Stu Launches on the App Store

For most of last year, if you’d asked me when our furnace filter was last changed, I wouldn’t have known. Not the exact date, not even the season. That’s the problem this app was built to solve, and today it’s live: Stu is available on the App Store for iPhone.

The Problem With What’s Out There

Most home maintenance apps are contractor marketplaces disguised as to-do lists. They’re free because they make their money routing you to a pro, whether you need one or not. The alternative most of us build instead is a sprawling spreadsheet or a pile of reminders scattered across a phone. Neither is really a system. One takes constant upkeep, and the other you learn to ignore.

What we wanted was simpler. Something that quietly kept track for us and told us what mattered this week. No lead generation, no ads, no reason to send us anywhere.

Why I Built It

When my wife and I bought our first home in the summer of 2025, we had no idea what we were getting into. The furnace, the sump pump, prepping for a Minnesota winter, the grading around the foundation. All the things nobody explains until something breaks.

We figured it out the hard way, through research, trial and error, and a lot of weekends at Home Depot. Somewhere in that process, something shifted. We stopped feeling like guests in our own house and started feeling like owners, the kind who know which shutoff valve to turn first and keep a record of every filter change and furnace inspection.

That’s Stu. The name is short for steward: someone who takes care of what they have and passes it on in better shape than they found it.

The Idea Behind Stu

A steward doesn’t need to be an expert. They need a system that surfaces what matters, explains why it matters, and stays out of the way otherwise. That’s the whole idea behind Stu.

So every task comes with instructions and the reasoning behind it, and the work builds your own know-how instead of just checking a box. When there’s nothing due, the app says nothing. No streaks to keep, no backlog guilt.

What It Does

Stu asks a few questions about your home, your location and the major systems you have, and builds a maintenance plan around them. Not a generic checklist, but a plan for your actual house. From there it’s four simple steps:

1. Describe your home. Your location and major systems, the basics Stu needs to fit a plan to your house.
2. Get a maintenance plan. A tailored list of recurring tasks: what to do, how often, and when.
3. See what’s due. Open the app and it shows what needs attention this week.
4. Record what’s done. Mark a task complete and it joins a permanent log, the answer to “when was this last serviced?” we never had.

Underneath, the app is organized into a few views. Today is your shortlist. Tasks holds the full plan, filterable by system or season. Systems breaks your home into ten areas, from HVAC to paint, each with its own history.

Private by Default

There’s no account to create and no connection required. Stu runs entirely on your iPhone, and your home’s data never leaves it. There’s no server it could leave to. The app collects a little anonymized usage information, like zip code and home type, to help it improve, but your home profile, tasks, and history stay on the device. And because that data is yours, you can export your full home history as a CSV whenever you want.

Who It’s For

Stu is for first-time homeowners figuring it out as they go, and for anyone tired of guessing what their house needs.

Getting Started

Stu is available now on the App Store by subscription, $24.99/year or $2.99/month. I built it for people in the spot we were in a couple of years ago, and I hope it helps you the way I wish it had helped us. If you run into anything, a bug, a missing task, or a feature you wish existed, I’d like to hear about it at support@stu.tools.

— Justin Anderson, Founder