The Ukulele That Started Something
My daughter Maya came to me one day asking me to tune her ukulele. So I did what most people do nowadays, I went to the App Store and searched for something to do that job. The app I found offered 3 days free then wanted me to pay £5.99 a week to continue using it. For what!? A tuner. Something that listens to a string and tells you if it’s sharp or flat. It annoyed me that simple tools were being unnecessarily monetised, and the App Store was incentivising them, especially in a subscription format. Wasn’t that long ago you’d pay 99p and done. Now everyone wants recurring payments from you. It was a growing trend I was already annoyed about and the ukulele pushed me over the edge.
So I built one.
I sat down and thought about what I actually wanted. Not just a tuner, but a set of principles for how tools should work. It had to work on any device. It had to work offline. It had to be free. And it didn’t need to go through an App Store to install. That last one was the revelation. When I started looking at what was possible in a single HTML file running in a browser, I realised how far web tools had come. A tuner, a timer, a breathing exercise, all of this could live in one file, install to your home screen like a native app, and work without a connection.
With the help of Claude and Replit I was able to think about these constraints more carefully and realise just how bad things had gotten with everyday tools. Pricing structures designed to trap you. Tracking by default. Mandatory accounts just to use a torch app. Ads baked into everything. None of it needed to be there. All of it was there because someone needed to extract value from you rather than give it to you.
After the tuner I started to think about what else I could build. Things I actually needed. A BPM finder, the one I’d been using was riddled with ads and trackers. A breathing app for my son, who has sensory processing differences and uses breathing exercises to help regulate. Every half decent one wanted up to £65 a year and required you to sign up. Sixty five quid a year for something that counts to four. I’d just had enough of everything trying to gouge me for money, and making it near impossible to cancel when you’ve had enough.
As more ideas came to mind and the catalogue grew, something struck me. What I was building had started to resemble a record label catalogue. I’ve run an independent record label, Exit Records, for over twenty years. I know what it feels like to curate a body of work. To decide what belongs and what doesn’t. To sequence things so they make sense together, not just individually. And here I was doing the same thing with browser tools.
Each one got a catalogue number. KIN-001 was Maya’s tuner. KIN-004 was the BPM finder. KIN-014 was the breathing app. There’s a build rules document that works like a label ethos. On Exit, I don’t sign a sound, I sign people whose instincts I trust and give them a framework that respects the work. The build rules do the same thing for tools. Every tool follows the same constraints: single HTML file, works offline, no accounts, no tracking, installs as a PWA (Progressive Web App). If a tool can’t meet those rules, it doesn’t belong in this catalogue.
I didn’t plan any of this. I just noticed it happening and decided to be deliberate about it.
-----
In music, the best work almost always comes from constraints. A limited palette, a time restriction, a single hardware unit, a set of sounds you’re allowed to use. The limitations force you into territory you wouldn’t have found otherwise. The same thing happened here.
A single HTML file means no dependencies that break in six months. You could open it in ten years and it would still work. Local only storage means your data never leaves your device. No server to get breached. No company selling your information. For something like a breathing app for a child with additional needs, that’s not a feature. It’s a responsibility.
These constraints aren’t limitations. They’re values. Running a label taught me that. You don’t talk about what you stand for. You just make things that are consistent with it, and the right people find their way to it.
-----
Some of the tools are mundane and that’s fine. A unit converter. A QR code generator. They do one thing, they do it cleanly, they don’t ask for anything in return.
But some carry more weight.
KIN-014 is the breathing app I built for my son. He’s autistic and ADHD, and breathing exercises help him regulate when the world gets too loud or too fast. I built it with specific patterns that work for him, including one called Five Finger Breathing where you trace the outline of your hand as you breathe. It cost nothing to build, nothing to use, and it doesn’t need to know his name or his email address to help him calm down.
KIN-035 is called Random Acts. It gives you one act per day, either an act of kindness or an act of defiance. You open it, you see a sealed card, you tap to reveal. You can’t skip, you can’t redraw. You get what you get and you sit with it. In the evening it asks if you did it. Not to track you. Not to build a streak. Just to close the loop. 73 acts in the deck and it won’t repeat until you’ve seen them all. A daily nudge to either be kind to someone or push back against something that doesn’t deserve your compliance.
-----
I should be honest about the process. I didn’t code these from scratch. I built them with Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant and Replit. I described what I wanted, we worked through the design together, and it wrote the code. I’m not a software engineer. Even though that was nearly the path I chose. I studied computer languages at college before deciding to become a musician and DJ.
Some people will want to dismiss that. “He didn’t really build them.” I’d push back. I didn’t build my synths, CDJs, or the software I make music with either. No one questions whether the music is mine. The instrument isn’t the art. The intent is. What I brought is taste, judgement, and a specific set of values about how software should treat people. Claude brought the technical execution. That feels like producing a tune to me. You don’t need to play every instrument. You need to know what the thing should sound like and be relentless about getting there.
-----
There are 35 tools now. (I’ve parked 2 to iron out some bugs) I didn’t set out to build 35 of anything. I set out to tune a ukulele without being shaken down for a subscription. But once I had the constraints and the process, it turned out there was no shortage of simple tools that had been ruined by greed, and no shortage of things in my own life that could be made easier by something built with care.
The whole collection lives at kintools.net No account needed. Nothing to sign up for. Everything works offline. Nothing tracks you. If something’s useful to you, use it. If it’s not, close the tab. That’s how tools should work.
I called the project KIN because these tools are a family of things, built by people for whom independence isn’t an aesthetic choice, it’s a structural one. I’ve spent 30 years building infrastructure that answers to me rather than someone else’s business model. I just didn’t know that instinct extended to software.
It turns out it extends to everything.
Darren (dBridge)
If you’d like to get involved, have any ideas or would like to submit an app there are links at the bottom of the catalogue page. If you notice any bugs, please feel free to report with the link in the app.