ClearHead

Inspiration

ClearHead focuses on first‑year and international students in the UK who are sleeping badly, missing lectures, and don’t know whether to contact wellbeing, a tutor, a GP or NHS services. The motivation is that they often get stuck at “I don’t know who to talk to” instead of taking a concrete step.

What it does

ClearHead is a student support navigator for UK university students who feel overwhelmed but don’t know who to contact. It takes them from “I’m not coping and I’m unsure where to start” to a clear first step, a ranked set of support options, a message they can send tonight, and a one‑time check‑in text a few days later so they’re not left alone with the plan.

How we built it

We used the Cursor SDK as an engineering automation runner to build ClearHead quickly and safely. A TypeScript script (dev/clearhead-builder.ts, run with npm run build:step) reads a checklist from .clearhead/agent-state.json, spins up a Cursor agent on our repo, plans the next change, edits the code, runs npm run build to verify it, and marks that step as done. Cursor SDK helped us scaffold the Next.js app, wire the Manus API, and iterate on the UI without manually prompting in the editor. At runtime, the Manus API powers the student journey: the app sends each guided support check to Manus, which returns the urgency band, support routes, copy‑ready message, and follow‑up plan that ClearHead shows to the student.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing safety and usefulness: making sure crisis language triggers an override while still allowing a smooth experience when students are safe. Matching the Health Impact judging criteria: tightening language around non‑diagnosis, proving the SMS check‑in, and making routes more specific to UK universities.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Manus’s own evaluation scored ClearHead 82/100 and called it “demo‑ready as a strong MVP." Was able to demonstrate that a confused student goes from “I don’t know who to contact” to who to contact, why, exactly what to say, and when to check in again though rigoruosu agentic testing

What we learned

How to design non‑diagnostic AI that respects clinical boundaries but still feels genuinely helpful and how to use Manus both as a runtime agent and as a meta‑reviewer of a product against a real judging rubric

What's next for ClearHead

Built With

• cursor-sdk
• manus
• nextjs