Moody
A calmer way to notice how you feel
A self-initiated mood-tracking app I designed and built on my own, sketching in Figma and deploying a real, working web app with Claude, GitHub, and Supabase.
Solo
Designer, builder, and deployer
0→1
Sketch to working app
Live
Built & deployed a real web app
4 tools
Figma · Claude · GitHub · Supabase
This one’s real. Try it right here.
Moody is running live, the same web app I designed, built, and deployed solo with Figma, Claude, GitHub, and Supabase. Poke around the check-in, the history view, the whole thing.
Fig. 03, Moody on desktop
Fig. 04, on mobile
the real appI wanted to take something all the way to deployed
After years of handing off designs for other people to build, I wanted to feel the whole loop again, from a sketch in a notebook to a working app I could actually open on my phone. Moody is that project: a small, calm mood-tracking app I designed and built entirely on my own.
It’s a personal wellbeing tool, not a clinical or medical product. The goal was modest and human: make it easy to notice how you’re feeling, without the app turning it into homework or judgment.
- Self-initiated, my product, my call on every decision
- A way to keep my hands dirty with real building, not just specs
- Deliberately scoped small so it could actually go live
Most mood apps ask too much and moralize too often
I’d tried the existing apps. The good ones were clinical; the popular ones gamified your feelings into streaks and badges until logging a bad day felt like losing. Both made the same mistake: they treated a fragile, private moment like a data-entry task.
So I framed the design problem narrowly: capture a feeling in a few seconds, in a way that feels calm and non-judgmental, and make the patterns gently visible over time. Nothing more until that core felt right.
“The hardest part of a mood tracker isn’t the chart. It’s designing the five seconds where someone tells the truth about how they feel.”
One person, real software, emotional data
Working solo on nights and weekends shaped everything, and so did the fact that this is real software holding genuinely personal information.
- Team of one: every hour spent building wasn’t spent designing, and vice versa
- Real backend: Supabase for auth and storage, not a throwaway prototype
- Privacy: emotional data deserves a careful, minimal-by-default approach
- Scope discipline: get a calm v1 live before adding anything clever
Design and build in the same week, on purpose
I sketched the core interaction by hand, then designed it in Figma until the daily check-in felt like a breath rather than a form. From there I built it for real, using Claude as a pair to move from design to working React and Supabase faster than I ever could alone, and GitHub to keep it honest.
Designing and building in the same tight loop changed the work. When you have to implement your own ideas, you stop drawing things that feel nice and can’t exist. The design got simpler every time it hit real code.
- Hand sketch → Figma → working app, in days not months
- Claude as a build partner; I stayed the designer and decision-maker
- Supabase for auth + data; GitHub for version control
- Every round-trip through real code made the UI simpler
A team of one, plus AI, and I’m honest about which is which
There was no team, so I’ll be precise about the help. I made every product and design decision; Claude accelerated the parts that usually slow a designer down, scaffolding components, wiring up Supabase, untangling bugs at 11pm. It’s the difference between being able to build and deploy the real thing and only being able to spec it.
That’s the part I’m most excited to bring to a team: I can now prototype in real, working software, not just pictures of software. It makes me a faster, more grounded collaborator with engineers.
“AI didn’t design Moody. It collapsed the distance between the idea and a thing I could actually hold.”
A real app I use, and a new way of working
The tangible outcome is a working v1 I actually open: a calm daily check-in, a quiet history of how things have been trending, and none of the streak-shaming. But the bigger outcome is what it did to my practice.
I came out of it a designer who can take an idea all the way to a deployed, working web app. That changes the kinds of conversations I can have with engineering, and the kinds of bets a team can let me make.
- Built and deployed a working, private mood-tracking web app I use myself
- Proved I can design and build, not just hand off
- A repeatable solo loop: sketch → Figma → Claude + Supabase → deploy
- Ongoing, I keep iterating as I learn what helps
What I’d carry forward
Designs get honest the moment you have to build them. Half of what looked elegant in Figma collapsed in real code, and the app was better for it. I’ll never fully trust a flow again until I’ve felt it run.
And AI is a genuine force multiplier for a designer who knows what they want. It didn’t replace the judgment; it removed the friction between having an idea and seeing if it was any good.
Currently open to new roles
Let’s make somethingclear.
Senior, Staff, Lead, or Design Manager, if you’re untangling something complicated and want a designer who thinks in systems, I’d love to hear about it.