In this article
Straight answer: Goblin Tools is genuinely good, essentially free, and you should have it bookmarked. And it has a ceiling almost nobody names: it hands you a beautifully chopped list of steps — and then leaves you alone with it, and starting was your actual problem.
This review exists because Goblin Tools occupies a rare spot in the ADHD world: near-universal goodwill, built by one developer (Bram De Buyser) with obvious care for neurodivergent users, no venture-capital growth machine, web version free, mobile apps a few dollars. Nothing here is a takedown. It’s a map of where the tool ends.
What Goblin Tools actually nails
Magic ToDo is the star: type “clean the garage,” press the magic wand, get the task broken into steps — with a spiciness setting that chops finer for worse brain days. The genius is the friction floor: no account, no setup, no app to configure, one paste and one click. On a day when opening a chat and explaining yourself already feels like too many steps, that matters enormously.
The Formalizer reworks your blunt draft into something professional (or your rambling one into something short) — a real gift for the RSD-flavored email problem. The Judge reads tone in messages you received, which anyone who’s spiraled over “ok.” understands. The whole thing costs almost nothing and asks almost nothing. As a first AI tool for an ADHD brain, it’s close to perfect.
Where it stops: the list is not the start
Here’s the moment the review genre skips. It’s Tuesday, the garage task has defeated you for three weekends, and Magic ToDo just gave you nine clean steps. You read them. You agree with them. You close the tab.
The gap between a list and motion is the actual ADHD gap. Task decomposition was never the whole problem — task initiation is, and a static list can’t initiate you. It can’t ask “which step are you on?”, can’t shrink step one when you stall, can’t sit with you while you do it, can’t handle “I did step 2 but step 3 exploded into a phone call I’m now avoiding.” The list is a map; what a stuck brain needs at the moment of stuckness is a companion — something that responds.
That’s not a flaw in Goblin Tools; it’s a boundary of the format. A one-shot tool produces artifacts. Getting unstuck is a conversation.
The pairing that actually works
Keep Goblin Tools for what it’s best at, and add a configured conversational assistant for what it can’t do:
- Quick chop, low stakes → Magic ToDo. Fastest path from “ugh” to steps that exists.
- Chopped but still frozen → a configured ChatGPT/Claude running the 2-Minute Door: one sub-2-minute action, then report back. Initiation is a dialogue.
- Long or scary task → an AI body-double session: the check-in loop that keeps you attached to the work — the thing a list structurally cannot be.
- Every day, automatically → custom instructions so the assistant’s answers are always ADHD-shaped without re-explaining.
The free tools cover the moments; the ADHD AI Starter Kit ($27, once) turns the pairing into a system — setup blocks for ChatGPT and Claude, the five rituals including the Just Start Protocol and Body Double Session, and printed anchor cards for the days you don’t open anything. Goblin Tools chops the task; this is the part that gets you to actually touch it.
FAQ
Is Goblin Tools free? The website is free with no account; iOS/Android apps are a few dollars once. No subscription.
Is Goblin Tools private? It doesn’t require an account, which is more privacy than most tools offer by default. As with any AI tool, don’t paste things you wouldn’t want processed by a third-party service.
Goblin Tools vs. ChatGPT for task breakdown? Goblin is faster for a quick chop; ChatGPT with a breakdown prompt gives you conversation — resizing steps, first-action focus, and follow-through — at the cost of a little more setup. Most ADHDers benefit from both, used for different moments.
Is there a Goblin Tools alternative that also does the starting part? Not in one-click form — starting is interactive by nature. The nearest thing is a general assistant configured for ADHD plus a ritual you actually run; that combination is what the Starter Kit packages.
Related tools
- Best AI tools for ADHD 2026 — the full honest comparison
- AI task breakdown for ADHD — the conversational version of Magic ToDo
- AI body doubling — for the tasks a list can’t start
- ADHD AI Starter Kit — $27: the initiation layer Goblin Tools leaves open
- The AI for ADHD hub — every setup guide, technique, and honest review in one place