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Better Split of the Task

Inspiration

Falling behind in coursework can feel overwhelming. A missed lecture or unfinished assignment can quickly turn into a backlog, and a normal to-do list doesn’t always answer the most important question: “How do I catch up?”

We created CatchUp to help students turn missed work into a manageable plan. The idea is simple: make the next step clear so students can focus on making progress.

What It Does

CatchUp is a student planner designed around recovering from missed coursework. Students can organize assignments, set their availability, and adjust their catch-up schedule as their priorities change.

By bringing workload and available time together, CatchUp helps students approach their backlog with more structure and less guesswork.

How We Built It

We built CatchUp using Lovable, with TypeScript and TanStack Start. We focused on connecting assignment management, availability settings, and schedule adjustments in one cohesive planning experience.

Our approach was iterative: establish the core planning flow, refine the interface, and make the experience easier to navigate. The current version provides a guest demo, while account-based persistence is a planned next step.

Challenges We Faced

One of the biggest challenges was balancing useful planning features with simplicity. Students who already feel overwhelmed need an interface that makes planning feel approachable.

Another challenge was accounting for changing schedules. A catch-up plan needs to accommodate limited availability and manual adjustments because students’ days rarely go exactly as expected.

We also planned secure authentication and per-user data storage. That integration remains unfinished because our Lovable workspace reached its credit limit.

What We Learned

We learned that a student planner needs to do more than organize tasks—it needs to help users decide what to do next.

The project also helped us think through the transition from a guest demo to a persistent application, including secure sessions, data ownership, and optional migration of guest plans.

What’s Next for CatchUp

Our next milestone is adding Lovable Cloud authentication and per-user persistence, allowing students to access their plans across sessions and devices. We also plan to offer an optional way to import guest data so students can keep the work they started before creating an account.

Our goal is to make catching up feel achievable, one clear step at a time.