Can AI build a cleaning schedule app like Tody?

Build a personal cleaning schedule web app to replace Tody for my own use.

Tech rules:
- Plain HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript in one file. No framework, build step, account, or server.
- Store all data in localStorage under one key, with a version number in the saved object.

Data model:
- Task: id, name, room (kitchen | bathroom | bedroom | living room | other, editable), intervalDays, lastCompletedAt, createdAt.
- Settings: cleaningMode (relaxed | standard | proactive), which scales each task's effective interval by a multiplier.

Features:
- Task list grouped by room, each task showing a dueness bar that fills from green (just done) to red (overdue), based on days elapsed since lastCompletedAt relative to intervalDays.
- "Mark done" button per task that resets lastCompletedAt to now and the dueness bar to green.
- Add, edit, and delete tasks with a custom room and interval.
- A settings toggle for the three cleaning modes that scales suggested intervals across the whole task list.
- A starter task library (10–15 common household tasks with sane default intervals) pre-loaded on first run, editable or deletable.
- A "Due today" view at the top listing every task that's due or overdue, sorted by how overdue it is.
- An "Export reminders (.ics)" button that creates one repeating calendar event per task, using the task's effective interval, so my calendar app can remind me.

Edge cases the build must handle correctly:
1. Set each task's cleaning interval independently in days, weeks, or months, not one global interval for every task.
2. The dueness bar must fill smoothly from green to red based on elapsed time relative to the interval, not jump in hard steps.
3. Support the three cleaning modes (Relaxed, Standard, Proactive), each scaling every task's suggested interval by a fixed multiplier.
4. Completing a task resets its dueness timer to zero and lastCompletedAt to now. It never jumps to a fixed calendar date.
5. Group tasks by room or zone, and let the user reassign a task's room after creation.
6. Deleting a task removes it and its history with one confirmation, no orphaned data left behind.
7. A brand-new task with no lastCompletedAt should show as due immediately, not crash the dueness calculation.
8. Changing a task's interval after it already has a lastCompletedAt must recalculate its dueness bar against the new interval right away.

Backup and import:
- One-click "Export JSON" and "Export CSV" buttons, since Tody has no export feature to match against.
- "Import JSON" restores a full backup after a confirmation that it replaces current data.

Layout:
- Mobile-first, thumb-friendly, readable at 375px wide. Works in Safari and Chrome.

Exclusions:
- No publishing, App Store submission, accounts, login, payments, multi-person sync, or FairShare-style contribution tracking.

Also write a short README that explains where the data lives, how to export and restore it, and that clearing browser data deletes everything.

Keep it under 800 lines. This is a personal tool, not a product.

What is the short answer?

Yes. AI can build a personal cleaning schedule app that replaces Tody’s free tier or Premium at $9.99 per year in a weekend. Tody’s entire pitch is a rotating chore list with a color-coded dirtiness bar, which is closer to a cron job with a progress bar than software. That’s exactly the kind of thing a single HTML file can do well.

The trade-off shows up if you’re on Premium+. The $80/year Team tier exists so 12 people can see the same shared list, and that’s a lot to pay for what a Google Sheet with conditional formatting almost does for free. Rebuilding real-time sync for a household is a genuinely bigger project than the single-user version.

Option	Best for	Upfront cost	Ongoing cost	Main limitation
Build a rough prototype	People who want to test whether a task list with a dueness bar covers their cleaning routine	$0 and 3–5 hours	$0	Dueness bar interpolation and default intervals are untuned
Build a daily-use personal version	People cleaning solo or in one household who don’t need real-time multi-person sync	$0–$20 and 10–15 hours	$0	No household sync or FairShare-style contribution tracking
Keep paying for Tody Premium+	Households of 2–12 who want real-time synced task ownership and fairness tracking	$0	$25–$80/year	Paying yearly for a shared list a spreadsheet nearly replicates

The ready-to-paste starter prompt at the end of this page builds the daily-use version.

What should the first version include?

The first version needs a task list you trust to tell you what’s actually due. Everything else comes after a week of use.

• Task list grouped by room, each with a dueness bar
• Per-task cleaning interval in days, weeks, or months
• Three cleaning modes that scale suggested intervals across the list
• “Mark done” that resets the dueness timer to zero
• A “Due today” list, so recurring chores surface without scrolling every room
• A calendar export (.ics), so your phone’s calendar handles reminders
• JSON and CSV backup, since there’s nothing to import from Tody
• Deliberate exclusion: no multi-person sync or FairShare contribution tracking in the first version. That’s the one part of Tody that needs a real backend, and it’s optional if you clean solo.

If you’re tracking other recurring routines beyond cleaning, a general habit tracker covers that ground too.

What can AI build reliably?

ChatGPT and Claude produce a working single-file task list with a dueness bar on the first try. The list, room grouping, and localStorage saving work out of the box because they’re common patterns.

Concrete things AI gets right quickly:

• A task list grouped by room with an add/edit/delete flow
• A dueness bar that changes color based on days elapsed versus interval
• Three cleaning modes that scale intervals with a multiplier
• A starter task library pre-loaded on first run
• Export buttons that download JSON and CSV

A “mark done” button that resets the timer and re-sorts the list by urgency is also a quick win once the core works.

Recurring chores and reminders

Recurring chores are the easy part. Each task stores an interval and a last-done date, so “due next” is one subtraction. AI gets that right on the first prompt, including a “Due today” list sorted by how overdue each task is.

Reminders are harder, because a web page can’t wake itself up. Chrome ended work on the Notification Triggers API, the proposal that would have let a page schedule its own notifications. Without it, a closed page can’t remind you of anything.

The workaround AI handles well is a calendar file. Ask for an “Export reminders (.ics)” button that creates one repeating event per chore. Import it into Google Calendar or Apple Calendar, and your calendar sends the reminders. Test one import before you rely on it, since neither help page spells out how repeating events in imported files behave.

The catch: the calendar file repeats on a fixed schedule. It won’t shift if you clean the bathroom 2 days early, the way Tody’s dueness bar does. Re-export it after you change intervals.

Where will AI need human help?

AI needs your help with the dueness bar itself. Replicating a smooth, continuously-filling dirtiness indicator requires real interpolation logic between the last-done date and the interval, and it’s easy for AI to get wrong on the first pass, jumping in hard steps instead of filling gradually. Test it by marking a task done and watching the bar over several days.

Multi-person real-time sync is the second thing to think through, and honestly to skip unless you need it. It needs a backend with accounts and either websockets or polling, a real step up from a single-user local app. If you clean with a partner or roommates, decide up front whether you actually need live sync or whether checking one shared device is enough.

Other checks to run yourself:

• A brand-new task with no completion history showing as due immediately, not crashing
• Changing a task’s interval after it already has history, and confirming the bar recalculates
• Deleting a task and confirming nothing orphaned is left in storage
• Reassigning a task to a different room and confirming grouping updates

Privacy is simple for personal use. Your task list and completion history never leave your browser. The flip side is that clearing browser data deletes everything, so the backup button is not optional.

Phone notifications

Real push notifications are possible, but they’re a step up. Since iOS 16.4, iPhone web push works only for web apps added to the Home Screen, and the push itself has to come from a server. That means a service worker, a push service, and something running on a schedule. For one person, the calendar file is the better trade.

Sharing with a household

Tody keeps household sync, FairShare, and monthly household reports for Premium+. A personal build has 3 cheaper options:

• One shared device. Keep the app on a tablet in the kitchen. Everyone marks chores done in the same place. No backend needed.
• Pass the backup around. Export JSON, send it to your partner, and they import it. Fine for weekly hand-offs, bad for same-day edits, since the last import wins.
• A free hosted database. Firebase’s free Spark plan allows 50,000 reads and 20,000 writes a day on Firestore, far more than one household needs. Supabase’s free plan also works, but it pauses projects after 1 week of inactivity. Either one adds logins and hours of setup.

If 2 people need live sync on their own phones, Tody’s Duo plan at $25 a year costs less than the time to build it.

Can I get my data out of Tody?

No export method was found, at any price tier, including Premium+. There’s no documented CSV, PDF, or backup and restore feature on Tody’s pricing page or FAQ. All cleaning history, task intervals, and completion logs appear to live only inside the app.

This means the export trap here isn’t a limited format or a missing field, it’s that there may be nothing to export at all. Before you cancel, open Settings inside Tody and look for a backup or export option yourself, since a feature missing from the docs isn’t always missing from the app.

Because there’s likely nothing to import, your build starts with a blank task list rather than a migrated one. The starter prompt includes a pre-loaded starter library of 10 to 15 common household tasks so you’re not starting from zero.

How long will it take and what will it cost?

Rough prototype: 3–5 hours and $0 on a free ChatGPT or Claude plan. You’ll have a working task list with rooms and a dueness bar.

Dependable daily-use version: 10–15 hours across a week or two, including tuning the dueness bar interpolation and default intervals for your actual household tasks. $0–$20 if you pay for one month of an AI plan to speed up the fixes.

Against Tody Premium at $9.99/year, a $20 AI month is roughly 2 years of subscription cost, so this only pays off if you value owning your data or dislike Tody’s upsell prompts. Against the $80/year Team tier, it pays for itself in about 3 months.

These figures are estimates from reviewing the feature set. They are not measurements from a completed test build.

Which AI tool or approach should I use?

Claude is a good default. It previews single-file HTML apps directly in the chat, so you can click through the dueness bar behavior before saving anything.

ChatGPT works equally well for the first version. Paste the starter prompt, save the output as index.html, and open it in your browser.

Cursor is the better choice once you’re tuning the dueness bar’s color interpolation and want to iterate on one function without regenerating the whole app.

Lovable is worth considering only if you actually want multi-person sync, since it makes adding accounts and a hosted database easier than building that from scratch. For a single-user version, it adds maintenance you don’t need.

What will I need to maintain?

Almost nothing for the single-user version. The app is one HTML file with no server, no API, and no bill.

Your recurring work:

• Export a JSON backup once a week and save it somewhere outside the browser
• Re-open the app in the same browser; a different browser or a private window starts empty
• Tune task intervals during your first few weeks as you learn what your household actually needs
• Re-export the reminders calendar file whenever you change intervals

If you want the app on your phone, save the file to your phone’s Files app or put it on a free static host and add it to your home screen. Hosting publicly means anyone with the link can open the empty app, but your task data stays in your own browser.

Should I build it, buy it, or reduce scope?

Build it if you clean solo, or with one other person who’s fine checking a shared device rather than needing live sync. The dueness bar and per-task intervals are the whole product, and they’re buildable.

Buy it if you’re a household of 3 or more who genuinely wants live sync and FairShare-style fairness tracking. Real-time multi-person sync is the one piece of Tody that’s a meaningfully bigger project to rebuild, not a weekend add-on.

Reduce scope if you only track a handful of recurring chores. A habit tracker with recurring reminders covers that without the dueness-bar complexity.

Free cleaning schedule alternatives compared

Check whether a free option already fits before you build or pay.

Option	Recurring chores	Reminders	Household sharing	Main limit
Tody free	Yes, with dueness bars and auto-rotation	The app has notifications; the pricing page doesn’t say which tier	No, sync is Premium+	One person, one home
Home Routines	Daily, weekly, and monthly routines	Yes	List sharing and iCloud sync	Extras cost $1.99/mo or $19.99/year
Sweepy	Free for custom tasks; the auto-made schedule is premium	Not stated on its site	Invites listed; tier not stated on its site	Premium is $3.99/mo or $19.99/year
Todoist free	Recurring due dates	Basic task reminders	Up to 5 people per project	5 projects; custom reminders need Pro
Google Tasks	Repeat by day, week, month, or year	Yes	Shared tasks can’t repeat	No dueness view
Apple Reminders	Repeating reminders	Yes	Shared lists, items assigned to people	Everyone needs an Apple Account
Your own build	Yes, with dueness bars	Through a calendar file	Shared device or backup hand-off	You maintain it

Todoist and Apple Reminders handle recurring chores well. None of the general to-do apps copy Tody’s dueness bar, where a task fills up gradually instead of flipping from “not due” to “due”. If that bar is why you like Tody, its free tier or your own build are the only options on this list.

Recommendation: build it if you’re one person or a two-person household willing to share one device or export/import manually. Keep Tody Premium+ if your household is bigger and live sync between phones is how you actually coordinate chores. If you mainly want reminders and don’t care about dueness bars, try Todoist’s free plan or Apple Reminders before building anything.

What if I wanted to ship this to other people?

Shipping this means adding accounts, a real-time sync backend, and conflict handling for simultaneous edits from multiple household members. That’s a separate project measured in weeks, not a weekend. The personal build above is a starting point, not a shortcut to a product.

Starter build specification

• User: You, for your own use (or one household sharing a device or manual export/import).
• Problem: Paying yearly for Tody Premium+ when the core product is a rotating chore list with a dirtiness bar, and there’s no way to export your data if you ever want to leave.
• Core workflow: Open app, see which tasks are due by color, mark a task done, watch its bar reset to green.
• Required features: Task list grouped by room, per-task interval, dueness bar, cleaning modes, mark-done reset, “Due today” list, calendar export for reminders.
• Deliberate exclusions: No accounts, no real-time multi-person sync, no FairShare contribution tracking, no store submission.
• Data ownership: Stored in your browser’s localStorage. Exported as JSON and CSV. Imported from JSON backups only, since Tody has no export format to match against.
• Definition of done: You add 10 tasks across 3 rooms, mark 3 done, and confirm their dueness bars reset to green while the other 7 continue filling toward red at the correct rate for their interval.

For more on scoping a first build, read can AI build an app for me. If plant care is another recurring chore you track, pair this with a plant care tracker.

Sources and verification

• Tody pricing page: free tier, Premium at $9.99/year, and Premium+ Duo/Family/Team tiers at $25/$40/$80 per year.
• Tody FAQ: no export, backup, or restore feature documented.
• Tody method page: describes the dueness/dirtiness tracking concept.
• Tody on the App Store: in-app prices of $9.99, $24.99, $39.99, and $79.99 for the same tiers, slightly below the website’s $25/$40/$80.
• Tody on Google Play: tier structure cross-check.
• Home Routines on the App Store: free core features, $1.99/mo or $19.99/year extras, sharing and iCloud sync.
• Sweepy on the App Store: premium at $3.99/mo or $19.99/year. Sweepy’s site: custom tasks free, auto-generated schedule premium.
• Todoist pricing: free plan limits, recurring due dates, and reminders.
• Google Tasks help: repeating tasks, and shared tasks can’t repeat.
• Apple Reminders shared lists: sharing and assigning reminders.
• Notification Triggers (Chrome for Developers): scheduled web notifications were abandoned.
• Web Push for web apps on iOS (WebKit): push only for Home Screen web apps, iOS 16.4 and later.
• Google Calendar import help: importing .ics files from a computer.
• Firebase pricing and Supabase pricing: free-tier limits for a shared household database.

This app was not built and tested for this page. The verdict is based on a review of Tody’s pricing page, FAQ, and app store listings. No export or backup feature could be confirmed at any tier; verify this directly in Tody’s in-app Settings before canceling. Tody’s price was checked on November 6, 2026.

Reviewed on November 6, 2026.