I accidentally participated in OpenAI Build Week

Hey everyone. In this post I will share how a fortunate circumstance allowed me to submit a focus app, 5 Minute Grove, that I made just for myself to the OpenAI Build Week hackathon. Let me give you some context about the app first.

In search of focus

Most of the work I’m doing nowadays is very very fulfilling. However, it can still be hard for me to focus. I can know exactly what I need to do and yet continue staring at the screen aimlessly or distract myself.

So I’m always looking for ways to make starting work and focusing easier.

Over the past couple of years I’ve tried many focusing methods and background apps, from Lofi Girl radios to idler productivity games such as Virtual Cottage.

Many of them are great for maintaining momentum. However, none of them so far helped me consistently enter the flow.

The idea

In Virtual Cottage 2 there’s a nifty button at the end of a timer - “Add 5 minutes”. This is the only app where I’ve seen this feature.

A normal timer wouldn’t help me start. But I found myself extending a session over and over by clicking that button until I entered the flow.

This is where it occurred to me that just starting and finishing a single timer is not enough for me - I need frequent checkpoints to warm me up. Those 5-minute extensions worked wonderfully for that.

The app

I wanted to see how far I could take that focus workflow, so I decided to build a web app specifically for that.

I made the first prototype in about 20 minutes with Codex on the night of July 12.

It was very rough around the edges, but showed promise. I kept iterating on it over the week.

The app starts by asking you to commit to an easy goal - just 5 minutes of focus. After the timer ends you can choose to stop or add another 5 minutes.

Once you enter the flow and no longer need the 5-minute checkpoints, you can switch to counting up without interrupting your current focus session.

You can manage multiple focus sessions at once in the focus list, which serves as a natural TODO list.

I leveraged my gamedev experience to make using it as fun as possible. The Start/Add 5 minutes buttons produce a satisfying splash effect and play a pleasant xylophone sound that I made in Bitwig.

I added a grove that grows with your focus. It doesn’t do anything useful, but it is a nice decoration and a keepsake, reminding you of your progress.

This is where I got the idea for the app name - 5 Minute Grove.

OpenAI Build Week

I was building the app for myself and didn’t intend to submit it to any hackathons.

But on July 17 I got a newsletter from OpenAI which mentioned OpenAI Build Week. This is where I learned about it for the first time.

And just as it happened, I built the majority of the app during the hackathon submission period - July 13-21. Initial MVP was made on July 12, but the rules explicitly allow existing projects if substantial progress was made on them with the help of Codex during the week.

So I decided I might as well submit. This was a nice opportunity to participate in my first non-game hackathon.

I recorded the required <3 minute video, filled out the submission form and submitted the entry in the “Apps for Your Life” category.

I don’t expect to place anywhere close to 1st or 2nd (for which there are prizes). With 45K+ participants, there are surely better submissions than mine. But it was a worthwhile experience nonetheless.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading!

It was fun developing this app and submitting it to the hackathon.

If tiny starts and 5-minute checkpoints sound like they would help you with your work as they did for me, feel free to check out the app at 5minutegrove.com. The app is open source and is available on GitHub. I’m open to feature suggestions!