About the Project
Have you ever struggled with deadlines or just are always late, despite having schedules, calendars, and reminders? We did too. Which is why we had the idea to try a different strategy. PastDue is a web application that leverages fear and 'ptsd' to convince you to start doing your work early. Instead of reminding you when things are about to be due, it only reminds you when things have become past due. This may seem counterintuitive, but in fact it helps you do your work early and develop a healthy mental calendar without the reliance on a billion schedules.
Inspiration
This project was inspired by the constant struggle of staying on top of tasks, especially when life gets busy. We wanted to build something that could do more than just remind us—it would hold us accountable and keep us motivated, even if it meant roasting us a little when we fall behind. By integrating AI-generated reminders with humorous roasts, our goal was to make task management a little more fun (and a lot more memorable).
What We Learned
Through this project, we dove deep into several key areas: using OpenAI’s API for generating creative responses, setting up secure email notifications, and implementing a dynamic task management system in Python with Flask. The process taught us about efficient time-based scheduling and reinforced the importance of keeping user data secure and reliable in any app that involves task reminders.
How We Built It
We built the project using Python and Flask as the core framework, along with the OpenAI API to generate personalized roast messages based on task types. Firebase was integrated for secure user authentication and storing task data. Email notifications were configured using SMTP to ensure that users would be notified if they missed a task, complete with an AI-generated “motivational roast.”
Challenges We Faced
One of our biggest challenges was ensuring the timely and consistent delivery of reminders, even under high usage or when handling multiple users. Another major challenge was in handling humorous responses: generating AI roasts that were funny but appropriate, so as not to overdo it and accidentally demotivate users! Additionally, configuring the email setup was tricky as we navigated SMTP security requirements to make sure notifications were reliable without compromising security.
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