Use cases
Decision Maker (where it earns its place)
On Decision Maker:
Some decisions deserve a spreadsheet. The rest — which film, whose turn, pizza or curry — deserve a coin with more than two sides. The Decision Maker takes your options and picks one, fair and square, with no memory of past verdicts and no favourites. Democracy for households, at last free of debate. On this page: three concrete ways anyone who does this calculation more than once reaches for the Decision Maker, and the signals that tell you it fits.
When the Decision Maker earns its place
You come to the Decision Maker the way you come to any well-made calculator: with numbers, a question, and no patience for a landing page. It gives you a result and forgets it. That is its whole personality.
Most tools in this category, an ad-funded web calculator and a paid spreadsheet template, solve a version of the same problem, then bill you for the privilege of remembering it. The Decision Maker takes the opposite bargain: one file, once, kept.
Three scenarios drawn from general, family, and friends
The everyday one: you open the Decision Maker on a Tuesday morning, punch in the numbers, and close it. Two minutes. The record is more honest than the app that pinged you to remind you.
The specific one: the calculation it's built to run, day to day — the workflow it names is the calculation that most needs a home outside a subscription. Some people use only the Decision Maker. Some fold it into a Swiss Knife next to five others. Both are correct.
The out-of-band one: months later, you want to look back. The Decision Maker still opens because it is a file. There is no login lapsed, no export deadline missed. The answer is where you left it.
Signals it fits anyone who does this calculation more than once
You want a calculation that behaves like a document, not a service. You are comfortable typing your own numbers in. You would rather own the file than rent the calculator. Weight in the knife: 1. Manual: no manual — the tool is its own instructions.
Signals it fits
- You do this calculation more than onceThe Decision Maker pays back every time you don't have to reinvent the shape.
- You want it offline, on your own machineNo account, no cloud, no vendor between you and the arithmetic.
- You're comfortable with a hand-kept fileThe Decision Maker is a document. It behaves like one.
Questions people ask
How does the Decision Maker choose?
You give it the options, it picks one at random, and you all agree in advance to abide by the result. The abiding is the hard part; the picking is instant.
Is this a full replacement for an ad-funded web calculator?
For the working core of what most people use it for — keeping the inputs, the arithmetic, and the result — yes. For free, and paid for with your attention and your inputs, no. The Decision Maker is deliberately smaller and more honest about its scope.
Who is the Decision Maker not for?
Anyone who does this calculation more than once's opposite: a team that needs shared cloud state, or someone who wants automation over ownership. Use a SaaS for that; use this for the file.
A calculation that opens where you left it, on the machine you left it on.