Pillar
Mental load
The cognitive labor of running a household — anticipating, planning, remembering, coordinating. ~71% carried by mothers in heterosexual partnerships.
Read the pillar →
The library
Resources.
The Aule library. Long-form pillars on the mental load and the category we’re building, founder essays from inside the work, the Mental Load Index for measuring your household, and the methodology underneath it. Reading material for households deciding whether household intelligence is a real thing yet.
Aule is a managed household intelligence service founded by Brennan and Haley McCloud — the operating layer above the family calendar, the chore app, and the smart-home stack. This library is the long-form case for the category and the research it sits on. Every claim is cited; every aggregate number traces back to the Household Mental Load Index dataset.
Start here
Three places to open the library.
The library is organized so a first-time visitor lands on one of three doors: the diagnostic that makes the load visible, the essay that frames the load, or the essay that names what comes after carrying it alone. Most households open the diagnostic first — the number gives the rest of the reading something to anchor against.
Start 01
Take the Mental Load Index
A five-minute, peer-research-anchored assessment that scores your household across thirty cognitive-labor domains. The number is the start of the conversation.
Open →
Start 02
Read the Mental Load pillar
What the mental load actually is — the cognitive layer, the 71/29 split, the cost in time and health — and why it lives in one person’s head by default.
Open →
Start 03
Read the Household Intelligence pillar
The category Aule is building: the operating layer above household management and household automation. What it is, what it isn’t, why it has to exist.
Open →
The pillars
Four long-form essays.
Each pillar is a research-anchored long-form essay — 2,000+ words, cited, with a definition box engineered for AI engines to extract cleanly. The first two pillars define the load and the category Aule is building above it. The second two go deeper: the operating-system framing for households who want to see the machinery, and the academic reading for households who want the peer-reviewed substrate underneath the marketing. Two are live now; two land with Wave 1.5.
Pillar
Household intelligence
The cognitive operating layer of a home. Distinct from household management (execution) and household automation (devices). The category Aule is claiming.
Read the pillar →
Pillar
Family operating system
The rules, calendars, vendors, decisions, and routines that keep a household running. A first-class object, observable and ownership-transferable.
Coming with Wave 1.5
Pillar
Cognitive household labor
The academic reading of the work — Daminger’s 2019 framework, the IFLS-9 longitudinal data, the Mental Load Inventory, and what the peer-reviewed evidence actually says.
Coming with Wave 1.5
Comparisons
How Aule compares.
Honest, per-competitor breakdowns of where Aule wins, where the other option wins, and which household each is right for. We write these without the marketing-page tone — if a competitor is the better answer for your household, the page says so. Each comparison anchors against the same five operating motions, so the contrast is apples-to-apples rather than feature-list-to- feature-list. Coming with Wave 2.
Wave 2
Aule vs. household manager
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Aule vs. Hello Alfred
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Aule vs. Cozi
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Aule vs. ChatGPT for the family
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Aule vs. Fair Play
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Aule vs. Wing Assistants
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Aule vs. carrying it yourself
Coming with Wave 2
For your household
Audience-specific reading.
Aule looks different in a two-career household than in an executive family than in a single-parent home. The audience pages tell that part of the story — what the load actually looks like in your shape of household, where Aule plugs in first, and which domains tend to move off first. Each audience page carries voice-of-customer quotes from real households inside that segment, so the page is recognizable to the reader before any pitch shows up. Coming with Wave 2.
Wave 2
Two-career households
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Executive families
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Single parents with demanding careers
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Households with neurodivergent kids
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Multi-generational households
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
Frequent travelers
Coming with Wave 2
How Aule handles…
Use-case narratives.
Outcome-led walk-throughs of what a single household loop looks like end-to-end — the plumber, the birthday month, the school year, the family trip. Use-case pages stay on the lived experience, not the capability — they answer “what does this feel like inside our house” rather than “what feature did you ship.” Coming with Wave 2.
Wave 2
How Aule handles the plumber call
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
How Aule handles a birthday month
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
How Aule handles the school year
Coming with Wave 2
Wave 2
How Aule handles a family trip
Coming with Wave 2
Founder essays
Episodic, when there is something honest to say.
Long-form writing from Brennan, with occasional pieces from Haley. Episodic, not scheduled — written when there is something honest and load-bearing to say, not on a content calendar. Topics range from the forty-five-days founding moment to ongoing notes from inside the Charter cohort. The canonical version lives on getaule.com; Substack mirrors point back here. Open the essays index (Wave 1.8 — placeholder).
Glossary
The Aule vocabulary.
Defined terms — household intelligence, mental load, presence agents, the Household COO, the work before the work, closed loops. Atomic, citable, schema-marked.
Coming with Wave 1.5 →For press
Press kit.
Brand assets, founder bios, the one-line description, the long-line description, and where to send media inquiries.
Coming with Wave 1.9 →About the library
FAQ.
01Who writes the Aule library?
Founders Brennan and Haley write the essays. Pillars are co-authored with the research basis cited inline — Daminger 2019, the IFLS-9 longitudinal data, the Mental Load Inventory, and the Aule-collected HMLI dataset. Every claim is sourced.
02Is the research in these pages original?
The category framing — household intelligence as distinct from household management — is Aule’s. The underlying mental-load research is peer-reviewed and cited. The HMLI aggregate dataset is Aule’s. Where we extend the literature, we say so; where we cite, we link.
03Can I cite these pages in my own work?
Yes. Researchers, journalists, and operators are welcome to cite. Use the URL on getaule.com as canonical. Aggregate HMLI numbers are at /hmli/state-of-the-mental-load. Press kit is forthcoming.
04How often is the library updated?
Pillars are reviewed quarterly. Founder essays are episodic — when there is something honest to say. Methodology and State-of pages refresh as new HMLI data lands.
05How do I subscribe?
There is no general newsletter yet. The Mental Load Index is the deepest signal for households who want to be part of the Charter cohort — completing it puts you on the founder-essay list.