NudgeMe

The Problem

Every reminder app makes you click through three screens before you can save the thing. By the time you're done, you've forgotten what you wanted to remember. The design job wasn't a prettier form — it was making one sentence the entire input, and trusting the parser enough that the preview screen is the only correction surface a user ever needs.

The Decisions That Mattered

Natural-language input over a form. Chose a single sentence over the calendar-app pattern of date picker + time picker + repeat dropdown because the form is where reminders die. Tradeoff: the parser has to handle real human phrasing — slang, typos, "next tues" — and a visible preview step exists specifically so a misread can be fixed in one tap instead of a re-entry.

Save first, sign up after. Chose letting strangers type a reminder before creating an account over the standard auth-wall onboarding because the friction kills the demo. Tradeoff: anonymous draft storage and a quiet account merge on signup, but I get to watch real first-use behavior instead of post-signup behavior.

Block private data at the input layer. Chose pattern-matching for passwords, card numbers, and SSNs at parse time over a generic privacy disclaimer because users will type sensitive things into any free-text field eventually. Tradeoff: occasional false positives on legitimate strings, mitigated with a one-tap override.

What I Built

A one-input reminder flow: type the reminder the way you'd say it out loud, preview what the parser understood, edit anything that's off, then save. The same input supports one-time reminders, recurring schedules, browser notifications, email, SMS, and PWA install behavior without turning the first screen into a settings panel.

AI vs. Judgment

AI handled the LLM parser, the Supabase schema, the recurrence engine, the multi-channel dispatch, and the PWA install plumbing. What I wouldn't let it decide: when the parser is confident enough to skip the preview step. That's a trust call — get it wrong and silent misreads become missed reminders, which is the one failure mode the product can't survive.

What Didn't Work

First version auto-saved on parse with no preview. Sounded clean; produced silent misreads users only caught when the reminder didn't fire. Added the preview step back. Also tried push notifications without a PWA install — iOS Safari kills them. The "Add to Home Screen" step became a real onboarding moment, not a footnote.

Outcome

Live at nudgeme.rip. The product keeps the first-use loop focused on one sentence, then adds recurring reminders, browser pop-ups, email, text, and calendar sync only after the reminder is understood.