How to use KŌAN
There is no set-up. No manual. No tutorial.
But here is what you need to know before you enter.
Enter with an intention
When the garden opens, a ghost input waits at the bottom of the screen. Type a single intention — something you will work on in this session. Keep it honest. Keep it specific. Instead of "be productive", try "finish the second paragraph of the proposal."
Press Enter to place the stone. The input fades. The garden becomes the interface.
Sit with the sand
The garden responds to your presence. Move your mouse (or finger) and the sand disturbs underneath it — soft indentations, like a footstep. Stay still for 30 seconds and a rake appears, smoothing the sand back to its parallel lines.
Watch the freshness of the rake: fully raked sand means you have been still. Disturbed sand means you have been present and moving. Neither is bad. The garden doesn't judge.
Watch the candle
A candle burns in the garden. It has no numbers on it — just a wax body burning slowly down. A full candle is 25 minutes. When it extinguishes, your session ends gently: dusk falls, the garden dims.
If you want more time, click the flame while it still burns. Five minutes are added without ceremony. You can do this as many times as you need.
Follow the breath
A dedicated breath guide is available under the Breath menu. A circle expands (inhale) and contracts (exhale) on a 20-second box breathing cycle: 5s inhale, 5s hold, 5s exhale, 5s hold.
You don't have to follow it. But if you do for 2 or 3 cycles, you may notice your attention return to the work.
Settle the stone
When you have done the work, return to the garden and click your stone once to select it. Click again (or press Enter) to settle it. The stone sinks slowly into the sand. Ripples spread across the water. A small check appears.
Settled stones gain moss over days. After a week, they become part of the permanent landscape — ancient, quiet, done.
Return tomorrow
KŌAN saves your garden locally — no account, no server, no cloud. Your stones survive refreshes and closed tabs. When you return the next day, the garden will have changed: overnight growth detected, moss advanced, water stiller than you left it.
Unsettled stones from yesterday wait, slightly weathered. Abandoned stones drift slowly to the edge of the garden. This is the nightly forget policy: what you didn't finish doesn't vanish — it just moves to the margin.