The method.
Curb is a loop: a number, a target, what you actually did, and a schedule that adjusts once a week. This page says what that loop is built on, by the names the research uses, and what was left out on purpose.
The loop
You set where you want to land. You log what you do. Curb shows what is left today and what the week looks like, and each Monday the allowance steps once more. That loop is the whole product. The app spends its effort on it, and leaves the reading to the free services each guide points to.
How the schedule is calculated
The plan takes an equal share off each week, so no single step is large, and it never asks for more than it did the week before. A plan ends at the number you chose: lower, or zero. The first week only watches. It runs at least five days, or to the next Monday when the plan starts from days you had already logged.
Strength
Pouches and vapes carry a strength as well as a count, so the amount a day is the count times the strength, and the plan steps that amount. When the count at the current strength gets low, the schedule switches to a lighter strength and gives some of the count back. The routine stays while the dose drops.
A day over
A day over the allowance is counted as a day over. Days within plan, stamps and savings stay as they were, and the next day starts at the full allowance. If a week ran high, Monday offers the same number for one more week instead of the next step down.
Pausing
A schedule can be paused at any time. It holds at the week’s number until you resume, and the next step down starts the Monday after. Nothing logged or walked is taken away. If Pro ends, the schedule pauses the same way and logging carries on.
Stopping at a lower number
Not everyone wants to stop. Curb works at that point too: a lower number is a target in its own right, and zero is one option among others. The schedule holds at whatever number you set.
The techniques, against a published taxonomy
Described against the Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy (Michie et al., 2013), the standard way these interventions are catalogued, so they can be checked rather than taken on trust.
| Technique | Where it is in Curb |
|---|---|
| Self-monitoring of behavior | Logging, from the app, the widget, Control Center or Siri. |
| Goal setting | The target, and the allowance that leads to it. |
| Feedback on behavior | What is left today, the week so far, the schedule drawn. |
| Graded tasks | The schedule: one smaller step a week. |
| Salience of consequences | What it costs, and what cutting down has saved. |
| Focus on past success | Days within plan, which only go up. |
| Commitment | “What’s this for?”, asked once and quoted back when a step is a close call. |
| Prompts and cues | A new week, two left, a day over: notifications you choose. |
| Reducing negative emotions | A day over costs nothing and is never called anything worse. |
What Curb leaves out
- A score to lose. Curb’s stamps and records only ever fill in, and the one count that matters is days within plan, which only goes up.
- Lessons. Reading about a habit is rarely the hard part. The free services each guide points to cover it better than an app would.
- A community. Support from other people helps, and a community built badly would be worse than none. The guides name the free lines and services that already exist.
What this page does not claim
Curb describes methods. It does not claim an outcome, and there is no trial of Curb to point to. The guides in the app say the same: general guidance, and a doctor or pharmacist for what fits your situation.