From personal problem to product.

A self-initiated product, independently conceived and developed, in production.

Overview

Circuito is a personal productivity system that brings together, in a single product, fronts that usually live scattered across several apps: tasks, habits, finances, notes and calendar. It did not come from a briefing. It came from a need of my own. I lived the problem of jumping between tools, losing context and spending too much energy keeping the basics running.

Behind the interface there is a clear method: capture without friction, quickly clarify what is actionable and protect the day's focus. The challenge was turning that method into a product without exposing users to a heavy layer of jargon or configuration.

Context

People who take productivity seriously tend to collect tools: one for tasks, another for notes, a spreadsheet for finances, an app for habits. The invisible cost of that is friction. Capturing an idea means choosing an app, context gets lost between screens, and the best-known methods are usually too rigid or full of language that is hard to sustain day to day.

Since I was the first to suffer from this scenario, I had clarity about the problem and the freedom to build the solution my way, from method to interface and from infrastructure to the native app.

The problem

• Scattered tools fragment context and decision-making;
• Capturing something quickly still takes too many steps;
• Rigid or jargon-heavy methods wear people out before becoming habits;
• There is no single place connecting intention, organization and execution.

Project goals

• Reduce capture and organization friction as much as possible;
• Embed a solid method without exposing jargon to everyday users;
• Unify tasks, habits, finances, notes and calendar into one experience;
• Make clarifying a task a matter of seconds, not minutes;
• Deliver a fast, polished product with a native desktop presence.

My role

I built Circuito end to end, alone: conception, product strategy, interface design, front-end, back-end, infrastructure and the native Mac app. I used AI as a working partner throughout the entire process, accelerating design, code and review, which allowed me to deliver a complete product at a team's pace while keeping the coherence of a single decision-maker.

Technology and process

• Front-end in Astro with React islands and a custom design system;
• Back-end and infrastructure on Cloudflare Workers, D1, KV and R2;
• Native Mac app built with Tauri, with tray and automatic updates;
• AI used as copilot in design, implementation and review;
• Touches of intelligence in the product, such as auto-categorization and time estimates.

Discovery and process

The process started from real use. I was the first user and also the first source of friction. Instead of designing an abstract system, I mapped the methods that already worked for me, observed what got stuck in practice and kept cutting everything that added a step without creating value.

• Daily use as the main source of discovery and validation;
• Study of GTD, Eisenhower and MITs to extract what matters;
• Continuous interface iteration focused on clarity and speed;
• Decisions driven by real friction, not by a cosmetic roadmap.

Solution

The solution starts from a simple idea: a method only works if the friction is smaller than the urge to give up. That is why Circuito's central flow is capture raw, clarify on a single screen and focus on what matters now.

• Everything truly in one place, without scattering context across apps;
• Method embedded in the interface, with no setup or jargon required;
• Fast clarification, with the optional collapsed and the essential highlighted;
• The same visual logic applied to tasks, habits, finances, notes and calendar.

Results and impact

• A complete product delivered from scratch, solo, with five connected modules;
• Multi-tenant SaaS in production, with a fast, low-cost architecture;
• Native Mac app with tray and self-managed distribution;
• A productivity method turned into fast capture and clarification flows;
• A team's delivery pace achieved solo with AI in the process.

Learnings

Building Circuito reinforced for me that productivity is not about stacking features, but about removing friction. It also showed, in practice, that it is possible to run product, design and engineering end to end alone when AI comes in as a real lever for execution and review.

Live project

Circuito is in production and can be accessed directly through the link below.