Unstuck.

The problem

Over 80% of students procrastinate, with nearly 20% in chronic patterns driven by fear of failure and difficulty with emotional regulation. The core pain is the same whether a single task feels too big or too many deadlines converge: the student does not know where to start, and that uncertainty prevents starting at all.

Junior year makes it acute — AP classes, SAT prep, college essays, Common App deadlines, FAFSA, and coursework all compete for the same bandwidth. Avoidance and shame reinforce each other, and a scattered landscape of forgotten accounts (Khan Academy, College Board, Schoolhouse.world) adds cognitive load. Meanwhile counselors run caseloads far above the ASCA-recommended 250:1 — a national average of 372:1 — and learn a student is struggling only after grades reflect it.

The solution

Unstuck is designed for the moment before productivity begins. Through a structured intake, it generates a sequenced, time-aware plan, surfaces school-approved resources at the moment they're needed, and gives the student one clear next action — opinionated, narrow output that removes the burden of choice.

It opens every session with a warm, non-judgmental acknowledgment before delivering the plan, and includes worst-case fallback logic that recalculates without judgment when a student falls behind. A personal toolkit tracks what resources a student signed up for and why, and a counselor visibility layer provides anonymized aggregate data on student paralysis, resource follow-through, and engagement — insight that doesn't exist anywhere else.

How it works

Primary inputs are structured — category selections, dates, checkboxes — with optional, character-limited free-text fields so the model can respond to a student's own words rather than a canned string. A generative model turns those inputs into a two-layer plan: a full-scope plan across the whole time horizon and a rolling seven-day next-steps view. Adaptive replanning kicks in when tokenized email check-ins report incomplete tasks, recalculating from the current state.

Every free-text submission passes a four-tier screening classification (standard, elevated concern, crisis, and inappropriate) before reaching the master prompt, and crisis detection also runs silently on behavioral patterns across structured responses. Cost is controlled with plan output caching, batched distress screening, and tiered model selection — a lighter model for classification, a full model for plan generation. The live capstone prototype implements the first-plan path on Vercel.

Who it's for

The product is B2C in v1, serving two personas. The primary end user is Matt, a 16-year-old junior who is academically capable but freezes when tasks feel too large or too numerous; the paying subscriber is the parent or the student directly.

The secondary persona is Ms. Smith, the school counselor, who never interacts with the AI directly but uses a dashboard to monitor anonymized aggregate data, configure school-specific resources, and respond when students request contact. A B2B2C institutional tier is planned for v2, selling schools population-level insight, FERPA compliance coverage, and workflow integration.

Why it matters

Unstuck sits at the intersection of two high-growth markets — AI productivity tools (~25% CAGR) and mental health apps (~17%) — with a defensible white space: no direct competitor combines time-aware action planning, acknowledgment of decision paralysis, and a worst-case fallback. Tools like Calm and Woebot focus on how you feel, while Notion and Todoist assume you already know what to work on.

V1 is a $14.99/month subscription with API-cost controls built into the architecture. The college application process runs through every component as a primary use case, tying directly to the post-secondary enrollment, FAFSA, and SAT outcomes schools are accountable for. Positioned deliberately in the wellness and productivity lane rather than making clinical claims, the proprietary behavioral dataset built over time is a long-term competitive asset.

At a glance

Project

Unstuck

Built by

Teri Campbell

One-liner

Unstuck helps overwhelmed students figure out what to do first when academic and test-prep demands pile up.