Inspiration
With a couple of our team members working full time, having families, and also being students, we find ourselves being stretched quite thin but still wanting to participate. Something that one of our members mentioned is that journaling really helps. Therefore we wanted to create an app that lets users just get everything off their brain whatever it may be, and let it be sent to the void and let it get it off the users chest.
What it does
We wanted to help encourage focusing by tracking computer activity, cognitive load through hardware (hardware restrictions), to help groudn the user as much as possible. As in the middle of being in an anxious state can be quite paralyizing, scary and lonlely. This app is meant to help ground users quickly.
How we built it
Architecture: Electron + React + Flask, packaged as a desktop app.
Frontend: React 18, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS, Radix UI, Zustand. Runs inside Electron with HMR. Backend: Flask API (heart rate, journal, session summaries). Packaged with PyInstaller as a standalone binary. Database: SQLite (local, no cloud). AI/LLM: OpenRouter with Claude 3.5, with static fallbacks when the model isn’t used. Controller: Python + Tkinter, sends simulated heart rate over HTTP. Extensions: Chrome extension (Manifest V3) for tab tracking. Build: npm run build → PyInstaller (backend) + Vite (frontend) + electron-builder (macOS/Windows/Linux). API: REST endpoints for heart rate, journal entries, session summaries, health checks. Frontend proxies /api to the local Flask backend (port 39762).
Challenges we ran into
Challenges we ran into were the integrations. Our team was consistently was working on different ends and wanted to achieve a ton with this project and wanted, to make sure that we had a working product by the end of this. Although it is rough around the edges. We got a working project.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We wanted to get a complete end to end project and integrate our puppies. One thing we love is our dogs and being able to decompress with them each night. This was an instance where we wanted to make them the mascot of our application.
What we learned
This was the first time using Cursor much of the team, as well as using this powerful tool alongside the use of new tech stacks such as electron that allows us to not only run app's in the background but also integrate with the users activity as well.
What's next for Restore
Ideally we would be able to create use Apple watch, or other Heart rate monitoring devices that would connect directly to manage cognitive load. Therefore we can have more interactivity.
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