Every week there is a new model, a new agent framework and a new post telling you your job is gone by next spring. On top of that, the actual job: tickets, reviews, a pipeline that went red. I noticed I was sitting through whole days with my shoulders somewhere near my ears and breathing like I was holding it for later.

The fix is not a secret. A few minutes of breathing and stretching a day make a real difference, and everybody knows it. The problem is that nobody does it.

No app, no excuse

I tried the phone route. You open the breathing app, a notification pops up, and five minutes later you are reading something that makes you tense again. The phone is the last device you want to reach for when you want to switch off.

So I put the break where I already am all day: the browser. Keep brb.m1well.com open in a tab next to the ticket board, and when your shoulders creep up, switch over and hit Start.

No install, no account, no backend. The page is static and everything runs in the tab: the figures are SVG and every sound is synthesised with Web Audio, so there are no audio files either. It speaks English and German, the German version lives under /de/.

What a break looks like

On the start screen you pick a length - 2, 5, 8, 10 or 15 minutes - and what it should cover besides breathing: neck, shoulders, hands, standing up or eyes. The longer the break, the more areas fit in, and brb tells you how many. From 5 minutes on you can add a one-minute body scan at the end.

Breathing is part of every break, at least a fifth of it. There are seven patterns built in, from a calm coherent 6-6 to box breathing and 4-7-8, and you can add your own with seconds for in, hold, out and hold empty. The one you pick becomes the default for next time.

The exercises themselves are what you would do if someone reminded you: side tilts and chin tucks for the neck, shoulder rolls and a chest opener, wrist circles for the hands that live on a keyboard, a forward fold when you stand up, and for the eyes looking into the distance, slow blinks and palming. Each one runs at its own fixed length. The start screen shows the plan block by block before you begin, and if the exercises do not add up to the minutes you picked, it tells you so.

In the background you get café noise (voices you cannot make out, dishes, an espresso machine) or rain, or nothing. Short cue tones tell you when to move and when to come back, so you can keep your eyes closed.

Space pauses, Esc ends the break early. The minutes you did still count.

Stats that stay in your browser

Every break is saved in your browser’s local storage, under keys starting with brb.. The start screen shows days this week, breaks so far and your longest run. “Stats & badges” adds an 18 week heatmap, the breathing patterns you used and seven badges, from your first break to one taken before 9am. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, there is no server that would take it. The flip side: another browser or device starts from zero. The delete button in the footer wipes it all.

Settings work the same way: everything is saved as you change it, next to the stats. No config to edit by hand.

Five minutes, every day

brb will not fix the hype and it will not close your tickets. But five minutes of breathing and moving before the next meeting is five minutes where your shoulders come down and your head clears. Build it into your routine: after lunch, before a review, whenever the fifth AI announcement of the day hits your feed.

Open brb.m1well.com, hit Start, and I will see you in a bit.