being rebuilt into the app for the moment your thumb moves on its own. Not a blocker — blockers are a patch. A functional end-to-end development path exists; model qualification, the remaining product surfaces, device validation and the production release gates are still in progress, and I’m the only user of the rebuild so far. That’s the honest state.

• GLP-1 companion · IN THE LAB

  For people taking GLP-1: builds the sleep, food, and movement habits meant to outlast the prescription. Works alongside your doctor’s plan, never instead of it.

• Two quiet programs · IN THE LAB

  For porn and gambling habits — the ones nobody posts about. Same method, zero shame. When the risk is serious, they point at stronger help.

• Memento Mori · IN THE LAB

  You have a finite number of Tuesdays. An app for spending them on purpose.

What I am not

I’m a founder and product builder. I am not a clinician, therapist, neuroscientist, or guru, and I’m not interested in playing one. This work can support reflection and change; it does not replace qualified medical or mental-health care, and I say so plainly whenever the subject gets serious.

I also don’t watch your footage. Everything you type into the tools on this site stays in your browser. The camera is in your hand — that’s the whole point of the metaphor, and it would be a strange thing to build if I were holding the other end.

Common questions

Who is Alejandro Carbajo?

A founder and product builder based in Madrid. He builds apps that help you take your life back — small tools that help people catch themselves acting on autopilot, understand what the habit is doing for them, and be present in what they’re already doing. He writes the project Out of Autopilot in English and Spanish.

What does “apps that help you take your life back” mean?

Each app targets one specific moment rather than trying to own your day. It helps you notice the pattern, understand what it is doing for you, and recover the choice of what happens next.

Is this mindfulness?

It borrows the useful part — noticing what’s happening while it happens — and skips the rest. No incense, no streaks, no morning routine, no promise that you’ll become calm. Awareness here is a skill you use mid-act, not a mood you maintain.

How do I get in touch?

Through any of the profiles below, or by subscribing to the weekly note — which currently opens an email and gets answered by hand, because there is no mailing machine yet.

The camera is in your hand. I just built the shutter.