Last Friday

Inspiration A bank balance tells you what you have—not what you can afford. We built Broke by Friday to help students and first-paycheck earners cover essentials without constantly doing mental math. What it does Three screens turn financial uncertainty into action: Overview shows safe-to-spend money, Forecast reveals upcoming cash gaps, and Autopilot carries out fixes through a browser. How we built it We used Next.js, TypeScript, and Recharts for the frontend, with Python, FastAPI, and SQLite behind it. The engine detects recurring bills and runs 1,000 scenarios to estimate coverage. Playwright executes subscription pauses and savings transfers on local sandbox websites. What we learned Timing matters as much as balance. We also learned that financial automation becomes easier to trust when people can see the calculation, watch each action, and inspect the outcome. Challenges Our biggest challenges were keeping financial calculations deterministic, coordinating browser actions with account updates, and narrowing a broad idea into three clear features. Making the charts and execution flow readable on phones took several iterations. What’s next Connect real financial data, support more merchant workflows, and test whether the app helps students make better decisions between paychecks.

Built With

• css
• fastapi
• lucide-react
• next.js
• playwright
• python
• react
• recharts
• sqlite
• typescript