Floof - A tiny study buddy for your very questionable academic decisions.

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend

I made Floof for a friend, because she kept having the same problem: too many things to do, no idea where to start, and somehow making a schedule became another thing she had to procrastinate on.

And apparently telling her to “just make a schedule” is not actually a solution when her brain has already decided to open seventeen tabs and stare at all of them.

Floof is a small study and planning companion that tries to make getting things done feel a little less miserable.

It has tasks, projects, exams, assignments, goals, notes, a calendar, a focus timer, and a tiny mascot that sits there judging you very gently.

The idea was not to build another productivity dashboard that screams at you about your "daily efficiency."

I wanted something that felt more like a friend sitting beside you saying:

"okay. we have two hours. breathe. what actually needs to happen?"

And that is where Floof's AI comes in.

What I Built

Floof gives you one place to dump all the academic chaos that is usually scattered across notes, calendars, random screenshots, and the part of your brain that says “I'll remember this” and absolutely does not.

You can add tasks, projects, exams, assignments and goals, keep notes, check your calendar, and use the focus timer when you actually decide to start.

There is also Ask Floof, where you can tell it what is on your plate and how much time you have.

Instead of giving you some terrifying productivity lecture, Floof is meant to help turn that mess into something you can realistically deal with.

It can be as simple as:

I have 2 hours and 3 subjects. What should I do?

and Floof can help you figure out where to start.

The mascot is there because I wanted the app to have a personality.

Demo

Demo Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1arq6sKI3Hgd9Mi0PuD-x1DQxxExYllkM/view?usp=sharing

I also included screenshots in the repository because Floof is much easier to understand when you can actually see the little creature sitting there.

Code

GitHub: https://github.com/mehroofsaba/Floof

The repository contains the React frontend, Express backend, database setup, configuration, and the screenshots used for the project write-up.

I also made sure the API keys and local database stay out of the repository.

How I Built It

Floof is built with React and Vite on the frontend, with an Express/Node.js backend handling the application logic and data.

I used SQLite for the local application data and built the interface around a deliberately soft pastel visual system instead of the usual productivity-app grey-on-white situation.

The AI companion uses Gemma, Google's open-weight model, which is what makes the “Ask Floof” part of the app possible.

The fun part was actually getting the AI to feel like Floof instead of just dropping a generic chatbot into a pretty interface.

The responses need to feel like they belong to the same little world as the rest of the app.

That meant giving Floof a personality, keeping its advice practical, and making the interface around it feel like a companion rather than a support ticket.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

This was probably the part of the challenge that made the most sense for Floof.

I did not want the AI to just be a mysterious box that I send text to and get text back from.

Using an open-weight model like Gemma gives me much more room to experiment with how the model behaves, how it is integrated, and what kind of companion Floof can eventually become.

It also makes the project much more interesting to build on.

Floof could eventually have a local version, a different model, a more specialised study personality, or completely different ways of handling someone's data without having to redesign the entire application around one closed system.

For a personal tool, that flexibility matters.

Especially when the whole point is to build something for a real person rather than build another generic AI wrapper.

Prize Categories

Best Use of Gemma

And that's Floof.

It started with a very simple thought:

what if studying had a tiny creature attached to it?

So now there is a tiny creature attached to it.

And apparently the creature has opinions.