ADHD programmer systems: build around the brain you have, not the one the productivity books assume.

What an ADHD programmer needs from a system

Most productivity advice assumes a brain that remembers what it decided an hour ago. An ADHD programmer does not get that assumption for free. Working memory resets between sessions, time estimates drift, and task initiation stalls in front of a blank editor even when the work itself is understood. This page collects everything I have written about building around those facts instead of fighting them, and puts the pieces in the order I would read them today.

The starting point is GTD for ADHD does not work. I ran Getting Things Done for years and it collapsed every time the inbox outgrew my attention. The replacement is an energy-based system: match the task to the state I am actually in, keep every open commitment outside my head, and stop treating a failed morning as a character flaw. That post is the pillar for this track, and every other piece here assumes you have read it.

The second read is the 73 browser tabs essay, which argues the unpopular half of the case: some ADHD traits are design inputs for systems work. Holding many partial contexts at once is a liability in a to-do app and an asset in an architecture review. The pattern recognition post checks the popular version of that claim against the published research and finds it thinner than wellness writing suggests, so read the two together and keep the honest one.

One distinction runs through the whole track. A system is not a list of habits. It is a set of defaults that hold when motivation is absent, because motivation is exactly the resource an ADHD brain cannot schedule. Every post here is judged by that test: does the practice still work on a bad morning, with no coffee, after a broken night, when the task is boring? If it only works in hyperfocus, it is not a system. It is a good day.

Claude as external executive function

Most readers arrive here searching for some form of Claude ADHD support, and the honest answer is that Claude ships no ADHD mode, no ADHD plugin, and no executive function setting. Two posts exist only to say that clearly. Claude has no ADHD executive function mode traces the claim to a single viral video and explains what people who repeat it actually mean. Claude for ADHD: there is no plugin replaces the missing feature with the five-step workflow I run instead, from the brain dump to the checkpoint that ends a session. Three shorter posts cover the questions people actually type: how to use Claude for ADHD without writing code, the nine ADHD prompts for Claude I run, and what a Claude ADHD plugin actually is once you look past the name.

What Claude can do is hold state you would otherwise lose. CLAUDE.md as external working memory is the exact configuration file that stops the "what was I doing" reset at the start of each session, with the before-and-after numbers. The two skills posts, the i-have-adhd skill and the ADHD skills I run, cover the community skill for Claude Code, the two commands that install it, and the three skills that survived daily use. If you use Claude in the chat window rather than the terminal, start with the workflow post; the file and the skills come later.

A caution that the posts repeat and I will repeat here: Claude is a tool that forgets, talking to a brain that forgets. Neither side is the record. The record is the file on disk, the checkpoint at the end of a session, the plan written before the code. When both parties treat the written artifact as the source of truth, the pairing works better than either alone. When both trust the conversation, the session ends with two confident summaries and no idea what was actually done.

Tools, remote work, and the rest of the stack

Claude is one tool in a stack, and the stack is chosen by failure rather than by popularity. The ADHD developer tool stack names six tools by the executive function each one replaces: working memory, time perception, task initiation, and the rest. The test for every entry was whether it removed a failure I actually had. ADHD remote work for developers covers the case where the office cues disappear and context decay becomes the main enemy, with the specific systems that replace the cues.

Read these after the pillar and the Claude posts, not before. A tool added to a system that has no shape becomes one more tab. A tool added to the energy-based system from the first post has a job, and you can tell within a week whether it is doing that job.

Where this track leads

If the reading order above is working, the next step is the ADHD Productivity System on the products page. It is the energy-based system from the pillar post packaged as templates and a setup guide, sold as a single payment rather than a subscription, because a recurring charge is exactly the kind of open loop this track is trying to remove. Everything on this page stays free. The product is for readers who want the finished version rather than the build log.

This page is written for the ADHD programmer, developer, or software engineer who has already tried the standard systems and watched them fail. If you arrived from a search and the answer is not here yet, the newsletter at the bottom of this page is where new posts in this track are announced first.