That’s been bugging me for years. Not just the snooze thing, but the whole approach. Apps that give you basic recurring options or bury you in configuration screens. Sync that takes 30 seconds or only works within one ecosystem. “AI features” that are just chatbot wrappers. I kept waiting for someone to fix these problems. Nobody did.
Oakminder exists because no app handled these four things well at the same time.
The four frustrations
Snooze should work from the notification
Every app makes you open it to reschedule. That’s four steps when you’re busy. I wanted one tap from the lock screen.
Recurring reminders shouldn't break when you edit one
Other apps either give you basic repeat options or bury you in configuration. Editing one day shouldn’t erase the rest.
Sync should actually work across devices
Your reminders follow your account, not your hardware. Dismiss on one device, gone on all of them. Under a second.
Voice should do the work, not just suggest
Most “AI-powered” apps just wrap a chatbot. Say what you need and Oakminder creates the reminder. No copy-pasting.
Before Oakminder
I built web-based versions of the tools I wanted first. YouSoul is an AI-powered productivity app on Next.js that combines a calendar with a Kanban board. I built mini versions of Agendic calendar and Kanban tools on the web too, all trying to solve the same core problem: staying on top of what matters. Both apps were useful for getting organized on a laptop. But the real problem isn’t at your desk. It’s when you’re walking to a meeting or cooking dinner and a notification fires. Web tools taught me how to build things. But reminders need to live on your phone, where notifications actually happen. The idea had been building for years. I finally committed to building it. Oakminder is a personal project born from years of frustration with existing reminder apps.The web apps were good practice, but the real problem lives on your phone.
The philosophy
Simplify your life. Not by cramming in hundreds of features, but by making the ones that matter work better than anywhere else.
Every detail is intentional
Every detail is intentional
From how the scroll feels to how you snooze a notification, nothing is default. The snap scroll settles into a position that looks finished. The haptic feedback is tuned, not just turned on. The snooze wheel lets you pick 22 minutes or 91 minutes because your schedule doesn’t run on neat intervals.
Solve the full problem, not half
Solve the full problem, not half
Apple Reminders gives you a list. Google Calendar gives you a grid. Both are good, but neither solves the full problem. The Agenda Explorer combines both views. After years of switching between apps, I built the view I actually wanted. Read more
Action over suggestion
Action over suggestion
The voice agent doesn’t suggest. It does the work. Say “remind me to call the vet tomorrow at 3pm” and the reminder is created, scheduled, and ready. That’s what AI features should do. Read more
Measurement without guilt
Measurement without guilt
Analytics exist to give you a clear picture, not to guilt you into productivity. Feelings lie, data doesn’t. The numbers tell you how many reminders actually got done, not how many you missed. Read more
Minimalism where it matters
Minimalism where it matters
Categories are just a name and a color. I kept it minimal on purpose because all the real detail belongs on the reminder itself. No nested hierarchies, no tagging systems, no overhead. Read more
Freedom over lock-in
Freedom over lock-in
Mix and match platforms however you want. Your reminders follow your account, not your hardware. No ecosystem lock-in, no “works best with” asterisks. Read more
Depth over breadth
Depth over breadth
The goal isn’t 500 features to match bloated alternatives. It’s a completely different experience for reminders. Every feature on the roadmap, from context-aware scheduling to agentic pattern learning, fits the same principle: simplify your life, don’t add to the noise. If a feature doesn’t make reminders meaningfully better, it doesn’t ship.
What makes this different
I built Oakminder for myself first. I use it every day to manage my own reminders. If something annoys me, I fix it that week. It’s going to keep improving because the problems it solves are problems I still deal with daily. The problems it solves (the four-step snooze, the broken recurring, the ecosystem lock-in) aren’t unique to me. Students, parents, professionals, anyone whose phone buzzes at the wrong moment deals with the same friction. It’s also for anyone who’s tired of reminder apps that overcomplicate simple things. If you want something that actually simplifies your day instead of adding to the noise, that’s the whole point of this app. It’s built to get out of your way and let you focus on what matters. And as more people use it, their feedback will directly shape what gets built next.- What other apps do
- What Oakminder does
- Force you to open the app just to snooze
- Give you basic recurring options or overwhelming config screens
- Lock you into one platform’s ecosystem
- Wrap a chatbot and call it “AI-powered”
- Show you data without helping you act on it
Built with AI, designed with experience
I’ve been designing since 2009 and coding since 2016. I care deeply about building things that work well. I had React and React Native experience from AI-assisted projects before Oakminder, including helping someone prototype a React Native app. But this was my first time going all-in on building a native app from scratch. I chose Expo specifically and I’m glad I did. Native app development is genuinely complex: platform-specific notification rules, library restrictions, framework differences that only show up at runtime. Expo and RevenueCat simplified enormous parts of that process. But AI changed what’s possible for me on top of all that. My productivity, my learning speed, my ability to ship, all of it multiplied. Oakminder went from concept to a polished iOS app in three weeks because AI 10x’d what I could already do on my own. Claude Code is the main engineering agent behind Oakminder. I wrote a custom CLAUDE.md with hundreds of rules for this project: how to handle recurring reminders, notification categories, cross-device sync, the whole stack. Custom agent skills. Custom MCP integrations. The AI keeps up with how fast I want to move. The decisions about what to build and how it should feel? Those come from years of using and building productivity tools. AI didn’t decide what the snooze wheel should feel like. It didn’t decide that categories should be minimal. It didn’t know that editing one recurring reminder shouldn’t break the rest. AI gave me speed. Twenty years of building things gave me taste. The taste, the instincts, the attention to detail? That’s from years of caring about this stuff. And I think everyone should be exploring AI, because when you pair it with real experience and real passion, the results speak for themselves.AI 10x’d my productivity, my learning, and my ability to ship. The design experience behind Oakminder is what made sure that speed didn’t come at the cost of quality.
AI didn’t teach me how to build good software. It let me build it faster. That’s a difference worth understanding, and it’s why I think everyone should be using it.
What’s coming
iOS
Fully developed with complete features. Ready
App Store
Available on the App Store. Live
Web support
Browser access to your reminders. Coming Soon
- More voice features: handling edits, bulk operations, and natural follow-ups
- AI-powered analytics: not just what happened, but what you should do about it
- Context-aware scheduling: adjusting reminders based on your habits and patterns, like how walk-speed detection switches your music
- Agentic features: learning from how you use reminders and surfacing suggestions before you ask
- User-driven features: things I haven’t thought of yet, based on what people actually ask for
The core promise
Who built this
The full story, from MS Paint at age 3 to AI-assisted development.