Top AI Product

I’ve tried a lot of productivity trackers over the years. Most of them follow the same formula — install, configure a bunch of categories, remember to hit “start” every time you sit down, forget about it after three days, uninstall. So when [Shepherd](https://shepherdtime.com/) showed up on [Product Hunt](https://www.producthunt.com/products/shepherd-7) this week and racked up 358 upvotes on launch day (Feb 23), I had to see what the fuss was about.

Here’s the pitch: it’s a free Chrome extension that runs quietly in the background and tracks how you spend your time in the browser. No manual input, no start/stop buttons, no account creation. You install it, and it just… works. The whole setup took me maybe 20 seconds, which is honestly less time than it takes me to decide what to have for lunch.

What makes Shepherd different from the usual time-tracking suspects is the sheep thing. Every day, you get a fresh sheep. The more time you spend on productive sites, the healthier and happier your sheep looks. Spend half the afternoon bouncing between Reddit and YouTube? Your sheep starts looking rough — dirty, sick, generally disappointed in your life choices. It’s weirdly motivating. I found myself closing Twitter tabs not because of willpower but because I didn’t want my sheep to suffer. That’s a sentence I never expected to write.

Under the hood, Shepherd uses AI to classify your browsing activity as productive or distracting in real time. It also gives you a weekly health score and shows you patterns — like when during the day you tend to lose focus. There are social leaderboards too, if public shame is what gets you going.

The fact that it’s completely free with no premium tier or hidden upsell is refreshing. No accounts, no data collection drama, just a lightweight extension that does one thing well. For anyone working remotely and struggling with the “I’ll just check one thing” spiral, Shepherd is worth the 30 seconds it takes to install. Your sheep will thank you.