Behavioral Design
AI Agent
Built & Shipped
When returning to something you left feels harder than it should - Harbor is there. Not to fix you. Just to sit with you.
Role
Behavioral Design & Full-Stack Build
INdustry
Mental Wellness & AI
CLIENT
Personal Project
OVERVIEW
Harbor is a conversational AI agent designed for people navigating the fragile moment of returning - to school after a break, to work after time away, to routines that quietly fell apart. It's not therapy and it's not a productivity tool.
It's a quiet presence that acknowledges the weight of re-entry without rushing you through it.
I designed it, built it, and shipped it.
Try it live
The Gap
Habit trackers reward momentum. Therapy apps assume you need clinical help. Nothing sits in the moment before you're ready.
Productivity tools assume momentum.
Therapy apps are
too heavy.
Nothing sits in the in-between.
Habit trackers, streak counters, goal-setting apps – built for people already moving. They punish absence instead of supporting return.
Not everyone needs clinical intervention. Sometimes you just need something that says "this is hard and that's okay" without pathologizing the feeling.
The moment before you're ready - when you know you need to go back but can't quite start - has no product. Harbor lives there.
Design Decisions
Why ocean. Why conversational.
Water doesn't judge pace. It doesn't track how long you've been away. The night sky, the waves, the moon set the tone for a conversation that listens before it suggests. Tides come and go — so do people.
Why the cozy corner.
A separate space — string lights, no chat, no AI. Four gentle, optional things to do: calming sounds, a breathing rhythm, a fortune cookie, or a constellation to draw. Nothing to earn, just there.
Live Product
I designed it. Then I built it. Then I shipped it.
Harbor isn't a Figma concept. It's a working product deployed on Vercel, powered by the Claude API. I wrote every line of the front-end, designed the conversational flow, and put it in the world.
THE PRODUCT
Harbor in action.
Login, mood check-in, conversation, and the cozy corner — four quiet moments that make up the experience.
A calm login screen with no pressure to explain your absence.
No streaks, no "welcome back" guilt
Soft, ocean-toned entry
Harbor listens before it suggests- presence before action plans.
No forced to-do lists
Responds to how you're feeling first
A separate, AI-free space with four small, self-contained rituals.
Ambient sounds, breathing rhythm
Fortune cookie, constellation drawing
REFLECTION
Harbor taught me something I keep coming back to: the hardest design problems aren't about capability — they're about restraint. The AI could do more. It could track mood, set goals, send daily check-ins, build habit streaks. Every feature I considered, I asked: does this serve the person, or the product? Most of the time, the answer was the product. So I cut it.
What remained was something small and quiet - a conversational agent that listens before it suggests, a fortune cookie you open when you feel like it, and a presence indicator that says "I'm here" without saying "where have you been?"
This project also proved something to myself: I can ship. Not just design in Figma, not just hand off to developers - I can write the code, deploy the product, and put it in someone's hands.
WHAT'S NEXT
If Harbor had users.
Conversation memory.
Let Harbor remember what you talked about last time – so returning feels like returning to a friend, not a stranger.
Gentle re-engagement.
Not notifications - but if you open after a long gap, Harbor acknowledges the time. "It's been a while. That's okay."
Community layer.
Anonymous, opt-in. See that others are also coming back. "12 people opened Harbor today." Solidarity without exposure.
Coming back deserves
a soft landing.