DeenCal

Inspiration

Many Muslims living in the West struggle with a disconnect between modern daily life and their core values. It’s easy to fall into unstructured free time, boredom, or unintentional habits, and often difficult to find productive, beneficial ways to spend time that align with our deen.

Most productivity tools treat time as something to optimize rather than something to be lived with intention. In Islam, our days are already anchored by prayer, community, and purpose — yet existing calendars rarely reflect this structure. We were inspired to build DeenCal to bridge that gap: a tool that helps Muslims organize their time without sidelining their faith, and that makes deen a natural part of everyday planning rather than an afterthought.

What it does

DeenCal is a prayer-aware calendar with a conversational assistant designed to help Muslims plan their day around faith, productivity, and community. Users can naturally speak to the assistant to schedule or reschedule events, discover nearby Islamic and community activities, and receive meaningful at-home deen recommendations when no external events are available. The calendar automatically accounts for daily prayers and Jumu‘ah, encouraging intentional and spiritually aligned scheduling throughout the week.

How we built it

We built DeenCal using a modern web stack focused on clarity, responsiveness, and thoughtful user experience. The frontend is built with Next.js and React, with Tailwind CSS used to create a calm, Islamic-inspired interface. We integrated the Eventbrite API to surface nearby Islamic and sports events, and implemented natural-language scheduling logic to allow users to manage their calendar through conversation. For accurate prayer times, we used the Aladhan Prayer Times API. Throughout development, we intentionally avoided overengineering and focused on decisions that aligned with the spiritual purpose of the product.

Challenges we ran into

One of our main challenges was balancing technical functionality with intentional design. Handling natural-language scheduling required careful attention to edge cases, such as interpreting relative dates and correctly confirming recommended times. Another challenge was ensuring DeenCal remained useful even when external event data was unavailable. Rather than relying solely on APIs, we had to rethink how the assistant could still guide users toward spiritually beneficial actions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of building a product that feels spiritually grounded rather than just technically impressive. DeenCal continues to support users even when no community events are available, offering meaningful faith-centered guidance instead of empty results. We’re also proud of the clean, calm UI and the conversational assistant that makes scheduling feel natural, intentional, and human.

What we learned

We learned that designing for faith-based use cases goes beyond adding religious features — it requires rethinking defaults, tone, and user experience from the ground up. We also gained hands-on experience with natural-language interfaces, managing scheduling edge cases, and collaborating effectively under tight hackathon constraints.

What's next for DeenCal

With more time, we would expand DeenCal with deeper personalization, such as adaptive spiritual goals, long-term habit insights, and stronger integrations with mosques and community organizations. We also envision seamless collaborative scheduling, where users can book meetings with others directly through the assistant while maintaining privacy and intentionality. Long-term, we aim for DeenCal to become a trusted, privacy-first daily companion that helps Muslims align their time with their values.

Built With

• css
• eslint
• eventbrite
• javascript
• react
• tailwind
• typescript