Cosmicore

01 · Problem

Productivity apps make you feel behind, not motivated.

They're lists of things you haven't done yet. They guilt you. Nobody opens their task manager and feels excited. The interface exists to remind you of failure, not fuel momentum.

The hardest part of any focus session isn't the work — it's the moment before you start. The emotional friction of opening an app that makes you feel overwhelmed before you've even begun.

The question I kept returning to: what if your productivity left something behind? Not a crossed-off item. Something you could see, collect, grow.

User research findings

"I open my task app and immediately feel overwhelmed"

"I have no idea where my day went"

"I want to feel like I'm making progress, not just crossing things off"

"Why does productivity software have to be so ugly"

Target user

18–32 · Student or young professional · Uses Notion, Spotify · May play games · Wants to feel like their time means something · Hates boring interfaces

02 · Solution

Every focus session forges a celestial object into your personal galaxy.

Cosmicore is a space-themed productivity PWA where your work builds something real. Complete a session → reveal a unique celestial object. Your productivity becomes a living, breathing galaxy you can see and grow.

03 · Product Decisions

Five calls that shaped everything.

Building solo means no committee, no safety net. Every tradeoff was made alone and lived with.

01

PWA over native app

Building native would take 6+ months and require separate codebases for iOS and Android. A PWA delivers 90% of the native experience in a single codebase with instant deployments. Submitted to both stores via PWABuilder — same app, wrapped.

Speed over convention

02

Single file over component splitting

A 9,000-line App.jsx with zero import complexity. Faster debugging, faster iteration. The PWA service worker caches aggressively — first load is slow, every return visit is near-instant. The tradeoff was worth it.

Pragmatism over purity

03

Free tier with genuine value

Unlimited focus sessions, first 20 celestial objects, full task and habit management — all free. Trust is the product. Users who stay because they love it convert at a far higher rate than users who feel trapped behind a paywall on day one.

Trust before revenue

04

96 fictional celestial objects

Each object has a unique name, visual, rarity tier, and lore. The galaxy isn't a progress bar — it's a collection people actually care about. The rarity system (Common → Legendary) creates the same dopamine loop as loot systems in games, tied entirely to real focus time.

Meaning over mechanics

05

Constellation friend system

Productivity is often lonely. Adding a social layer — real-time body doubling, task collaboration, note sharing — addresses isolation and adds accountability-driven retention. Built using Supabase real-time subscriptions with no additional infrastructure.

Accountability as retention

✦ A glimpse at three of 96 — each one earned, never purchased

Lyris

Common · Moon

Solara

Epic · Star

The Void Star

Legendary · Galaxy

04 · What Was Built

Six systems. One coherent experience.

✦ Core mechanic

Stellar Forge

A focus timer where a celestial object forms in real time as you work. Complete the session to reveal what you've forged. The object is determined by session length and luck — longer sessions unlock rarer tiers.

Customisable duration (Pro) or 15/25/45/60/90 min presets
Brain dump field to offload distracting thoughts before starting
96 unique objects across 10 chapters, 4 rarity tiers
XP per minute of focused time

✦ Collection system

Personal Galaxy

Every object ever forged lives in your galaxy. Filter by tier, sort by rarity, switch between grid and cosmic map views. Each object has a name, lore, and rarity badge — a real collection, not a progress bar.

Grid and constellation map views
Filter by Moon · Planet · Star · Nebula · Galaxy
Rarity: Common · Rare · Epic · Legendary
Object detail with session metadata

✦ Daily practice

Habit Tracker

Three categories — Mind, Body, Soul — because productivity is more than work. Each habit earns XP, builds streaks, and contributes to your cosmic level. Missed days show clearly. Streaks are celebrated with milestone rewards.

Mind · Body · Soul category system
7-day visual dot strip per habit
Streak milestones: +XP at 7, 30, 100 days
Grace days so one miss doesn't break your chain

✦ Time management

Tasks & Calendar

A complete day management system inside one app. Daily to-do lists, scheduled tasks, recurring items, and a full calendar with Month/Week/Day views. Events sync with push notifications at user-chosen offsets.

To-do lists that persist Mon–Sun
Scheduled tasks that sync to calendar
Recurring tasks (daily / weekly / monthly)
Push reminders 15 min / 30 min / 1 hr / 3 hr before

✦ Progression system

Levels, XP & Achievements

Ten explorer levels from Stardust Initiate to Eternal Voyager. Every focus session, completed task, logged habit, and mood check-in earns XP. Sixteen achievements across four tiers — Bronze, Silver, Gold, Cosmic — each with a push notification on unlock.

10 levels with unique titles and visual identity
16 achievements across 4 tiers
Streak streak rewards at 7, 30, 100 days
XP history and analytics (Pro)

05 · Design System

Built in code. Felt in every pixel.

No Figma handoff — design and development happened simultaneously. The system was defined through constraint: dark only, earned reward, glow over shadow.

Colour palette

#04020e

Deep Space

#8a5af0

Cosmic Purple

#a78bfa

Purple Light

#5b8af0

Stellar Blue

#ffc628

Achievement Gold

#3ec882

Success Green

#50c8f0

Nebula Cyan

rgba(238,242,255)

Star White

Typography

COSMICORE

Orbitron 900 · Headers, Navigation, Branding · Space identity

STARDUST INITIATE · LV.2

Orbitron 700 · Labels, Level names, Badges · Uppercase tracking

Forge your focus. Every session forges something real from the cosmos — a unique celestial object earned through genuine, uninterrupted work.

Exo 2 Regular · Body text, Descriptions, Inputs · Clean and space-adjacent

Design principles

🌑

Dark only

The space aesthetic demands it. There is no light mode. The darkness is the canvas — everything glows from within.

✨

Glow over shadow

Light sources live inside the UI, not above it. Elements emit rather than receive light — consistent with the cosmic world.

🔒

Earned reward

Nothing unlocks without effort. Every visual flourish is tied to real behaviour. Delight follows action — it never precedes it.

🪐

Progressive disclosure

Complexity reveals as users level up. New explorers see a clean, simple interface. Veterans unlock depth naturally.

Visual mood board

Glow & depth

FORGE

Cosmic typography

Glass card system

XP & progress bars

RARITY

Common

Rare

Epic

Legendary

Rarity system

LV.4

+50 XP

36 DAY STREAK

EPIC DROP

Badge & pill system

06 · Tech Stack

Chosen for speed, not convention.

Layer	Technology	Why
Frontend	React + Vite (single App.jsx)	Fast iteration, zero import overhead, instant hot reload
Database	Supabase (PostgreSQL + RLS)	Row-level security, real-time subscriptions, Auth built in
Auth	Supabase Auth + Google OAuth	Email/password and social login in one service
Payments	Stripe (£4.99/mo · £24.99/yr)	Subscription billing, webhooks, customer portal
Email	Resend	Transactional email with verified domain
Push	Web Push API + VAPID	Native push on all platforms, no third-party SDK
Hosting	Vercel	Edge CDN, instant deploys on every git push
Monitoring	Sentry + PostHog + UptimeRobot	Error tracking, product analytics, uptime monitoring
Store packaging	PWABuilder	Generates Play Store AAB and App Store IPA from a single PWA URL

07 · Outcomes

Shipped, live, and growing.

96

Unique celestial objects across 10 chapters — each with a name, visual, rarity tier, and lore

Live

Full-stack PWA at app.cosmicore.app with active paying subscribers on the Pro tier

3

Platforms — Web, Google Play Store (closed testing), and Apple App Store (in review)

8

Months from first line of code to store submission — built entirely solo

16

Achievements built across 4 tiers — each unlocked through real usage milestones

Day 1

Error monitoring, analytics, and uptime tracking live from the first deployment

08 · What I Learned

Building solo compresses every lesson at once.

01

The hardest skill is cutting.

The first version of Cosmicore had 40% more scope — a social feed, voice notes, an AI coach. Every cut was right. Features that survive the cut are the ones that earn their place. Scope discipline is the single most important product skill.

02

Done beats perfect. Every single time.

Every week spent polishing is a week users don't have the product. The app that exists in someone's hands is worth more than the perfect app that doesn't exist yet. Ship, measure, iterate. This isn't a cliché — it's the only way.

03

Sentry is a mirror, not just a tool.

Real errors from real users revealed assumptions I'd never have caught testing alone. Error monitoring isn't a DevOps concern — it's a product feedback channel. The first three Sentry issues directly shaped what I prioritised next.

04

Design and code in the same flow state.

Building without a handoff — designing directly in code — forced every decision to be practical. No pixel-perfect Figma mockups that break in implementation. What you see is what ships. That constraint made the product more honest.