Grizzly Study Buddy
A simple, mobile-friendly study buddy that turns timed drills into relaxed, kid-friendly practice.
The spark
I watched my daughters studying timed math facts with paper flash cards, the same way I did 35 years ago. I first built a tiny app called MathWiz so they could practice anywhere without the dread of timed drills. That prototype grew into Grizzly Study Buddy—an expanded, friendlier companion for practicing core skills together.
What it is
- Short practice sessions that currently focus on core math facts, with room to expand into other subjects and mini-games.
- Pacing and feedback tuned for kids: clear progress, gentle prompts, and calm visuals instead of noisy gamification.
- Light streaks and progress markers that encourage consistency without piling on pressure.
- A space where my girls can "co-design" new ideas and games as we iterate together.
Stack
- Cursor + Cloud Code as pair programmers for scaffolding and refactors.
- GitHub for version control, with GitHub Actions running the CI/CD pipeline.
- Vercel for front-end hosting, behind a Cloudflare-managed domain.
- Supabase as the backend for data storage and auth.
What I learned
- Dialed in a reusable CI/CD flow: work in a fresh branch, review the diff, merge into a staging branch that triggers a Vercel staging build, then promote to main for production once it looks good.
- Sitting next to real users—my daughters—while that pipeline runs is incredibly powerful. They hit a friction point, I push a change, and they're testing the fix minutes later.
- Inviting users into the "sandbox," even when they're not technical, creates a tight feedback loop and changes how I think about UI and UX decisions in real time.