Girly cycle

A perimenopause companion for Gen X women — symptom tracking, doctor-ready reports, and pattern insights, so you're finally heard instead of dismissed.

Comment

Inspiration## Inspiration

Perimenopause is one of the most under-supported health transitions a woman goes through, and it's especially invisible for Gen X women in their mid-40s to mid-50s. Research shows 61% of women feel their doctors dismiss their symptoms, and a JAMA study found emotional and cognitive symptoms like brain fog and rage show up far more often in women's own words online than in their actual medical records — meaning doctors are literally documenting a different, narrower set of symptoms than what women are actually experiencing. We wanted to build something that closes that gap: an app that takes women seriously from day one, and gives them the tools to be taken seriously by their doctors too.

What it does

GirlyCycle is a perimenopause companion app that lets women:

  • Log symptoms daily, ordered by real-world frequency (fatigue, irritability, and poor sleep first — not just hot flashes)
  • See pattern insights, like correlations between poor sleep and brain fog
  • Generate a Doctor Dossier — a clean, exportable report built to actually get read and taken seriously in an appointment
  • Access an Atelier Membership for deeper insights and reports, with a 21-day free trial powered by RevenueCat
  • Preview a community space for shared validation and support (full peer circles coming next)

Daily symptom logging is free forever. We only gate the deeper insights and doctor reports — because the core habit of tracking your body shouldn't cost anything.

How we built it

  • Kotlin + Jetpack Compose for a native Android app with a warm, editorial, non-clinical design system
  • Room database for local, private symptom storage
  • MVVM architecture to keep logic clean and testable
  • RevenueCat powers our entire subscription and paywall system — offerings, purchase flow, entitlement checks, and restore purchases, all wired through a single EntitlementManager so premium features unlock the moment a purchase (or trial) is active
  • Built with the help of AI-assisted coding tools to move fast as a solo/student builder

Challenges we ran into

As a student building solo, the biggest challenges weren't the app logic — they were the build pipeline itself. We hit Gradle wrapper issues, network timeouts pulling dependencies, missing debug keystores, and Google Services config errors, all while racing the deadline. Debugging Android build tooling from scratch, without a pre-existing dev environment, ended up being one of the most valuable (and stressful) parts of the whole hackathon.

What we learned

Real research changes real product decisions. Reordering our symptom list by actual reported frequency, giving emotional symptoms equal visual weight, and building the Doctor Dossier around what doctors actually document (not what patients experience) all came directly from digging into real complaints on forums like Reddit's r/Menopause — not assumptions.

What's next

  • Full RevenueCat production setup with live Google Play products
  • Complete the peer community feature (currently a preview)
  • Localization for Asian markets, where perimenopause support and menopause-specific health apps remain especially underserved
  • Expand the correlation engine with more rule-based insights

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history