Sooner Countdowns

The fastest and simplest way to create and track public and private countdown timers. Add any date, watch it count down in real-time, and track it to completion.

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Inspiration

We live a life of dates and deadlines, some more important than others. I've created calendar entries for my most important and interesting dates before, but that always misses the feeling of the passage of time and the urgency that can bring.

One thing I've always found brings the urgency back to dates and times is seeing it being presented as a countdown. In fact, Bolt's own website does this with its hackathon deadline too :)

And so I wondered: what if I could have a quick, clean and easy way to record and track the countdowns of the dates that are most important or interesting to me? Whether it's the birth of a new child or the kickoff to the World Cup, the next solar eclipse, or the premier of the next summer blockbuster movie, I wanted to simplify the process of tracking the times that mean most to me and I hope it helps others too!

What it does

A minimalist countdown timer app for tracking important dates in real-time. Create private countdowns with a personal profile, or share public countdowns that become global watchparties where anyone can follow along. Each countdown displays live updates in days, hours, minutes, and seconds with smooth animations. The interface prioritizes speed—creating countdowns takes under 15 seconds with zero fluff. Whether tracking personal milestones privately or joining worldwide anticipation for major events, it transforms waiting into a shared visual experience.

Users will also be able to ingest or embed countdown information onto external sources through a provided embed code they can export and eventually through an API. Meaning, they can programatically track countdowns easily or paste them onto their own websites or Notion pages.

How we built it

I built this myself using ChatGPT and Claude to initially talk through the user experience I wanted, drafting a PRD, and then feeding that PRD back into Bolt along with some screenshots of countdown experiences as reference. Through various iterations, I kept refining the experience, slowly building up towards integrating Supabase to support user registrations, and deploying to Netlify.

Challenges we ran into

My biggest challenge was in getting Supabase to work properly. It kept having session timeout issues and the data often stopped populating the app. Through various iterations and do-overs, I managed to get it to a place where it appears to be stable now. Apart from that, I had a surprisingly pleasant and straightforward experience with Bolt, where I'd say I spent 90% of time within the Bolt agent experience, and the remaining 10% on ChatGPT and Claude.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Honestly, I'm most proud that I was able to even get a functional app up and running! The app supports the ability to create user accounts and users are able to track public countdowns and create private countdowns as well. I was able to do this all myself in under 10 hours and I shared it with my immediate circle who have been trying it out and have been inspired to build their own products now too.

What we learned

My biggest learning was that these tools have come really far! I think more than ever, it's become clearer to me that technical know-how isn't the main bottleneck for creation: it's the ability to break down ideas into smaller, clearer, achievable chunks and the will to push through for its existence in the world.

I also learned that even the "simplest" of ideas has tons of hidden complexities that must be reckoned with intentionally. You can either expose them or actively choose to not do them as a trade-off.

What's next for Sooner Countdowns

I want to populate the app with at least a hundred if not countdowns that people can publicly see and track in order to drive more interest. I intend on sharing it wider and further and getting feedback as to how useful it's becoming for others before doing an eventual launch on Product Hunt once I've ironed out the branding a bit more.

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