Build a to-do and habit tracker app that fits how you work

Every productivity app is someone else’s opinion about how you should work. Building your own lets you keep the two features you love and skip the twenty you don’t. On App Builder Agent, a to-do or habit app is usually the fastest project people finish — under an hour from idea to installed APK.

This guide covers both flavours — task lists and habit streaks — the features that matter, and prompts you can copy.

The pieces worth having

Pick from this list; a great app does four of these very well rather than all of them badly:

• Quick add — One field at the top, Enter to add, natural dates (“tomorrow 6pm”).
• Lists or projects — Work, Home, Study — with a colour each and counts of open tasks.
• Reminders — Local notifications at a time, or “when I open the app in the morning”.
• Habits with streaks — Daily/weekly habits, a tap to complete, a streak counter and a calendar heatmap.
• Today view — Tasks due today plus today’s habits on one screen — the screen you open ten times a day.
• Weekly review — What you finished, what slipped, and a chart of habit completion.
• Backup — Export/import JSON so a lost phone does not mean a lost system.

Build it with App Builder Agent, step by step

Describe your ideal day with the app, not a feature list — the agent turns it into screens.

1. Create a mobile app project. Habit apps live on the phone and need notifications, so pick the mobile type.
2. Describe how you want to use it. Say what the Today screen shows, how tasks are organised and what the habit view looks like.
   Build a to-do and habit app called Rhythm. Today tab: tasks due today grouped by list, then today’s habits with a big check circle. Lists tab with colours. Habits tab with streaks and a 12-week heatmap per habit. Reminders as local notifications. Swipe right to complete, swipe left to delete. Calm, minimal, off-white with one green accent.
3. Use it in the simulator for a minute. Add tasks, complete habits, open the heatmap. Tell the agent what felt slow or confusing. Move the simulated clock past midnight and check that yesterday’s habits roll over and the streak counts correctly; then set a reminder two minutes ahead and watch it arrive in the Simulate panel.
4. Add the one power feature you actually need. Recurring tasks, a Pomodoro timer, sub-tasks, a widget — one message each.
   Add recurring tasks (daily, weekdays, weekly, monthly) and a “Focus” button that starts a 25-minute timer on the selected task.
5. Install the APK. Export and put it on your home screen. Keep the project; every improvement is a sentence away.

Prompts that work well

Different people, different systems. Each of these prompts yields a different app:

Common mistakes (and the fix)

• Asking for every feature at once. Sub-tasks, tags, projects, Kanban, calendar sync and Pomodoro in one prompt produce a cluttered app with six tabs. Describe the Today screen and one organising idea; add power features one message at a time after you have used it for a day.
• Midnight and time zones. A habit ticked at 00:30 after a late night should count for “yesterday” for most people. Ask for a configurable day start (e.g. 4 am) and store dates as local calendar days, not UTC timestamps — otherwise streaks break when you travel.
• Streaks that punish one bad day. Losing a 90-day streak to a single missed Sunday is why people delete habit apps. Ask for one freeze per week and a “mark yesterday” option, and show the completion rate for the month next to the streak.
• Notifications for everything. Ten reminders a day get muted at the OS level in a week. Default to one morning digest plus per-task reminders you set explicitly, and ask for a quiet-hours setting.
• No backup. On-device storage is private and fast, but a lost phone loses your system. Ask for export/import as JSON and a share-sheet backup you can save to Drive; if you want laptop access as well, a hosted backend with sign-in syncs both.
• Recurring tasks that duplicate. A naive “daily” task creates a new copy every time the app opens, and after a week you have seven “Take vitamins”. Ask for recurrence to generate the next occurrence only when the current one is completed or its day passes.

Make it feel finished

• Make the Today screen the first screen. Everything else is secondary.
• Ask for haptics and a satisfying check animation — completion should feel good.
• Keep streaks forgiving: one “freeze” per week prevents users quitting after one missed day.
• Sort completed items to the bottom instead of hiding them; people like seeing progress.

Installing, publishing and next steps

Download the release-signed test APK from the Preview tab, install it and put it on your home screen. Because the data lives on the device, the app works offline and costs nothing to run. If you want the same lists on your laptop, say so and the agent adds a hosted backend with sign-in so both devices sync through the platform. The first app is free to build; the AI app builder page explains what the $1.49 Member plan (unlimited test APKs and source export) and the monthly plans add, all as one-time payments.

Productivity apps change with your life; that is the point of owning the project. Browse the ready-made to-do & habits apps to steal Today-screen layouts, then read the the plant and pet care reminder guide if reminders are your main use, or the notes and journal app guide if you want a daily reflection next to your tasks. Come back and ask for the next feature when you need it. Open the builder and describe your ideal Tuesday.

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