💡 TL;DR: We’re launching Indy by Shimmer, an AI-powered ADHD app designed for strategic, long-term support. Built from our understanding of what works across 80,000+ ADHD coaching sessions, Indy helps adults with ADHD stay focused on what matters and provides daily scaffolding to support follow-through. Indy helps you strategize, build daily and weekly momentum, and reflect patterns back to you over time.
Supporting the Evolution of ADHD Coaching
At Shimmer, we’ve spent years working with teens and adults with ADHD. Through this work, we’ve supported tens of thousands of individuals and delivered more than 80,000 coaching sessions. Because of this close proximity to real-world needs, we are proud to introduce Indy, an AI-powered tool, as part of the next evolution in ADHD support.
ADHD coaching has been a dynamic field from the start. Over the past two decades, it has gone through several evolutions, each emerging in response to limitations in how ADHD and coaching were understood and what technology made possible.
- The first phase of ADHD coaching was largely tactical and focused on in-the-moment interventions. While often well-intentioned, this phase was not consistently evidence-based and tended to treat ADHD challenges as isolated problems to be fixed as they appeared.
- The second phase of ADHD coaching emerged as research into neurodivergence and behavioral science became more widely integrated into practice. Coaching became more scientifically informed, with an emphasis on short-term goal pursuit and clinical rating tools. While this marked a significant improvement, it remained constrained to a short time horizon.
- In this new third phase of ADHD coaching, it has become increasingly clear that effective support requires tuning into a person’s broader life story, attending to multiple domains of life, and understanding the highly individual neurodivergent lived experience.
Shimmer is taking a leading role in contributing to these shifts.
This third evolution demands that ADHD support work not only in moments of action, but across time, connecting what people are doing right now with the longer-term direction they are trying to sustain. As this understanding has matured, one limitation has become increasingly difficult to ignore: human support alone does not scale in a way that can be financially accessible and consistently present in the way ADHD often requires.
Our mission has been to help shape coaching practices that recognize ADHD as a lifelong way of being, while remaining practical and grounded in everyday experience. The launch of Indy is built on the belief that technology-enabled solutions are a natural continuation of the work Shimmer has been doing.
“I’ve been in ADHD coaching myself for the past three years, and it’s been incredibly impactful.
Indy is exciting to me because it lets us make that kind of support more accessible and more present in everyday life, especially in the moments between sessions when people often need it most.”
— Chris Wang, co-founder & CEO of Shimmer
Indy Scales Third-Wave ADHD Support
Indy is designed to address a specific breakdown point we see repeatedly in ADHD support: an overemphasis on immediate needs at the expense of long-term direction.
ADHD can be understood as involving two interacting aspects of executive functioning: “hot” and “cold.” Hot executive functioning governs how a person responds in the moment, including emotional regulation, reactivity, and urgency. Cold executive functioning relates to future-oriented processes such as setting goals, holding them in mind, planning over time, and acting in alignment with personal values.
Most ADHD tools and apps primarily focus on hot executive functioning. In-the-moment support is relatively easy to standardize, and tools like reminders, checklists, and task breakdowns translate well to digital products. However, when support remains confined to the present, it does little to help people understand why something matters or stay oriented toward where they are going.
Support that helps people hold their goals, values, and evolving life direction in mind is precisely the kind of support that tends to fall away as systems scale. Over time, this creates a familiar pattern: ADHDers are doing more, yet feel increasingly disconnected from why they are doing what they are doing. A core principle behind Indy is that ADHD support must attend to both ends of executive functioning.
“Most people are surprised that ADHD Coaching doesn’t begin with immediate support on getting tasks done. We begin with the long-term direction of what that person envisions their life to look like. We start with their long-term aspirations and wants. Indy is designed to help create regular scaffolding that make intentional action possible over time for everyone, in coaching or therapy or not.
— Alex Bellitter, Lead Coach, Shimmer
Supporting both hot and cold executive functioning has historically been difficult to scale, but recent advances in AI have changed this constraint. For the first time, it is possible to build systems that maintain continuity over time, track patterns across weeks and months, and remain responsive to an individual’s changing context without relying on rigid templates or constant human availability. Shimmer is among the first organizations applying these advances to help lead the third evolution of ADHD support.
“I’ve already told all my clients that they need to get it, so they have something that keeps their intentions front and center. It really helps with pacing, getting clear on what’s reasonable for the week, and being actionable without overdoing it.”
— Coach LeighAnna, Shimmer ADHD Coach
Meet Indy, Your ADHD Copilot
Start by reflecting on your life story
When you start using Indy, it helps bring your life story to the forefront. Instead of beginning with tasks or reminders that force you into a constant “doing mode,” Indy maps what matters to you across your lived experience over time.
By starting with a visual, science-backed exercise that helps you see your life across time, the future feels less fuzzy. You begin to see how your life is unfolding and gain a sense of agency in shaping your own story.
“For the first time I saw my life as a story and not chaos.”
— Alexandra, 25, software engineer
Stay oriented with strategy & accountability sessions
From there, Indy helps you structure weekly and daily strategy sessions where you intentionally identify ways to move forward that align with your longer-term direction.
“Indy doesn’t feel neurotypical. It feels like it understands me.”
— Zane, 28, entrepreneur
Work through in-the-moment ADHD challenges
At the same time, Indy supports immediate, in-the-moment challenges. When you feel stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to proceed, Indy offers guided problem-solving grounded in behavioral science.
“It helped me understand why I was stuck and take action without spiraling.”
— Candy, 44, UX researcher
Even when Indy offers in-the-moment support, it does not direct your actions or tell you what to do. Its design follows coaching psychology principles, recognizing that lasting change depends on autonomy and personal choice. By maintaining this boundary, Indy supports self-awareness and confidence over time.
Spot patterns & trends, so you can course correct early
As you continue using Indy, the system reflects patterns in how you show up over time. You gain insight into where your attention goes, what you’re learning, what you’ve accomplished, and how you’re evolving.
“There are many ways to understand the lived experience of someone with executive functioning challenges. Simply averaging hyperfocus and distraction misses the point. No ADHDer is helped by the statistical average. The most effective support focuses on the N=1: the unique individual, navigating the paradoxes of neurodivergence by staying grounded in what matters.”
— Xenia Angevin, Principal Scientific Officer Applied Psychology & Technology, Shimmer
Celebrate and reflect on wins, to build your self-confidence
People with ADHD often move so quickly from one moment to the next that progress disappears before it has a chance to register. Indy helps you pause just long enough to notice what you actually did, what worked, and how you showed up, even on days that felt messy or incomplete.
Over time, these reflections build a clear record of growth. Seeing progress laid out across days and weeks helps rebuild trust in yourself, strengthens confidence, and turns effort into something you can finally recognize and believe in.
The Next Frontier
We are committed to advancing the field of neurodiversity support, guided by lived experience, emerging research, and new technological possibilities.
Indy was built by an ADHD team and shaped through extensive collaboration with ADHDers during beta testing. Participants across ages, careers, and life stages directly informed how the app was designed.
We’d love for you, or any ADHDer in your life, to try Indy for free. By using Indy and sharing what helps and what’s missing, you directly influence the future of ADHD support.
Try Indy for free at shimmer.care/indy. We value your feedback.
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