Build Your Own Daily Desk: Complete App & Code

Some mornings I have a Korean phrase to revisit, a page about studying abroad to check, and a possible article source waiting in another tab. The problem is not a shortage of lists. It is deciding what the first small action should be without letting the list choose my day for me.

Hi, I’m mio. I’m Japanese, and I’m studying English and Korean. I built a small local tool called mio Daily Desk after seeing Matt Wolfe’s much larger Control Center. His business app was the inspiration, not the codebase for mine. This guide is for making my independent, deliberately smaller version work on your own computer. If you first want to decide whether the idea fits your life, the free English introduction below tells the story and shows the working screen.

What you will finish: a local browser screen with Study, Life, and Writing lanes; three explainably ranked unfinished actions; a public RSS/Atom reading queue refreshed only when you press a button; a manually reviewed AI handoff; and a plain-JSON export/restore route. You will build it from ten complete files printed in this article. The application UI and its sample data remain in Japanese; this English guide translates the steps and expected outcomes. No ZIP download, image file, API key, or account credentials are required for the application itself.

The photo-style scenes featuring mio are illustrative images made with her fixed reference portrait, not documentary photos of app development or life in Korea. Screenshots of the application show the actual local build with fictional data.

Before-purchase contents — these three sections are available now:

• What you receive
• A result you can inspect
• Requirements, price, and honest limits
• After purchase: ten complete files, first run, manual RSS/XML, backup and restore, Codex rebuild requests, customization, and troubleshooting. The detailed linked contents appear inside the paid section.

What you receive

The paid section contains every byte of the ten-file reader kit as selectable code in this article. Each file has its own collapsed panel: open only the one you are creating. Put the files in one folder named mio-daily-desk. You also get the order to run them, the exact fictional sample results to expect, a matrix of what I verified and what I did not, and the mistakes I actually repaired while making this version.

The value is not a list of magical prompts. The route that I tested starts with the finished code below, then checks it on your computer. The separate Codex requests later in this article are a way to learn or customize the design; they were reconstructed for readers after my development work. I have not independently proved that sending A, B, and C to an empty-folder task produces byte-for-byte this tested kit, so I do not sell that as a one-paste guarantee.

The ten files are index.html, styles.css, app.mjs, core.mjs, server.mjs, sample-feed.xml, core.test.mjs, server.test.mjs, package.json, and README.md. The provided code contains no portrait, generated image, screenshot, personal account name, actual API key, private backup, or copied Control Center code. The little server serves only its own local files. It does not publish a website or connect a phone to your computer.

For comparison, the free English article shows the whole idea and its constraints without requiring a purchase. It includes a three-box paper version you can try today. This paid page is for someone who wants the working local tool, exact source, and the tests and recovery steps without reconstructing my trial and error.

A result you can inspect

In the first-run sample, four fictional notes are present. One is already complete, leaving three unfinished. The Today area presents the three open actions in order, with two due within two days and none overdue. Nothing about the names or dates is a record of me already studying in Korea. The due dates are computed relative to the day you open the app, so compare the counts and order rather than a screenshot’s calendar date.

The source route has two ways to test it. I imported the supplied fictional sample-feed.xml in the browser and saw two items added, one held back as a URL duplicate. Separately, on September 28, 2026, I manually refreshed the public third-party https://hnrss.org/frontpage feed and got 20 new items; refreshing it again got zero new items and 20 URL duplicates. That external count is a dated observation of one feed, not a promise about future runs or a claim that Hacker News operates the feed. The app stores titles, URLs, and a publication date when present. It does not establish that an article is true or measure likes, visits, or earnings.

I also exported an anonymous backup, changed the state, restored six notes and one feed in a fresh browser tab, and confirmed they were still there after reload. Automated Node tests passed 19/19 on the source files on September 28 and again during this English-guide review. Desktop, 390-pixel, and 320-pixel browser widths were inspected for clipping. I did not finish a full physical-phone, keyboard-only, or operating-system reduced-motion audit; the code includes those affordances, but those device-level claims remain unverified.

Requirements, price, and honest limits

This is a US$9.80 one-time WordPress guide, not a recurring app subscription. You need a laptop/desktop on which you can run Node.js, a modern browser, and a text editor that saves plain files with the exact names and extensions below. Node.js 22 or later is the intended minimum; my actual run used macOS 27.0, Node.js 26.0.0, and Chrome 153. Node 22 and Windows are not separately device-tested here. The app uses Node’s built-in modules, so there is no npm install, API key, database account, n8n plan, or Supabase plan to buy for this build. Your internet connection and any separate use of Codex have their own terms and possible costs.

The local server binds to 127.0.0.1. Notes live as plain text in the browser’s localStorage for that browser profile and exact local origin. A different browser or port does not automatically see them. Exported JSON is also plain text and must be stored privately. The app has no log-in, cloud sync, automatic backup, scheduled feed polling, private Gmail or school access, AI API call, automatic article publication, or friend-sharing link. A phone-sized preview is not phone-to-PC connectivity. Do not upload this folder to a public host or expose the server to a LAN as a shortcut; sharing would require a new authentication, hosting, privacy, and security design.

The app opens public HTTPS RSS/Atom only when you press Refresh, and it rejects many unsafe destinations. That is a constrained personal tool, not a universal RSS reader or a security guarantee. A feed that requires a redirect, IPv6-only service, login, non-standard port, or access that its owner has not granted may fail. Use permitted, public sources and recheck facts at the original page.

The ten complete files are delivered in collapsible panels below the purchase boundary on this page; there is no code ZIP or email attachment. The pictures help show the result, but they are not part of the code kit. Please review the price, tax, and refund terms shown at checkout before buying. The app and test evidence described here are for local version 1.0 from September 28, 2026; those tests do not establish how WordPress checkout or your account will behave.

The complete source and sequential implementation instructions begin after the purchase boundary. If you only want the idea, the free English article above is complete on its own. If you want the exact kit, you can see the scope and the limits here before paying.