RocketTime

Time is money. RocketTime turns every minute into currency you can track, spend, and grow - helping you build time wealth, not time debt.

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Inspiration

We track every dollar — budgeting, investing, and saving — yet our most valuable asset, time, often slips away unnoticed. We wanted to build a system that helps people see their time the same way they see their money.

That vision became RocketTime — a time management platform that treats minutes like money, helping users invest in productivity, spend on necessities, and cut losses on distractions.

“The richest people aren’t those who have the most money — but those who master their time.”

What it does

RocketTime helps people treat time like money. It turns daily activities into “transactions” — you earn coins for productive work, spend them on necessary tasks, and lose them on distractions.

The app visualizes your time as a financial statement, showing where your hours go, your “time balance,” and your productivity return on investment (ROI).

An integrated AI Coach powered by Google Gemini analyzes habits, detects time-wasting “subscriptions,” and gives personalized advice on how to invest your hours better. Users can set goals, connect Google Calendar, and track progress through a gamified dashboard that rewards consistency and focus.

How we built it

Frontend: React and TailwindCSS for a clean, dynamic dashboard.

Backend: Node.js, Express, and MySQL for data persistence and REST APIs.

AI Layer: Google Generative AI (Gemini) for natural-language message parsing and personalized advice.

Integrations: Google Calendar API for event creation and synchronization.

Gamification: A coin-based time economy where users earn, spend, and lose coins based on activity quality.

We modeled time like a financial ledger, turning each action into a transaction:

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into were keeping the database in sync across changes, schema drift like missing columns caused breakages during updates. We also battled CORS and routing between the React frontend on port 3000 and the Node/Express backend on 5000. Integrating Gemini’s JSON-schema outputs with MySQL was tricky, mapping nested JSON to stable SQL types without losing fidelity. Environment differences across macOS and Windows teammates led to path, line-ending, and tooling inconsistencies. We had to ensure AI-generated recommendations actually aligned with real user data so feedback was accurate and actionable. And tying Google Authentication end-to-end was nontrivial: we needed secure access to our authentication table in MySQL, consistent session/token handling, and clean wiring from backend APIs through the frontend so sign-in state and calendar-connected tasks/events stayed in sync.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a fully functional, cross-platform time management app in less than 36 hours.

Created an AI-powered assistant that understands human goals and converts them into structured data.

Integrated Google Calendar and real-time goal tracking with a gamified coin-based economy.

Solved major cross-OS and database issues collaboratively under hackathon pressure.

Turned a simple productivity concept into an emotionally resonant product that motivates users to see time as real wealth.

What we learned

On this project we learned how to build and use a MySQL backend end-to-end—designing schemas, writing queries, and safely updating records from user input with validation and prepared statements. We tied that data layer into Google authentication by storing user profiles/sessions in the database and using it to manage sign-ins securely. We also integrated tasks and events with Google Calendar, mapping our task model to calendar events, handling create/update/delete syncs, and dealing with time zones and recurring events. Along the way we learned practical hygiene like migrations, error handling, and rate-limit retries—so the app stays reliable as users interact in real time. How to use Google’s genAI using Gemini to process natural language, classify user intents, make events on google calendar and generate actionable recommendations.

What's next for RocketTime

  • Build time-to-value analytics that show users how “profitable” their habits are.

  • AI Agent decision making for your personal tasks on your events depending on your long term goals

  • Add integrations with Apple Screen Time and Android Digital Wellbeing.

  • Introduce social leaderboards to compare “time wealth” and encourage positive habits.

  • Release a mobile companion app for on-the-go tracking and push-based AI insights.

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