Clutch

Turn your deadlines into a competition. AI rates your tasks, you race to beat the clock, and friends see who grinds hardest.

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Inspiration

We've all been there — staring at a to-do list that feels more like a guilt trip than a productivity tool. Traditional task managers treat every deadline the same, whether it's "buy milk" or "study for finals." We wanted something that actually understands how hard your tasks are and rewards you for grinding through the tough ones. The idea was simple: what if deadlines felt less like dread and more like a game you actually want to win?

What it does

Clutch is a gamified productivity platform (iOS app + web) where AI rates the difficulty of your tasks on a 1-10 scale based on the task itself, its category, deadline pressure, estimated time, and competition mode. You earn points calculated as:

You level up through tiers (Rookie → Grinder → Warrior → Elite → Legend → Mythic), compete on global and friends leaderboards, create groups with shareable 6-character codes, and race friends to point targets — all synced in real-time across mobile and web through Firebase.

A built-in cheat detection system flags suspicious completions (finishing a difficulty-8 task in 30 seconds isn't fooling anyone).

How we built it

  • iOS app: Swift/UIKit, fully programmatic (no storyboards), targeting iOS 26. Dark cyberpunk UI with neon cyan and purple accents matching the web design. REST API calls to Firebase Realtime Database — no SDK dependencies.
  • Web app: Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS with Firebase JS SDK. Mobile-first responsive design with glassmorphism, smooth animations, and the same dark theme.
  • AI difficulty rating: OpenAI GPT-4o-mini API with a structured prompt that weighs category, deadline, time frame, and competition mode. Local keyword-based fallback for offline use.
  • Backend: Firebase Realtime Database as the single source of truth for leaderboards (leaderboard/{userId}), friend relationships (friends/{userId}/list|incoming|outgoing), and group competitions (groups/{code}). Both platforms read and write the same paths.
  • Scoring engine: Identical PointsCalculator logic implemented in both Swift and JavaScript to ensure cross-platform consistency.

Challenges we ran into

  • Cross-platform data model alignment — The web app was built first with its own localStorage schema. Making the iOS app use the exact same Firebase paths, millisecond timestamps, and serialization format required a full model rewrite mid-development.
  • UIKit programmatic layout — Building a polished, animated UI without storyboards or SwiftUI meant hand-wiring every constraint. A scroll view bug crashed the Profile tab for a while due to conflicting constraint hierarchies.
  • Dark theme consistency — Matching the website's cyberpunk aesthetic (#06060c backgrounds, #00f5d4 neon accents) across UIKit components like UISegmentedControl and UIDatePicker required forcing dark mode and overriding nearly every system color.
  • Category button touch issues — An orphan UIStackView was silently sitting on top of the category buttons, intercepting all touch events. Took debugging the view hierarchy to find it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • True cross-platform sync — create a task on your phone, see it update on the website's leaderboard instantly
  • The AI difficulty rating genuinely adapts: "do laundry" in the chores category gets a 2, while "study for organic chemistry final" in exam prep with a 6-hour deadline gets an 8-9
  • The cheat detection actually catches people trying to game the system
  • A polished, cohesive dark UI across both platforms that looks like a real shipped product, not a hackathon prototype

What we learned

  • Firebase Realtime Database's REST API is powerful enough to skip the SDK entirely on iOS, keeping the app lightweight
  • Designing a scoring system that feels fair requires balancing multiple variables — pure difficulty isn't enough without time pressure and urgency
  • AI-powered features need graceful fallbacks; the local keyword estimator handles offline mode seamlessly
  • Programmatic UIKit is verbose but gives you pixel-perfect control over animations that SwiftUI still struggles with

What's next for Clutch

  • Push notifications for deadline reminders and friend challenges
  • Streak protection mechanics (freeze days, bonus multipliers for long streaks)
  • Group races with live updates using Firebase real-time listeners on iOS
  • Task templates for recurring tasks (weekly meal prep, daily gym sessions)
  • Apple Watch companion for quick task completion on the go
  • AI task breakdown — have GPT split a big project into subtasks with individual difficulty ratings
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