DEV Community: Bijosilin Marisilin

FocusDesk: How a Small Frustration Turned Into My Own Desktop Productivity Assistant

Bijosilin Marisilin — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:41:48 +0000

Yesterday, while working on my software projects, I noticed a small but frustrating problem. I was constantly switching between my code editor, browser tabs, and Google Calendar just to check my schedule, deadlines, and upcoming tasks.

The problem was simple: I wanted my important information to stay visible while I worked. I wanted my Google Calendar events, important deadlines, daily focus tasks, and a clean dashboard on my secondary monitor.

It sounds like a simple requirement, but finding the right tool was harder than expected.

Before building anything, I explored different desktop widgets and productivity tools, including both free and paid options. However, most solutions did not match my workflow. Some had limited Google Calendar integration, some locked useful features behind paid plans, and others included too many unnecessary widgets that created more distraction than productivity.

I did not need another dashboard showing everything. I needed something focused. Something built around the way I work.

That is when I decided:

Why not build my own?

Introducing FocusDesk 🚀

FocusDesk is my custom desktop productivity assistant built completely from scratch.

The goal was simple: create a lightweight desktop dashboard that helps me stay focused while keeping my important information visible. Instead of changing my workflow to fit existing tools, I wanted to create a tool that fits my workflow.

Building FocusDesk was not only about writing code. It was about solving a real problem and overcoming different technical challenges.

The first challenge was creating a desktop widget experience. I needed a widget that could stay visible while working, run independently from browser tabs, work smoothly on a secondary monitor, and provide a clean, distraction-free experience.

The second major challenge was Google Calendar integration.

The goal was to automatically display upcoming events, important deadlines, and scheduled tasks directly inside my custom desktop interface. Connecting calendar information with a desktop widget required testing, debugging, and improving the way data was fetched and displayed.

After several iterations, the calendar information started appearing directly inside my widget. Seeing my own schedule displayed inside something I created was a great feeling because it transformed an idea into a working solution.

Currently, FocusDesk includes a custom desktop widget interface, Google Calendar integration, automatic event and deadline display, secondary monitor support, a focus timer, CPU and memory monitoring, and a minimal productivity-focused design.

For example, my dashboard can display important deadlines such as CIS047/CIS017 submissions, along with my daily schedule and upcoming tasks, without needing to open multiple applications.

This project reminded me that some of the best software ideas come from personal problems. A small frustration became an opportunity to learn and improve my skills in desktop application development, API integration, UI design, problem-solving, and debugging real-world issues.

The biggest lesson I learned is that sometimes the best tools are created because existing tools do not solve the exact problem you have.

FocusDesk is still evolving. Some future improvements I want to add include AI-powered daily planning, smart task prioritization based on deadlines, voice commands, more customizable widgets and themes, advanced calendar features, and cross-platform support.

Software development is not always about building the next big platform. Sometimes, it starts with a simple question:

"Why doesn't a tool exist exactly the way I need it?"

That question was enough to start FocusDesk.

A small problem became a project.

A project became a learning experience.

And the journey continues. 🚀

GitHub Took Opus From Students. Now I’m Writing Code Manually.

Bijosilin Marisilin — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 18:09:08 +0000

A student’s story of watching the best AI tools disappear, one update at a time.

I am writing code manually now.

Not because I want to. Not because I think it builds character or makes me a better developer. Because GitHub took away every model that was actually useful, left me with $2.00 worth of credits that disappear after four messages, and somewhere along the way “free Copilot for students” became a joke.

Let me tell you exactly how we got here.

When it was good, it was really good
I am a final year software engineering student. I have been using GitHub Copilot through the Student Developer Pack for a while now.

And for a while, it genuinely felt like a superpower.

I could open VS Code, pick Claude Opus, and work through problems that would have taken me hours to untangle alone. Complex algorithms. Unfamiliar codebases. Architecture decisions I had never made before. Opus did not just give me answers — it explained the reasoning, walked me through the thinking, helped me actually understand what I was building.

That is what learning with good AI feels like. Not autocomplete. Not a shortcut. A thinking partner.

Twenty, twenty-five interactions a day. No limits. No credit bars slowly draining. Just me and the model, building things.

Chapter 1: They took Opus. Then Sonnet. Then left us Haiku.
On March 12, 2026, GitHub sent out an announcement.

New packaging for students. Copilot Student Plan. Nothing changes for you, your access continues, no action needed.

Except it did change. Buried in the middle of the post:

Claude Opus — removed from the student plan. Claude Sonnet — removed. GPT-5.4 — removed. GPT-5.3-Codex — removed.

What was left for students to pick?

Claude 4.5 Haiku.

Haiku is the cheapest, smallest, fastest model in the Claude family. Anthropic built it for quick, simple tasks where speed matters more than depth. It costs $1 per million input tokens. Opus costs $5. That price gap exists because the capability gap is real.

Haiku gives you something. But it is not Opus. Anyone who has used both for real work knows immediately.

GitHub said they made this change “to keep Copilot free and accessible for millions of students around the world.”

I get it. Running Opus for nearly two million students every day costs serious money. I am not saying GitHub is lying.

But when the Student Developer Pack marketed itself as giving students access to the same tools professionals use — and then the first major change was removing the best models and leaving the cheapest one — that promise quietly died. Most students just did not notice yet.

Chapter 2: Then came the limits
After the model cuts, weekly and session token caps appeared.

GitHub said most students would never hit them. Some of us did anyway — during exam week, hackathon nights, or any session where you were deep in a problem and firing question after question.

Mid-thought, Copilot would just stop. Rate limited. Come back tomorrow.

After that came the 300 monthly premium request cap. Every chat message counted. 300 sounds generous until you realize a serious work session can burn 20 to 30 in one sitting. You start checking the counter. You start wondering if this question is worth a request or if you should just figure it out yourself.

I caught myself doing that. Rationing questions. Deciding some things were not worth asking.

That is a strange feeling when the whole point of the tool is to help you learn.

Chapter 3: June 1st — The last straw
On June 1st, 2026, GitHub switched to GitHub AI Credits.
Students now get 200 credits per month.

That is $2.00. Total. For the whole month.

Every single token costs credits now. Your message in. The response out. The context the model holds in memory. All of it drawing down from your 200 credit pool. And when the credits run out, there is no fallback model anymore. Copilot just stops.

Students opened VS Code on June 1st and within minutes some of them had nothing left.

One student posted on the GitHub forums: their entire monthly allowance was gone after 4 to 5 chat messages. The same student had been making 20 to 25 requests every single day for months before this. On June 1st, a few messages. Gone.

I read that post and thought — yeah. That tracks completely.

The full picture
If you lay out the whole journey:

We started with Opus, Sonnet, and frontier models. Real tools. Real access.

Then Opus was removed. Then Sonnet. Haiku was left behind and called free access.

Then weekly token limits. Then a monthly request cap. Then the cap was replaced with $2.00 of credits that four chat messages can erase.

Each step was announced as a small necessary adjustment. Each one framed as protecting free access for students. Each one made the tool a little less useful than the month before.

And here I am at the end of that road.

Writing code manually.

What makes me actually angry
I want to be honest about this part.

It is not losing the tool that gets to me the most. Developers survived for decades without AI assistants. I can figure things out the slow way. That is fine.

What gets to me is the framing that never changed.

The Student Developer Pack still lists Copilot as a headline benefit. GitHub still says they are committed to supporting the next generation of developers. The marketing still sounds like the promise from two years ago.

But $2.00 a month that runs out in four messages is not free access. It is the ghost of free access. The name of a benefit without the benefit itself.

And the students who feel this the most are not the ones who can casually subscribe to Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus. Those students already had alternatives. The students who genuinely depended on the Student Pack were the ones for whom $20 a month for an AI subscription is not a small decision. Students from countries where that is real money. Students without a credit card. Students who saw this as their one realistic shot at the same tools everyone else gets to use.

Those students lost the most. And every announcement was wrapped in language about global access and supporting the next generation.

I am just a student
I do not have a fix for this. I am not going to pretend I do.

I am finishing my degree, building projects, trying to learn as much as I can before I graduate. I do not have an expense account or a company paying for my tools. I have a laptop, a GitHub account, and 200 credits that reset at the start of each month and disappear before I have done anything meaningful with them.

So I am writing code manually now.

Thinking through problems myself. Reading documentation the long way. Debugging line by line without a thinking partner to bounce ideas off.

Maybe that is fine. Maybe that is even good sometimes.

But I remember what it felt like to work with Opus. To actually have a tool that met you where you were and helped you think harder, not just type less.

That feeling is gone now.

And I just think someone should say that out loud.

If you are a student going through the same thing — drop a comment. I want to know I am not the only one sitting here writing for loops by hand in 2026.