Student-built product lab

We don't wait for graduation to start building.

RiJoLabs is Riccardo & Joshua — two students building apps and automations that solve real, everyday problems.

Explore our projects Meet us

2 apps · 2 automations · 1 mission

Scroll

Who we are

Two students. One lab.

Riccardo and Joshua, founders of RiJoLabs

Riccardo Zanatta

Finance & Product

Economics & Finance student at the University of Bologna. Into markets, data and building tools that make them faster.

LinkedIn ↗

Joshua Israelachvili

Product & Game Design

Business and Economics student at the University of Bologna. The mind behind Roommates.

LinkedIn ↗

We met as students, and decided not to wait to build things people actually use.

Projects

What we're building

01 / App In development

Mediometro

Your university grades, finally clear.
02 / App In development

Roommates

Your shared flat, now a game.
03 / Automation Built & tested

Real-Time X Tracker

Financial news, before it's news.
04 / Automation Built & working

Quake Watch

Every significant earthquake of the week, in one clean sheet.
01 / App In development

Mediometro

Your university grades, finally clear.

Illustrative demo

Animated demo of the Mediometro app with sample data: a weighted average out of 30, a list of exams with grades and credits, and a projected graduation grade out of 110 that updates when a new exam is added.

The problem

Students juggle exams, credits and grades across portals and spreadsheets, with no clear view of where their average and final grade are heading.

What it does

An app for University of Bologna students to track exams, see their weighted average in real time and project their final graduation grade.

  • Add exams, grades and credits (CFU) in seconds
  • Weighted average updated instantly
  • Projected graduation grade (out of 110)
  • Simulate upcoming exams: what grade do I need?
02 / App In development

Phase 1 (house management) runs locally · first 3 mini-games in progress

Roommates

Your shared flat, now a game.

Mobile app · iOS, Android & web
Idea & product: Joshua

Illustrative demo · tap the tabs

Animated demo of the Roommates app with sample data, cycling through four screens: Home, with an out-of-stock alert and free tasks to claim for points; Supplies, a grid of household products marked in stock, running low or finished; Ranking, the weekly leaderboard with prize, penalty and a flatmate in debt; and Games, a House Match round of the Vacuum Dash mini-game.

The problem

In a shared flat nobody's in charge. Chore rotas live on paper until someone skips a turn, the toilet paper runs out without anyone noticing, and fights start over who "always does everything".

What it does

A mobile app for students living away from home that runs the house and turns it into a game. Chores, supplies, bonuses and penalties become points, leaderboards and mini-games, with fair rules the house decides together and a tone that's ironic, never humiliating.

Clean up and you win. Leave the pan dirty… you're buying the coffee.

Sounds familiar?

Skipped turns

The rota says it's your week. Somehow, it's never anyone's week.

It's finished. Again.

Toilet paper, oil, detergent: nobody notices until it's too late.

"I always do everything"

Without visibility, every chore turns into an argument.

How it works

  1. Post a chore

    Pick it from the house catalog, set a deadline (24h minimum) and an optional repeat.

  2. Grab it, or let the app decide

    First come, first served with one tap. Still unclaimed after 24h? It goes to whoever has the fewest points this week.

  3. Earn points

    1–5 points per chore, +1 if you finish at least a day early. Rescue someone's overdue chore and take their points.

  4. Win the week

    The week closes Sunday at 23:59: first place gets the house prize, last place gets the penalty. Say, "skip a chore" and "buy everyone coffee".

Rules decided together, points earned on the field.

House-voted rules

The house votes which chores exist and what they're worth (1–5 pts). A proposal passes with a yes from at least half of the others.

Fair free tasks

Max 3 claimed-but-undone tasks per person and one open task per chore. No gaming the system.

Out of toilet paper? One tap and everyone knows.

"It's finished!"

Every household product is a big emoji tile: in stock, running low, finished. One tap adds it to the shopping list and alerts everyone.

Groceries that pay

The list becomes an automatic "House shopping" task (36h deadline) worth 2–5 points, based on how many different items you buy.

Penalties & redemption

Skipped chores and "left it dirty" reports, voted by the house, cost points, capped at −10 a week. Redeem one within 48h with a chore worth at least as much.

In debt

Still carrying a penalty when the new week starts? You play the mini-games with 20% less time until you redeem yourself.

Silent-consent check

A chore marked done is confirmed unless someone disputes it within 24h. Then the majority decides.

Two leaderboards

Cleaning and mini-games, weekly and monthly, showing prize, penalty and who's in debt.

Rules of the game

points per chore
1–5
early bonus
+1
weekly penalty cap
−10
to redeem a penalty
48h
sock-shaped lives
3
languages: IT & EN
2

Five principles

  • One tap for everything you do often.
  • Hard to cheat where it matters.
  • You can always get back in the game.
  • Ironic, never humiliating.
  • What happens in the house stays in the house.

How it's built

AI-first, spec-driven: the rules were designed and debated on a web prototype, turned into a complete spec, and tested against real scenarios (the Saturday-night penalty, the half-done shopping run, the chore assigned by the app). The spec is the source of truth that Claude Code implements autonomously.

  • React Native + Expo
  • TypeScript
  • Supabase (auth, database, realtime, scheduled jobs)
  • Expo Notifications
  • Rules engine covered by automated tests
03 / Automation Built & tested

Real-Time X Tracker

Financial news, before it's news.

Illustrative demo · fictional alerts

Animated demo of a chat with a bot called RiJo Pulse. Fictional alerts arrive every few seconds, each with a source and priority tier, the highlighted keyword, the percentage move in a box, a link to the original post and the delivery latency. A keyword watchlist counts how often Fed, Oil, Nvidia, Bitcoin and Tariffs appear.

The problem

By the time market news hits the newspapers, it's already priced in.

What it does

A real-time "newsletter" faster than any newspaper. It monitors up to 5 key breaking-news and market-flow accounts on X: every new post hits an n8n webhook, gets parsed, ranked by source priority and formatted, then lands on Telegram within about 5 seconds — with the hot keywords of the moment and every percentage move highlighted.

  • Up to 5 X accounts, each on its own real-time webhook
  • Telegram alert in ~5 seconds from the original post
  • Priority tiers per source (P1 / P2 / P3), so the key feeds stand out
  • Auto-highlights a watchlist of hot keywords (e.g. Fed, Oil, Tariffs), updated as the narrative shifts
  • Every percentage move boxed and bolded, like 【+3.7%】 — ignoring years, prices and plain numbers
  • Clean, readable alerts with a one-tap link to the original post

Stack

  • n8n
  • Webhooks
  • JavaScript
  • Telegram Bot API

How it works

  1. Trigger

    New post on X

    One of up to 5 monitored accounts publishes.

  2. Instant

    Real-time webhook

    Each account has its own webhook into n8n.

  3. Logic

    n8n Code node

    Parse · priority tier · highlight keywords & %

  4. ≈5s

    Telegram alert

    Formatted, readable, one tap from the source.

code-node.js
const keywords = ["Fed", "Nvidia", "Bitcoin", "Tariffs", "Oil"];for (const keyword of keywords) {  const regex = new RegExp(`\\b(${keyword})\\b`, "gi");  text = text.replace(regex, "<b>$1</b>");}// Only real percentages: 2%, +3.7%, -1.25% — not 2026, $100 or "10 contracts"const percentageRegex = /(?<![\w.])([+-]?\d+(?:\.\d+)?)%/g;text = text.replace(percentageRegex, "【<b>$1%</b>】");

Rule-based, no AI needed: speed comes from webhooks, not from guessing.

04 / Automation Built & working

Quake Watch

Every significant earthquake of the week, in one clean sheet.

Illustrative demo · demo data

Animated demo with made-up data: a stylised map with pulsing points for earthquakes near Italy and worldwide, above a spreadsheet that fills row by row with date, magnitude, location, depth and feed.

What it does

Pulls the last 7 days of earthquakes from USGS open data in two parallel feeds, Italy & surroundings (M3.5+) and worldwide (M6+), then cleans, merges and de-duplicates them (Italy wins) and appends date, magnitude, location, depth, source and link to a Google Sheet.

Stack

  • n8n
  • USGS API
  • JavaScript
  • Google Sheets

How it works

  1. Start

    Trigger

    Kicks off the workflow.

  2. 2 feeds

    USGS Italy + USGS World

    Last 7 days, in parallel: M3.5+ and M6+.

  3. Logic

    Clean & merge

    One tidy list from both feeds.

  4. Italy wins

    De-duplicate

    Each earthquake appears once.

  5. Output

    Google Sheets

    Date, magnitude, location, depth, source, link.

Coming soon

This is just the beginning.

Vision

A world where students don't wait to graduate to start building — where a good idea and a laptop are enough to ship something people actually use.

We believe the best time to build is now. Universities are full of people with sharp ideas who never turn them into anything, because "real" building feels like something for later. RiJoLabs exists to prove the opposite: that two students, with curiosity, modern tools and AI, can design, ship and iterate on products that solve everyday problems — for students first, and for everyone after.

Mission

We build simple, useful apps and automations that solve problems we live every day — as students, roommates and finance enthusiasts — and we ship them fast.

Our mission is to turn everyday friction into products. We start from what we know firsthand: tracking grades at university, sharing a flat with roommates, following financial news in real time. We build fast, test with real users, and improve with every iteration — combining software development, automation and AI to create tools that are simple to use and genuinely useful.

Build, don't just talk.

Every idea on this site is a working product or prototype.

Start from real problems.

We build what we, and people like us, actually need.

Move fast, learn faster.

Ship early, listen to users, iterate.

More in the lab

Project 05 — Coming soon
Project 06 — Coming soon

Let's build something.

Riccardo on LinkedIn ↗ Joshua on LinkedIn ↗

Met us at BRASA Madrid? Let's stay in touch.