MindMargin

MindMargin's powerful and inclusive landing page that describes the
The dashboard retrieves health and schedule data, makes a clear stress forecast, and highlights the top factors driving today’s stress risk
MindMargin connects directly to Apple Health and accurately pulls live metrics like heart rate and activity.

MindMargin - personal stress intelligence system.

OVERVIEW: In a world where burnout is the norm, MindMargin gives students the ability to stay ahead of stress before it catches up with you.

MindMargin connects seamlessly with the apps already living on your iPhone (Calendar, Health, etc…) to gain a real-time understanding of your mental load and stress. It observes your packed schedule, monitors physiological signals like heart rate, tracks your movement, and listens when you tell it how you're feeling.

Every morning, MindMargin delivers a personalized daily plan. It tells you when to take a break, what to do in that break, and how to structure your day so you're performing at your best. MindMargin doesn't just track stress, it preemptively fights it.

FUNCTIONALITY: At the core of MindMargin is a hand-crafted stress evaluation function. A place we deliberately chose not to use AI. Rather than risk a model hallucinating a false sense of calm or unnecessary alarm, our evaluation logic is built directly on decades of peer-reviewed stress research. Deterministic, transparent, and trustworthy by design.

Sleep (weight = 2.86): sleep loss has been proven to proportionally increase anxiety. We negate sleep time since less sleep → more stress.

Heart Rate Variability (weight = 2.14): A lower Heart Rate Variability typically indicates more stress. We again negate this in the evaluate function.

Activity (weight = 1.66): Fitness and Activity can buffer psychological stress. We compare the user's stress to 8000 steps (the optimal threshold according to Tudor and Locke in 2004). Below optimal → higher score.

Resting HR (weight = 1.34): Higher heart rate above the population mean (68bpm) can indicate stress

Schedule (weight = 1.50): Based on Karasek demand-control model of occupational stress: Busy hours → cognitive demand Back to back blocks → lack of recovery Late night → circadian disruption

Check-in (weight = 0.50): Self reported stress (0-5 scale) The overall function normalizes this data onto a 0-10 scale based on their weights

HOW WE BUILT IT Mind Margin is a native Swift iOS app powered by a Supabase backend. We used Apple's HealthKit and EventKit APIs to pull real data directly from the apps users already rely on (sleep tracking, calendar events, and biometrics) with no manual entry required. That data flows into our custom stress evaluation pipeline, transforming raw health and schedule signals into a personalized, interactive stress relief experience.

CHALLENGES AND WHATS NEXT Our biggest challenges centered on data reliability and trust. Integrating live HealthKit and EventKit data, syncing it seamlessly with Supabase, and handling on-device permissions were all more complex than anticipated. A stress app that feels clunky or invasive defeats its own purpose, so we invested heavily in making the experience feel smooth, intuitive, and respectful of the user's privacy. We hope to deploy this app and help users live a more stress-free life.