I built a productivity app in 2 days as a solo founder — here's what I learned
Got frustrated with todo apps that make you do all the organizing yourself. So I built Focus Today — you brain dump everything, AI sorts it into priorities and tracks your time.
Launched this week. Currently at 0 paying users but getting first feedback.
Tech stack:
Python + Flask, Claude API for AI, PostgreSQL, deployed on Render. No React — just vanilla JS and Jinja2 templates. Kept it simple on purpose.
What I'd do differently:
Skip the fancy setup and ship even faster. The hardest part wasn't the code, it was just starting.
Live at: https://joinfocustoday.com/
Anyone else building solo? Would love to connect.
hey Sarah, congrats on shipping Focus Today! curious — what's been the toughest part since launch, and roughly how much time a week does it eat up? also curious if you're currently paying for anything to help with it, or if it's mostly diy/free tools right now.
The 3 stack rewrites part hit hard. I just shipped my first Android security app today after 1+ year of weekends — went through 3 architecture rewrites of the DNS resolver alone before it was fast enough not to slow down browsing. Solo dev work is 80% throwing away what doesn't work. Congrats on getting Stripe transactions in — that first paying customer signal is huge.
Brain dump first, organize later is the right instinct. Most todo apps make you do too much setup before anything feels real, so the thought dies in the gap. DictaFlow helps in that same gap, when you want to capture the raw idea fast, before any sorting or cleanup starts. The cleaner the capture step, the more likely you are to actually use the rest of the workflow.
Hey Sarah congrats to shipping fast . I know your frustration the hardest part was starting is so real -I building IELTS Master solo from mongolia with broken wrist and 0$ and the first week was i just fighting agains my self to commit . One thing what finally pushed me through was talking to one real user who said "I've never seen anything like this in Mongolian before." That was it. One sentence from one person kept me going for months.
You're already past the hardest part — you shipped. Everything from here is just iteration. Keep going Sarah, would love to follow your journey. 🙌