Sprint Focus

Inspiration

As students and developers, we constantly struggle with maintaining focus in an age of endless distractions. We noticed that while many Pomodoro timer apps exist, they often lack integration with task management and meaningful analytics. We wanted to create a solution that not only helps users focus but also provides insights into their productivity patterns and helps them organize their work effectively. The goal was to build an all in one productivity tool that lives right in your browser, always accessible when you need it most.

What it does

SprintFocus is a comprehensive productivity Chrome extension that combines three essential tools into one seamless experience. At its core is a customizable Pomodoro timer with a beautiful visual progress ring that helps users maintain focus through timed work sessions. The integrated Kanban style task board allows users to organize their work with drag and drop functionality, custom tags, and the ability to link tasks directly to focus sessions. The analytics dashboard provides deep insights into productivity patterns with pie charts showing time distribution across different subjects, a GitHub style activity heatmap displaying daily focus patterns, and streak tracking to maintain motivation. Users can customize everything from timer durations to color themes, making it truly their own productivity companion.

How we built it

We built SprintFocus using modern web technologies to ensure a smooth and responsive user experience. The frontend is powered by React 19 with TypeScript for type safety and maintainable code. We used Tailwind CSS for styling, creating a beautiful and consistent design system with support for multiple themes and dark mode. For data visualization, we integrated Recharts to create interactive pie charts and custom activity heatmaps. The extension uses Chrome Extension Manifest V3, leveraging the side panel API for a native browser experience and the local storage API for data persistence. We used Vite as our build tool for fast development and optimized production builds. The drag and drop functionality was implemented using native HTML5 APIs, and we created custom React hooks for managing timer state and Chrome storage synchronization.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was managing state synchronization between the React components and Chrome's storage API. We needed to ensure that timer state, tasks, and analytics data remained consistent across browser sessions and component updates. Another significant hurdle was optimizing the animations and re renders. Initially, our pie charts would re render on every timer tick, causing performance issues. We solved this by implementing React.memo and carefully managing component dependencies. Creating a responsive and beautiful UI that works seamlessly in the Chrome side panel's constrained space required multiple iterations. We also faced challenges with the drag and drop implementation, particularly ensuring smooth animations and proper state updates when moving tasks between columns. Finally, implementing the activity heatmap with proper date handling and timezone considerations took careful planning and testing.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're incredibly proud of creating a polished, production ready extension that genuinely solves a real problem. The visual design exceeded our expectations, with smooth animations, beautiful color themes, and a professional interface that rivals commercial productivity apps. Successfully implementing complex features like the activity heatmap and real time analytics while maintaining excellent performance is something we're particularly proud of. The seamless integration of three major features (timer, tasks, analytics) into one cohesive experience demonstrates strong architectural planning. We're also proud of the attention to detail, from custom scrollbars to thoughtful loading states and error handling. The extension is fully functional with no external dependencies or API keys required, making it truly privacy focused and easy to use. Finally, creating comprehensive documentation and making the project open source shows our commitment to helping others learn and contribute.

What we learned

This project taught us valuable lessons about building browser extensions with modern web technologies. We gained deep experience with Chrome Extension Manifest V3 and its APIs, particularly the side panel and storage APIs. We learned how to optimize React applications for performance, especially when dealing with frequent updates like timer ticks. Managing complex state across multiple components and persistent storage taught us important patterns for state management. We improved our TypeScript skills by creating comprehensive type definitions for our data structures. Working with data visualization libraries like Recharts gave us insights into creating meaningful and beautiful charts. We also learned the importance of user experience design, spending significant time on animations, transitions, and responsive layouts. Perhaps most importantly, we learned how to scope a project appropriately for a hackathon, focusing on core features that deliver maximum value while maintaining code quality.

What's next for Sprint Focus

We have exciting plans to expand SprintFocus into an even more powerful productivity platform. First, we want to add cloud sync functionality so users can access their data across multiple devices while maintaining privacy through end to end encryption. We plan to implement more advanced analytics, including weekly and monthly reports, productivity trends over time, and AI powered insights that suggest optimal work patterns based on user data. Integration with popular task management tools like Todoist, Trello, and Notion would make SprintFocus a central hub for productivity. We're considering adding team features, allowing groups to share focus sessions and track collective productivity. Customizable notification sounds, more theme options, and the ability to create custom color schemes are on our roadmap. We also want to add goal setting features with milestone tracking and achievement badges to gamify productivity. Finally, we plan to publish SprintFocus to the Chrome Web Store and potentially expand to other browsers like Firefox and Edge, making it accessible to millions of users worldwide.