Python 
iCal 
TickTick API 
Automation 
Parenting 
The problem
Helping a teenager study consistently is part scheduling problem, part executive-function problem. They know what to study; they don’t reliably plan when. Weekly nagging doesn’t scale and turns parents into the bad guy.
What I built
A Sunday-evening automation that reads the school iCal feed and the family sports schedule, backward-plans study sessions for each upcoming test or assignment, and pushes the tasks to a shared TickTick list: tagged, dated, and right-sized to the available windows in the week.
It also scans recently completed tasks for low debrief scores and creates “book office hours” follow-ups when something’s not landing.
The full origin story (and what surprised me) is here: Study Buddy: building a backward-planning system for a teenager.
What it shows
- Designing for the actual user (a teenager with ADHD), not the parent paying the bill
- Composing existing tools instead of building yet another app
- Closing the loop: not just generating tasks, but watching outcomes and intervening when something’s stuck
Stack
Python · iCal parsing · TickTick API · Cron · Claude Code skill