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Getting Started with Panic Attack Toolkit

Panic Attack Toolkit is a free web app for getting through a panic attack. It walks you through three guided relief flows — breathing, grounding, and anchoring — designed to be usable by someone whose working memory is impaired mid-attack. Relief never requires an account: open the app, tap a card, and you are inside a guided flow within seconds.

The app is built around one promise: help before the account question. You should never have to sign up, configure anything, or read a tutorial while you are panicking.

First Visit​

When you open the app for the first time, you move through a short onboarding:

  1. Welcome screen: Introduces what the app is and what it will ask of you — very little. One primary action carries you forward.
  2. Safety notice: A plain-language notice explaining what this app is and is not. It is not a substitute for professional help or emergency care, and it tells you when to seek help. Tap the one primary action to acknowledge it.

That's the whole onboarding — two screens, readable in under 15 seconds. After you acknowledge the safety notice, you land directly on Home. The notice never appears again, and on every visit after that the app opens straight to Home with relief one tap away.

A permanent version of the disclaimer lives at /legal/disclaimer in the app.

Home: Three Relief Cards​

Home is built for one-handed use in a bad moment. The hero line — "You can get through this minute." — sits above three large relief cards:

  • Breathing: A guided visual pacer that breathes with you. You choose a pattern — box breathing, 4-7-8, the physiological sigh — or accept the "just breathe" default and let the pacer set the pace.
  • Grounding: The 5-4-3-2-1 technique, one sense per step. You name things you can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste, advancing at your own pace. It is designed to be read aloud — by you, or by someone helping you.
  • Anchoring: Short reframing statements that appear one at a time with slow, calm transitions, to interrupt catastrophic thinking.

Every flow starts within two taps. Emergency guidance ("If you are in danger, call your local emergency number.") is visible on relief screens without covering the content.

Making an Account (Only When You Want One)​

Relief is fully usable signed out. An account adds the parts of the app that remember things between visits:

  • Safety Plan: Five sections — warning signs, what helps, three contacts, medications, and a note — readable at a glance mid-attack, and editable on calm days.
  • Episode Log: Record each attack in under 30 seconds: an intensity from 1 to 10 (you choose it explicitly — there is no default), triggers, what helped, and an optional short reflection.
  • Technique Library & Education: Browsable without an account, but your reading connects to your logged history when you are signed in.
  • Sync: Your plan and history live server-side, so signing out — on a shared device, or by accident — never loses your data.

You can create an account from the app whenever you're ready. If you sign in, the app keeps you signed in across visits unless you sign out.

Free, Plus, and Pro​

The free tier fully solves the core problem: every relief flow, the technique library, the education page, and — with an account — the safety plan and episode log, all free. Data export is free on every tier.

  • Plus ($2.99/month or $29.99/year) removes ads and adds practice reminders and next-day check-ins.
  • Pro ($9.99/month or $99.99/year) adds pattern insights: your most common triggers, time-of-day trends, and which techniques correlate with better outcomes for you — computed from your own history, stated with appropriate uncertainty.

Upgrades are always offered calmly, from Settings or a gated feature — never mid-relief, never with countdowns or guilt.

Built for Bad Moments​

The app is designed around the reality of panic:

  • Large targets (48px minimum) and no pinch or drag-only gestures, so tremors and shaking hands don't cause mis-taps.
  • Keyboard-reachable controls — you can pause or leave any flow with Esc.
  • Zoom-safe layout — everything stays readable and visible at 150% browser zoom, with no clipped content or horizontal scrolling.
  • Reduced-motion support — if your system requests reduced motion, the animated pacer becomes a calm static progress indicator with phase text.
  • Offline-friendly relief — the relief flows run entirely in your browser. After your first visit, they work with no network at all.

Where to Go Next​

If something isn't working, the troubleshooting guide covers the common cases, or contact us at support@edgeless.dev.

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