Ask an image model for an App Store screenshot and you get a beautiful visual with an unreadable headline. I inverted the order: a script draws the text, and the model isn't allowed near it. Plus the bit of arithmetic that cost me a full set of screenshots.
Family apps are very good at filing a household's information. None of them change who has to think about it. Building Noan, I spent more time on that shift than on every feature combined — and on the tightrope it forces: making invisible work visible without keeping score.
No crash, no log, just white. Three different causes, one symptom — plus the 4th bug that made the other three impossible to debug: my safety net had a hole in it.
An AI agent ships «average» code by default: 300-line files, any everywhere, logic in the JSX. Here are the 10 rules I wrote for VoiceJournal, and why they hold.
VoiceJournal made it to the App Store, but not on the first try. The concrete rejections I got, the exact fixes, and the process traps (DSA, ITMS-90186, RevenueCat, App Groups) that aren't anywhere in Apple's docs.
You talk for 30 seconds. Whisper transcribes, Claude writes your journal, gives you a Mind Score and tags your emotions. Here's how it's built and why I did it.
Three apps shipped in two years. The stack I'd pick again tomorrow, the anti-patterns I lived through, and the specific traps you won't find in the docs.