Build → your daily Brilliant practice
Fifteen minutes a day on Brilliant is enough to compound. Stake real money against hitting that target. Hit it and your stake returns. Miss and the forfeit funds the charity you chose. The hard part of Brilliant is showing up — Lockin makes that the cheapest decision.
Suggested starting contract
$3/day against missing your daily target of 15 minutes in Brilliant.
Free on Google Play and the App Store. On Android, the Learning challenge uses Digital Wellbeing; on iPhone, Screen Time. Both verify your daily Brilliant time without you having to log anything by hand.
Select Learning from the challenge picker. Pick Brilliant from the list of supported learning apps Lockin can monitor on your phone.
On Android, you'll be sent to your phone's app-usage settings to allow Lockin. On iPhone, you'll grant Screen Time access and pick Brilliant from the app list. Both flows give Lockin only the signal it needs — daily app time — and never expose screen contents, accounts, or messages.
The default is fifteen minutes of active Brilliant time per day, which comfortably covers two short interactive lessons or a problem-of-the-day plus a follow-up. You can lower it to ten minutes if you want a stricter floor that one lesson satisfies, or raise it to thirty for a deeper daily commitment when you are working through a structured course.
The default stake is $3 per day — an amount that would feel like a real loss without being punitive. Pick the charity from Lockin's vetted list across categories including climate, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy; that is where forfeited stakes go. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations.
By default the deadline is end-of-day — 23:59 in your local timezone — meaning your Brilliant minutes only need to be logged before midnight. Tap Set deadline in the wizard to pick an earlier time on a 24-hour picker — 9:00pm is a strong default for Brilliant, since it pulls the lesson out of the pre-bed scrolling window where most missed days die. An earlier deadline raises both the difficulty and the reward: tighter deadlines unlock higher Locks and XP rewards. The deadline is set once during contract creation and applies to every scheduled day for the life of the contract — it cannot be edited mid-contract.
Your stake is held securely by Stripe. The contract starts at midnight in your local timezone. Hit at least your daily Brilliant time minimum before your deadline each day or that day's stake is forfeited.
From Lockin's data
In the Lockin beta, Learning-challenge contracts where users set a modest daily floor — around fifteen minutes of active Brilliant time, enough for two short interactive lessons or a problem-of-the-day plus follow-up — showed stronger week-three retention than contracts with longer minimums. A floor that two short sessions always satisfy removes every plausible excuse, which means every miss is a genuine choice and the financial consequence lands harder.
"I had been paying for a Brilliant subscription for fourteen months and used the app maybe six times. Two weeks with Lockin on top of it and I started actually opening the lessons. The $3 was small, but losing it on a day I had spent eight hours scrolling felt absurd in a way that finally pushed me to open Brilliant instead."
— Anonymous beta user, Brilliant challenge, 5 weeks active
No. Lockin reads your phone's own daily Brilliant usage — Digital Wellbeing on Android, Screen Time on iPhone. Brilliant's own streak counter and your XP totals are not part of the verification, and Lockin has no visibility into them. You have to actually open the Brilliant app and use it for at least your daily minimum before your deadline. The benefit of using the OS counter rather than Brilliant's streak is that Lockin's signal is strictly active in-app time — no streak-freeze mechanic on Brilliant's side affects your Lockin contract one way or the other.
Yes. On iPhone the Learning challenge uses Screen Time — Lockin reads your daily Brilliant time and the contract settles automatically at end of day. Verification is hands-off; you don't have to log anything by hand on either platform. Both Android and iPhone are fully supported for the Brilliant flow.
None of those. On Android, the screen-time permission only reveals which app you used and for how long. On iPhone, Screen Time only reports whether you crossed your daily minimum for the apps you selected — Lockin never sees screen contents, your Brilliant account, your XP totals, the problems you worked on, or anything you type. The pass/fail signal each day is a minutes-in-Brilliant check compared against your daily target — nothing more.
Forfeited stakes go to a registered charity from Lockin's vetted list. You choose the charity from categories including climate, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy when you set up the contract. The bulk of your stake funds the charity you chose. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations. Refer to the transparency page inside the app for charity-by-charity tallies.
The Learning challenge measures active time inside the installed Brilliant mobile app, so lessons completed on the Brilliant website in your phone's browser do not count — they do not produce active time inside the app on either Android or iPhone. If you prefer the browser experience on a laptop, that is fine for the practice itself, but you'll still need to log the daily minimum inside the mobile app to satisfy the contract. A common pattern in the beta is to use the mobile app for the daily fifteen-minute floor and the desktop browser for longer weekend sessions on top.
Every contract has a per-day deadline by which your Brilliant minutes must be logged. The default is end-of-day — 23:59 in your local timezone — so you have until midnight to clear the daily minimum. During the contract wizard you can tap Set deadline and pick any earlier time on a 24-hour picker; 9:00pm is a popular choice for Brilliant because it forces the lesson to happen before the late-evening scroll window opens. The deadline you choose applies to every scheduled day for the life of the contract. Tighter deadlines unlock higher Locks and XP rewards. The deadline is locked in at contract creation and cannot be edited mid-contract — that immutability is what makes it function as a real precommitment rather than a movable goalpost.
Free to download. You set the target, the stake, and the charity.
Author
The Lockin Team — Lockin Editorial
Last verified