The situation
In October 2023, after the Hamas attack on Israel, the schools in the "Otef" region — the communities surrounding Gaza — shut down with no clear timeline for return. Families were evacuated, displaced, or sheltering in place. The schools that did eventually reopen ran on irregular, constantly-changing schedules that no one could keep track of.
Parents were managing coordination through WhatsApp groups. Hundreds of messages a day. Which kids were going to school, which weren't, who could host playdates, what time was pickup — all of it buried in noise. For parents already under enormous emotional stress, this was an additional exhausting overhead.
What I built
Clearday is a scheduling coordination platform built specifically for these communities. The core idea: give parents a dedicated, structured place to coordinate around school schedules, instead of fighting through message threads.
The platform has four main features: a daily schedule view that shows school status and any changes; a playdate coordination tool where parents can post and discover availability; a multi-school admin panel with RBAC so each school can manage their own data; and a daily email digest through Resend that summarizes the next day's plan.
Google SSO was a deliberate choice — these parents were not going to create another account during a crisis. One click with their existing Google account was the right call.
The build
I built the first working version in about two weeks. The stack choice was Next.js 15 with PostgreSQL because I needed server-side rendering for the schedule views to load fast, and I wanted a real relational database to handle the multi-school admin hierarchy properly.
The hardest technical decision was the RBAC model. Each school needed its own admin who could manage their school's data independently, but I also needed a super-admin layer for platform management. I built a simple role table — parent, school_admin, platform_admin — with middleware that checks permissions on every protected route. Simple enough to ship fast, structured enough to not be a mess later.
The daily email digest was actually the feature that drove the most engagement. Parents told me they liked having "one summary" they could read in the morning before the day started, rather than checking the app repeatedly. That was a learning I didn't anticipate.
What I'd do differently
I'd add push notifications earlier. Email was the right first step because it didn't require app install, but real-time alerts for sudden schedule changes matter a lot when schools in a conflict zone close on short notice.
I'd also think harder about the onboarding flow. I handled verification of who belonged to which school manually for the first cohort. That doesn't scale, and it was a significant time cost during a period when I was also trying to support the community in other ways.
Why I built it
I've been running with veterans through Running with Rami for eleven years. When the war started, some of the people I run with every Friday were directly affected. I couldn't do nothing. Building something useful was the way I know how to show up.
Clearday isn't a startup. It's a product that exists because a community needed it and I had the skills to build it. That's reason enough.