PRform

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Inspiration

Most world records are broken at 4:00 PM. That's not a coincidence---it's circadian science. Your body's power, endurance, and reaction time naturally peak in the late afternoon, driven by your internal clock.

Alfonso Gonzalez-Cano is a track and field athlete at Phillips Academy Andover. Every season, he faces the same frustration: his training is dialed in, but he never really knows how much sleep he needs to perform his best, and actually getting that sleep when it matters most is a different challenge entirely.

Haoyu Zhang is a competitive swimmer at Phillips Academy. Most of his meets are in the morning, yet he performs best in the afternoon. That gap made us wonder: could circadian science and sleep give athletes the edge that separates a PR from a near-miss?

Christian Estrada is a sleep researcher and author at Penn and a developer at a circadian startup. He doesn't just know how much sleep matters for athletic performance, he knows how to systematically shift your circadian rhythm in the days before a competition so you peak at exactly the right moment.

We built PRform because no tool existed that brought those two things together for competitive runners.

What It Does

PRform is a performance optimizer for athletes. You input your weekly workout schedule and upcoming meet calendar, and the app works backward from race day, progressively shifting your circadian rhythm earlier over before a meet/competition so your reaction time, coordination, and endurance all peak at the starting gun. Beyond the schedule, PRform keeps you accountable with a live wind-down dashboard. Each evening it delivers a time-stamped behavioral countdown:

Dim your lights
Be active
Wind down
Time your meals

These aren't rigid checkboxes - they're circadian entrainment tools. Each one sends a behavioral signal that helps anchor and shift your internal clock. If you miss a step or don't hit your target bedtime, the dashboard adapts in real time, recalculating your plan based on where you actually are, not where you were supposed to be. The dashboard also gives you a daily peak performance window, not just on race day. Every day, you'll know the window when your reaction time, focus, and physical output are at their highest, so you can schedule your hardest workouts, drills, and mental prep around it.

The science behind PRform isn't limited to athletics. Circadian rhythm governs cognitive performance just as much as physical: mathematical reasoning, working memory, and reaction time all peak at predictable windows throughout the day. The same entrainment logic that helps a runner peak at race time could help a student peak for a standardized test, a final exam, or a high-stakes presentation.

PRform launches with runners and endurance athletes, but the underlying system is sport- and domain-agnostic.

How We Built It

calculateSleepPlan(user, workouts, meets): DailySleepPlan[]

PRform is a full-stack web app built with:

Next.js 14 (App Router) + TypeScript
Tailwind CSS for the design system
Prisma + SQLite for the database
NextAuth.js for authentication
Recharts for the sleep ramp visualizations
Framer Motion + Tailwind keyframes for animations

The sleep algorithm lives in a standalone lib/sleepAlgorithm.ts utility that ingests a user profile, workout history, and meet schedule and returns a 14-day array of daily sleep objects. The design system is modeled after Citius Mag: stark black and white, electric yellow-green accents, zero border radius, and JetBrains Mono for all data readouts.

Challenges We Ran Into

The hardest part was translating real sleep science into a deterministic algorithm that still felt intuitive to use. Circadian phase shifting is well documented in research, but converting phase response curves and melatonin onset data into concrete per-night bedtime adjustments required serious iteration.

We also had to make a deliberate product decision early: PRform cannot literally dim your screen or control your devices. The entire wind-down system had to be compelling enough as a behavioral coaching tool on its own. Getting the live dashboard to update phase status in real time without re-running the full algorithm on every tick also took careful state management.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

The sleep algorithm is grounded in real peer-reviewed science, with every adjustment tied back to a specific study:

The phase-shift logic cites Mah et al. (2011) and Lewy et al. (1998)
The blue light timing cites Brainard et al. (2001) and Chang et al. (2015)
The biological sex adjustment cites Burgard and Ailshire (2013)

We're also proud that the app genuinely looks and feels like a premium product, not a hackathon prototype. And the wind-down protocol is scientifically sound: an athlete who follows it consistently for a week before a meet would see measurable results of around 5-15%, which can be critical in races.

What We Learned

The gap between "this is scientifically accurate" and "this is something an athlete will actually use at 9pm after a hard workout" is enormous.

Product decisions that seem minor, like how many taps it takes to enable night mode, or whether the bedtime number is big enough to feel urgent, turn out to matter a lot. We also learned how powerful the circadian phase-shift concept is once you explain it clearly. Most athletes have never heard that consistent nightly behavioral cues alone can shift your sleep phase by 30 to 90 minutes in a single week.

What's Next for PRform

Push notifications via the Web Push API so wind-down cues arrive on your phone without opening the app
Wearable integrations with Garmin, Whoop, and Oura Ring to compare actual sleep against targets
Team dashboard so a cross country or track coach can monitor recovery scores across a full roster
AI-personalized wind-down adjustments based on how athletes respond to different training loads over time
Academic Optimizer that adjusts your circadian rhythm for important tests or exams. SAT, ACT, debate competitions, math competitions, etc.

The science scales to every sport. PRform grows from there.