Project

Daycup

A daily planner that tells you whether your day fits.

Client: Personal project
Started: September 2026
Status: In development, with a browser beta
My role: Founder. From idea to beta, with AI as my copilot.
Disciplines: Naming, visual identity, UI design, app and landing page development
Links: Web ↗ App ↗

Daycup is an app that helps you manage your free hours. You add your commitments with a buffer for the unexpected, and you can clearly see how much time you have left and what fits in it. And if you can’t get to everything, that’s fine: whatever doesn’t fit moves to the next day.

The challenge

I noticed how easily free hours, after or between our obligations, ended up as wasted time: scrolling on the phone or watching a series. Organizing everything we want to do in our heads, without writing it down anywhere, is really hard.

It’s not that the existing apps didn’t work, but they all let you add unlimited tasks. When we’re motivated we plan to do lots of things, but we tend to overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in a year. What was missing was an app with a limit, where not finishing everything didn’t feel like a punishment.

At first it was going to be a portfolio piece: something tangible to show how I execute ideas and how I use AI as a copilot. But I saw it had a real use, and it kept growing until I started thinking about launching it.

The approach

The core idea is a cup: like a cup, we have a limited capacity for a day’s tasks, especially in our free time. If you go over, it spills, and whatever’s left over moves to the next day, no problem. It was also a challenge to represent an app with something as everyday as a cup.

I decided the app wouldn’t be about demanding productivity: it wants to boost productivity, but not punish anyone for not getting everything done, the way a drill sergeant would.

I started with the problem it had to solve; then came the cup metaphor, and then the name. With those three pieces, building the identity and the project step by step was simple.

Process

Today’s version didn’t come out on the first try. The first idea was to plan by the hour: suggesting what time to do each task, like a calendar. I dropped it because the problem isn’t when, but how much. Daycup switched to measuring capacity only.

For the cup I drew three directions on a tablet: stoneware, ink and glaze. I chose stoneware, because its handmade finish conveyed the calm I was after.

In version 1, each task was a layer with its name inside the cup, but the titles got cut off by the curve. When I tested it with a few people, they all preferred the list separate and the cup only as a visualization.

The overflow changed along the way too. First a red block over the cup, then red streaks down the side. It looked like blood, so now coffee spills and the red stays only in the warning text.

The solution

Naming

I started with Spanish names about limits: Margen, Aforo, Justo, Cupo. But I wanted an English name, short and able to work outside Spain. Headroom was perfect, but there was already a startup with an almost identical app; Sparetime, Leeway and Sparetask were taken too. Daycup won because it doesn’t describe the product: it’s the metaphor. “Day” is what you plan and “cup” is its limit: a cup has a fixed size and, if you go over, it overflows. The name already explains how the app works.

Before deciding, I checked the WIPO trademark database (there was only an expired Australian pharmaceutical brand) and registered daycup.app.

Identity

Most productivity apps look alike: clean geometry, blues, check icons. Daycup doesn’t promise more productivity, it promises calm, and I wanted that to show. That’s why I drew the cup by hand on a tablet, with an irregular stroke and a handmade ceramic finish: it has to feel like something from home, not a tool.

The palette comes from the coffee itself: cream paper for the background, ink for the text and four coffee tones for the layers. Red only appears when something doesn’t fit; it’s the brand’s signature. For headlines and figures I chose Gloock, a serif with character and less overused than other display faces; for the interface, Manrope, legible and neutral.

The slogan came from the ice. I ruled out sugar because the tasks are already the coffee; ice cools things down, and that’s where “Keep your day cool” came from.

Overflow

When tasks go over your free time, the cup fills to the brim and the excess spills: coffee running down the side and forming a puddle on the saucer, the exact size of the overflow. At the same time, the number in the header turns red, the task that doesn’t fit moves to a “Doesn't fit today” block with two ways out, “Move to tomorrow” or “Make room”, and you can’t close the day until you resolve it. When you do, the coffee recedes, the puddle dries up and the level drops.

From that discarded idea I learned that the metaphor has to hold up to the end: a cup spills coffee, not alarms. Red on the liquid read as blood; in the text, it reads as a warning.

App and landing page

I built Daycup with Vite and plain JavaScript, no frameworks, GSAP for animation and IndexedDB to store data on the device, with Claude Code as my copilot. I chose a PWA because a single codebase installs on your phone, works offline and needs no app stores or accounts: it fits the idea that your days never leave your device, and it let me launch fast.

The hardest part was the cup. The liquid had to move naturally and follow the drawing’s perspective while staying exact: each layer matches exactly how long its task takes. I solved it with an elliptical surface and a wave that settles without changing the real level.

The landing page speaks to the user, not the recruiter: it shows the problem and how the cup fills up and overflows as you scroll.

Result

Daycup is still in development. I haven’t presented it publicly yet: for now I use it myself every day to catch bugs and polish the experience. The only outside feedback so far came from testing the first version with a few people, and it’s what led me to separate the list from the cup.

The app, the landing page, the Spanish and English versions and the feedback form are already finished, in beta. Still in progress: fixing what I find in daily use and preparing the launch.

What I learned

If I started today, I’d show the product to other people much sooner. Version 1 took me weeks, and a handful of tests were enough to see that the list had to be separate from the cup. I’d also set a launch date earlier: it’s easy to keep polishing forever.

For the next project I’m taking away a method: every change on its own branch, tested on a real phone before merging it, and every decision written down with the reasoning behind it. And an idea: AI speeds things up enormously, but the judgment of what to build is still mine.