What is a commitment contract?
An agreement you make with yourself that carries a real consequence. You fix the goal, what counts as proof, the deadline, and what a miss costs — all of it in advance, while you still want the thing. Then you are bound to it.
It is the oldest trick in behavioural economics and the only one that keeps working after the study ends. Commit is one you can't quietly renegotiate at 6am.
Every commitment contract has the same four parts
- 1
The goal
Stated precisely enough that a stranger could tell whether you did it. “Get fit” is not a contract. “Gym before 9am, five days a week” is.
- 2
The proof
What counts as evidence, decided before you need it. Otherwise the version of you that wants to skip gets to define what counted.
- 3
The deadline
A fixed moment the contract is judged at. Open-ended goals are never missed, which is exactly why they are never met.
- 4
The penalty
What a miss actually costs. It has to be real and it has to hurt a little, or it is a reminder wearing a contract's clothes.
With money at stake, you’re 4.5× more likely to succeed
In a randomised trial, people who staked their own money on a weight-loss goal hit their 16 lb target 47.4% of the time. The group with nothing at stake hit it 10.5% of the time.
And it isn’t one study. Across 35 randomised trials, deposit contracts — commitment contracts, the thing Commit is — beat every other incentive tested — cash rewards, lotteries, all of it — and they were the only kind still working months after the programme ended.
A tracker records what you did. A contract changes what you do.
Ticking a box costs nothing, so a habit tracker is only ever as strong as the motivation you already had — which is the thing that was missing. A contract puts something on the other side of the decision.
| Aspect | Commitment contract | Habit tracker |
|---|---|---|
| What it does when you skip | Charges you | Breaks a streak |
| Who decides you did it | Evidence does | You do |
| Cost of lying to it | You'd be paying to lie | Nothing |
| Works without motivation | Yes | No |
Habit contract, accountability contract, deposit contract
They are the same instrument under different names. Behavioural economists say commitment contract or deposit contract; Atomic Habits popularised habit contract; people who add a second person to it call it an accountability contract. The mechanism never changes: a consequence, agreed in advance, that you cannot vote yourself out of later.
How Commit enforces one
Commit is a commitment contract you can actually sign on a phone. You set the goal, the proof, the deadline and the penalty; an AI coach grades your evidence against the criteria you wrote, at the leniency you chose; and a miss moves real money after a four-day window to appeal. The parts above are the product, not a metaphor for it.
Write one and find out
Pick a goal, put a number on missing it, and see how different the 6am decision feels.
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