Cozi Gold
Share a household calendar, lists, chores, and simple meal notes
The core loop is small enough for a capable coding agent to produce a useful local version in one sitting. For Cozi Gold, share a household calendar, lists, chores, and simple meal notes. The hard boundary is family adoption, mobile apps, reminders, sync, and years of household workflow polish, plus sync, integrations, and household adoption.
Build verification: not recorded. How we judge buildability
What you give up
- family adoption, mobile apps, reminders, sync, and years of household workflow polish
- frictionless family sync
- retailer and smart-home integrations
- large recipe or product database
- mobile polish
Why people still pay
People still pay for Cozi Gold because household apps survive when every family member actually uses them and the data stays current across devices. The recurring cost buys multi-user conflicts, reminders, notifications, imports, barcode data, smart-home APIs, backups, and long-term maintenance, not just the visible interface.
Your build guide
The stack, security requirements, and agent rules for a focused replacement.
Before you start
- Runtime and tools: TypeScript, React, Node and PostgreSQL with workspace membership enforced on the server.
- Before starting: A PostgreSQL database, session authentication, two isolated example workspaces and private attachment storage.
Use these project rules and optional skill references alongside the prompt. Review each skill before adding it to your agent; the AGENTS.md export includes the same guidance.
Project rule — domain: Store Household, Member, EventSeries, EventException, ChoreOccurrence and ListItem; completing one recurring chore affects only that occurrence, not the series.
Project rule — scope and recovery: Use household-scoped invitations and timezone-aware reminders. Keep children's details private, and distinguish a best-effort reminder from a guaranteed notification.
Project rule — acceptance: Move one weekly chore to Saturday and mark it done; later weeks retain the original schedule and another household cannot retrieve the print view.
Project rule — delivery: document real setup commands and permissions; do not claim a build, accuracy level, performance result or security certification that has not been demonstrated.
Recommended skill: supabase-postgres-best-practices — review this PostgreSQL domain schema, uniqueness constraints, transaction boundaries and access-scoped queries; Supabase hosting is not required. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Recommended skill: web-design-guidelines — review keyboard access, focus, validation, error recovery and the readable work/review interface or HTML report. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Implementation plan
Phase 1
Pin the working slice and create its example input: Share a family calendar, recurring chores and grocery lists, with a printable week that shows each person's commitments. Confirm setup: A PostgreSQL database, session authentication, two isolated example workspaces and private attachment storage.
Phase 2
Implement persistence and write-time invariants before decorating the UI: Store Household, Member, EventSeries, EventException, ChoreOccurrence and ListItem; completing one recurring chore affects only that occurrence, not the series.
Phase 3
Connect the working view to real saved state. Check membership on reads, mutations, attachments and exports. Keep activity history separate from editable current state; do not make private records public through search.
Phase 4
Expose the app-specific limits and recovery path in context: Use household-scoped invitations and timezone-aware reminders. Keep children's details private, and distinguish a best-effort reminder from a guaranteed notification.
Phase 5
Walk through this concrete acceptance case and preserve its exported evidence: Move one weekly chore to Saturday and mark it done; later weeks retain the original schedule and another household cannot retrieve the print view. Finish the README and backup/restore instructions; report unfinished capabilities explicitly.
Build the following focused alternative to Cozi Gold. Implement the focused workflow below first; the verdict is not evidence of a completed or production-certified build. WORKING SLICE Share a family calendar, recurring chores and grocery lists, with a printable week that shows each person's commitments. SETUP AND ARCHITECTURE Use TypeScript, React, Node and PostgreSQL with workspace membership enforced on the server. Prerequisites: A PostgreSQL database, session authentication, two isolated example workspaces and private attachment storage. Before integrating anything, record actual versions and permissions, plus model files or provider limits only where used, in the README; make unavailable dependencies visible rather than simulating success. DOMAIN MODEL AND INVARIANTS Store Household, Member, EventSeries, EventException, ChoreOccurrence and ListItem; completing one recurring chore affects only that occurrence, not the series. IMPLEMENTATION CONTRACT Check membership on reads, mutations, attachments and exports. Keep activity history separate from editable current state; do not make private records public through search. Provide an input/setup view, the main work view, and a review/export view appropriate to this workflow. Preserve the last saved state if a job or save fails. Include empty, loading, permission-denied, partial and retryable-error states. Log identifiers and error categories without secret values or unnecessary private content. APP-SPECIFIC BOUNDARY AND RECOVERY Use household-scoped invitations and timezone-aware reminders. Keep children's details private, and distinguish a best-effort reminder from a guaranteed notification. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIO Move one weekly chore to Saturday and mark it done; later weeks retain the original schedule and another household cannot retrieve the print view. Also reopen the app after an interrupted operation, confirm the saved record/export remains inspectable, and document the recovery action. These are implementation acceptance requirements, not a claim that this guide has been tested. DELIVERY Deliver a runnable repository with migrations or project-format versioning, a non-sensitive example, environment/permission setup, the exact manual acceptance steps, and a backup/export-and-restore walkthrough. Implement the working slice before optional integrations; list any deferred paid-product capabilities honestly. Do not add capabilities outside the working slice just to resemble the original product. PROJECT RULES FOR AGENTS.md Keep the domain invariants above executable at the write boundary. Propose scope changes before adding providers or permissions. Never fabricate source evidence, publish results, identity matches or successful delivery. Preserve user originals and require an explicit confirmation for destructive changes or external publication.
$ open in your agent (prompt prefilled, you press enter), copy the prompt or copy or download AGENTS.md
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Alternatives to building your own
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Cozi Gold pricing
| plan | monthly | annual (per mo) | what you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| cozi free | $0 | $0 | Shared calendar, lists and recipes for the family; no numeric caps disclosed.Free plan includes ads. |
| cozi gold | — | $3.25 | Whole-family upgrade; no ads, mobile month view, calendar search, up to 3 reminders per event, change notifications, birthday tracker, shopping mode, premium support.Official page says $39 on web or in-app purchase; no monthly price published. |
free tierfree plan exists with shared calendar/lists/recipes; no numeric caps disclosed.
billingannual on public page ($39/year); no monthly plan published
hidden costsGold applies to everyone in the family; free tier is ad-supported.
pricing sources checked 2026-08-10 · pricing source ↗
Questions about Cozi Gold
Can you build your own Cozi Gold with AI?
The verdict is yes for the scoped workflow. The core loop is small enough for a capable coding agent to produce a useful local version in one sitting. For Cozi Gold, share a household calendar, lists, chores, and simple meal notes. The hard boundary is family adoption, mobile apps, reminders, sync, and years of household workflow polish, plus sync, integrations, and household adoption.
What does the Cozi Gold build prompt cover?
The prompt starts with this scope: Share a family calendar, recurring chores and grocery lists, with a printable week that shows each person's commitments. Full-product capabilities excluded from the comparison include: family adoption, mobile apps, reminders, sync, and years of household workflow polish; frictionless family sync; retailer and smart-home integrations. Follow the implementation plan and its prerequisites before expanding the build.
How do I use the prompt, AGENTS.md and agent skills?
Start with the Cozi Gold prerequisites and stack, then copy the prompt into your coding agent. Save the project rules as AGENTS.md in the project root. Linked skills are optional packages or source instructions for specific tasks; review their current contents and install only those matching the chosen stack. A skill does not supply API credentials or verify the finished app.
How long will this Cozi Gold project take?
The catalogue estimate is one sitting for the limited scope. Setup, integration approvals, debugging, deployment and ongoing maintenance can add time. This is an estimate, not a delivery guarantee.
What would I give up by replacing Cozi Gold?
family adoption, mobile apps, reminders, sync, and years of household workflow polish; frictionless family sync; retailer and smart-home integrations; large recipe or product database; mobile polish. People still pay for Cozi Gold because household apps survive when every family member actually uses them and the data stays current across devices. The recurring cost buys multi-user conflicts, reminders, notifications, imports, barcode data, smart-home APIs, backups, and long-term maintenance, not just the visible interface.
What price is this guide comparing against?
The recorded Gold plan is $3.25/mo (annual-equivalent), checked 2026-07-31. Check the linked pricing source before buying. Building your own also has hosting, API and maintenance costs; the recorded amount is not a guaranteed saving.
What can I use instead of building Cozi Gold?
Cozi Free: The same shared calendar, lists, tasks, and recipes for $0; the ads and nicer controls stay upstairs. Family Tools Basic: Calendar, chores, and shared lists for twelve people; meal planning is exactly where the paywall starts. Check each option's license, hosting needs and feature limits.