As a software engineer, I’ve always thought of building something on my own.

But in the early years, everything felt messy. I’d jot down ideas here and there—most of them ended up abandoned.

Why? I think of 2 reasons

• I made things too complicated with tech problems
• I wasn’t thinking like a user

After 5 years of working, some shifts happened:

• I worked on enterprise systems → had to follow big architecture rules, spent most of my time researching tech & best practices
• I worked at a small startup → had to think more about business logic, quick feature delivery, and how to easily change or even remove stuff
• GenAI helps code faster
• GenAI also pushed this “build in public” trend → I got FOMO, joined some communities → learned not just tech but how ideas actually form

The problem

• I subbed to a bunch of stuff: chatGPT Plus, Cursor, domains, etc.
• Monthly/yearly charges, sometimes I forgot and didn’t prep my VISA balance
• Sometimes I got surprise charges when my budget was tight
• Sometimes I missed payments and had to go back into settings to re-subscribe manually

My solution

→ build a web app to track all recurring stuff: gym, rent, subscriptions

→ be able to add/manage them

→ get notified before due dates

→ kind of like a smart reminder

why a web app?

’cause I’m a web dev lol. will make a mobile version too—to learn more.

while building it, couldn’t ignore daily expense tracking either. so I added that in.

also: when I mark a recurring item as paid → it auto logs a daily paid record for that date.

What I’ve done so far

1. used ChatGPT to brainstorm and prioritise
2. checked other apps (iPhone’s Reminder app UI is 👌 simple & clean)
3. tested some GPT prompts to see if it could help (FOMO again)
4. found a colour palette, sketched some quick UI with help from GPT I’m absolutely not even an amateur designer, just decide where the boxes are on my app. The result might far different than this design
5. ran some early validation with GPT
6. started building (with Cursor) and sharing the journey on Facebook + Threads

gonna keep building, sharing.

let’s see what happens.