Just shipped the MVP for ToxStop – An elite focus shield to stop context-switching for engineering squads 🚀
Hey Indie Hackers! 👋
I've been working on a problem that drains productivity for a lot of engineering teams: constant context-switching and notification overload. Between impromptu meetings, Slack pings, and late-night alerts, developers spend way too little time in actual deep-flow state.
So, I built and just shipped the MVP for ToxStop—a high-end B2B SaaS designed specifically for engineering managers and developers to reclaim their focus.
It features a clean, dark obsidian UI built for high-end developer workflows, giving teams real-time tracking of focus scores, burnout risks, individual deep-work timers, and distraction mutes.
You can check out the live MVP here: https://b2b-saas-mvp-dashboa-0kxm.bolt.host
I'd love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or any advice on marketing B2B SaaS tools to engineering teams. Let me know what you think! 🛠️🔥
The shift away from individual focus scores makes sense: a developer won't want a tool that looks like another manager dashboard. The next test is whether the promise survives an engineering manager's buying process without quietly turning personal data back into team surveillance. What can a manager actually see in the updated product, and have you put that exact screen in front of a developer yet?
"Spot on, @niteshnagpal! That is a massive blind spot we hadn't fully mapped out yet.You nailed the core tension: if a developer feels like a tool is just a manager surveillance dashboard or a way to track their individual 'focus scores', they'll reject it instantly—no matter what the engineering manager wants. The big design challenge for us now is figuring out how to protect developer privacy completely while still keeping managers happy with team-level health. We want managers to see high-level workflow friction or blockages without ever having access to individual tracking or personal data.We haven't put that specific privacy-first boundary in front of a real developer yet, but your comment makes that priority number one. How do you usually see successful dev tools handle that exact balance?"
I wouldn't claim there's a standard pattern that solves this. The boundary I'd test is: a manager can see team-level friction and blockers, but can't drill down to one developer's focus score or infer it from a tiny group. Then I'd show the same screens to a developer and a manager separately, rather than relying on the privacy promise in copy. What is the smallest team size for which your team-level view still feels useful without identifying an individual?
You hit the exact architectural wall every dev tool faces.
To answer your question directly: 3 to 4 members is our hard floor. If a team dips below that (like a pair-programming duo), individual inference becomes mathematically unavoidable, so we completely lock or mask the friction scores to prevent guessing.
And love your point about showing the screens separately—we actually built the manager view to be completely detached from individual feeds. A manager gets aggregate pulse metrics (like total team context-switching time and blocked sprint hours), while individual data stays local.
You can check out how the live layout handles this here:https://b2b-saas-mvp-dashboa-0kxm.bolt.host
Appreciate you pushing on this! How do you usually handle that tiny-group data leakage in other developer workflows?
I wouldn't claim there's a standard pattern that solves this. The boundary I'd test is: a manager can see team-level friction and blockers, but can't drill down to one developer's focus score or infer it from a tiny group. Then I'd show the same screens to a developer and a manager separately, rather than relying on the privacy promise in copy. What is the smallest team size for which your team-level view still feels useful without identifying an individual?
"My bad, typo in the link on that last one! Here is the actual working link with the updates live: https://b2b-saas-mvp-dashboa-0kxm.bolt.host
"Appreciate the killer feedback, RetroScale and Zykov! You guys completely nailed the positioning blind spots.I just pushed a full update to the MVP: Stripped out the surveillance framing: Removed terms like 'focus scores' and individual keystroke tracking. Doubled down on data autonomy: Explicitly made it so developers own their personal data, while managers only see high-level team trends. Focused on concrete outcomes: Fewer interruptions, protected focus blocks, and zero micromanagement. Have a look at the updated live version here: https://b2b-saas-mvp-dashboa-0kxn.bolt.host. Let me know what you think of the new direction!"
Congrats on shipping. One thing I’d revisit is the positioning — “elite focus shield”, focus scores and burnout risk sound interesting, but the actual outcome for an engineering manager could be much more concrete. I’d lead with what changes after adopting it: fewer interruptions, protected focus blocks, and better visibility into team workload without micromanaging.
The dark developer-tool direction makes sense, but I’d make the value proposition do more of the selling than the “high-end” framing. Have you tested the messaging with engineering managers yet?
Congrats on shipping! Since you asked about marketing to engineering teams: the biggest objection you'll hit is surveillance. 'Focus scores' and 'burnout risk' can read as 'my manager is watching me'. What's worked well for dev tools is making the individual the owner of their own data, with managers seeing only team-level trends, and saying that clearly on the landing page. A custom domain instead of the bolt.host URL will also help a lot with trust when EMs evaluate it. Who do you see as the buyer: the EM, or developers bringing it in bottom-up?