ChoreMate

Calendar View
Pending VS All Chores

Inspiration The idea for ChoreMate was born out of genuine frustration. One of our teammates actually had to move out of their last house specifically because of bad roommates.

The issue wasn't that they were bad people; it was the lack of accountability The sink was always full, but "nobody put the dishes there." The trash was overflowing, but it "wasn't anyone's turn." We realized that awkward conversations notes and group chat arguments don't solve the problem, data does.

We wanted to build a solution that removed the ambiguity from household chores. We needed a system that offered clear assignments, recurring schedules, and, most importantly, proof of work.

What it does ChoreMate is a native iOS application that helps roommates track, assign, and verify household tasks. Shared Calendar: A visual dashboard of who needs to do what, and when. Smart Frequencies: Handles one-time, daily, weekly, or bi-weekly tasks automatically. Proof of Work: Users cannot simply check a box. The app utilizes the camera integration to require a photo of the completed task (e.g., a clean sink) before the status flips to "Completed." Roommate Profiles: Color-coded profiles make the UI scannable at a glance.

How we built it We built ChoreMate entirely in Swift, Xcode Playground, leveraging the power of SwiftUI for a modern, reactive user interface.

The Tech Stack SwiftUI: For the core interface, navigation, and state management. UIKit: We used UIViewRepresentable to bridge the native UICalendarView into our SwiftUI environment, allowing for a high-performance calendar experience.

Challenges we ran into The biggest technical hurdle was none of us knew Swift prior to this hackathon and we only had one working laptop that could run Swift... Despite this, we powered through and collaborated as a team to make sure that we all contributed, learned, had fun and slayed!

Technical wise, a specific challenge was the reload mechanism. When a user added a chore, the calendar dots wouldn't update immediately. We realized that updateUIView wasn't triggering a deep refresh of the calendar decorations. We solved this by manually calculating the date components for the entire visible month.

What we learned! User Psychology: We learned that an app isn't just about code; it's about social engineering. Adding the "Photo Proof" feature completely changes the user behaviour from lazy to accountable. And we learned Swift!

What's next for ChoreMate Backend Integration: Currently, we are using local state. We plan to integrate CloudKit or Firebase to allow real-time syncing across different devices. Gamification: Adding a leaderboard to show which roommate has completed the most chores effectively. Push Notifications: Reminding roommates 1 hour before a task is due.