Story

Hi HN!

I’m Hélène. My husband and I are builders from Belgium, and we’ve spent the last few months building a side project called 13 Virtues.

The idea comes from Benjamin Franklin’s personal character system. Instead of tracking many habits at once, he focused on one virtue per week (Temperance, Silence, Order, etc.), cycling through 13 virtues over 13 weeks, then repeating the cycle. He documented this practice for many years.

We wanted an app that follows this structure strictly, rather than another flexible habit tracker. One virtue at a time. One day at a time. Repeat.

You can try the ledger directly on the homepage without creating an account. You can mark faults for today and see the current virtue with Franklin’s original quotes:

https://www.13-virtues.com

Why we built it:

We were frustrated with productivity apps that optimize for streaks and metrics rather than reflection. Franklin’s system felt refreshingly constrained and intentional, and we wanted something we’d actually use ourselves. My husband handled the engineering; I focused on product and design.

Pricing model:

We deliberately avoided subscriptions.

- Free tier: the full 13-week cycle and daily ledger

- Lifetime upgrade ($79 launch price): long-term history beyond the current cycle, guided reflections, data export, and a downloadable Modern Virtue Guide (PDF) that explains the method and its rationale in more depth.

Franklin’s system predates SaaS by a few centuries, and a monthly fee felt wrong for something meant to be practiced quietly over years.

Tech:

- Backend: Laravel

- Frontend: Vue (Inertia)

- CSS: Tailwind

- Hosting: Hostinger

Built over ~12 weekends.

We’ll be around today (CET) to answer questions — happy to discuss the implementation, the pricing decision, or Franklin’s original writings. Thoughtful UI/UX feedback is especially welcome.