Build 18, and we still have not launched

Things that would have taken me weeks, I now do in a couple of hours.

I know how to code. That part has not changed. What changed is the speed. A lot of people are buying coding tools right now, and the speed is what is actually helping us. I can sit down, have an idea, and put it in the app the same afternoon.

1:00

“Things that'd take me weeks, I do in a couple hours.”

This episode was a behind the scenes record of the app we are building. It is called Cass. Gabby found the name and there are two meanings behind it, including the constellation Cassiopeia, which is an M for half the night and a W for the other half. That matches what the app is for. You see your ups and your downs, and you get a chance to intervene. Gabby is the face and the mastermind of it. I am putting the pieces together and coding.

We beta test so we can be wrong in private

Right now we have a landing page and we share it with people who want in. Everything is in beta. The reason is simple. We can test ideas before we launch them. Once it is live, it is harder. People complain. One little thing goes wrong in the App Store and you get one star reviews.

6:48

“We can test ideas before we actually launch them.”

We also keep a build log. There were eighteen builds before this one. It is a way for us to track what changed and when, and it matters if we ever want to go public one day.

Two open items. The account screen says free. That is beta. It is not going to be free. And I still have to double check Apple's terms on the section where a user can become a client, because I am not sure you are allowed to self promote like that inside the app. It may have to be an external link.

The icon was going to tell you your day sucked

At the start we made the app icon a W. Good day, it updates to a W. Bad days, it flips to an M. Same logic as the constellation. Then I looked at it again and pulled it.

Same instinct with customization. Gabby pitched themes, pop culture faces instead of the mood icons, and I had thought about something like that early on. It is a good idea and we will explore it. For now I stepped back to keep it simple. The views are the same. There are three of them, and I usually keep it at three. Minimal, see everything, and one other look. Where a word might confuse someone, tapping the card flips it and explains what it means in simple words.

11:40

“I'm going to step back to keep it simple.”

The research pointed at one gap

We found this through research. The number one complaint people had about tracking and period apps was that they wanted a quick summary to show a doctor. No app was doing that. So Cass builds a summary of what is happening in your cycle that you can hand to your provider, instead of trying to memorize it in the room.

21:12

“And there was no app that was doing that.”

Retention is the gap between input and reward

What makes people stick with an app is the delay between typing something in and getting something back. Right now the patterns section needs two cycles of data before it shows you anything. That is a long wait, and the stickiness drops because of it.

23:40

“That delay between I type something and the reward.”

So we added early observations. You log a few days and it already tells you something. Log overwhelmed every day for eight or nine days and it will say so, which means it is doing its job. Before that screen, there was nothing. The three things to do today on the home screen does the same work.

I built it for my eyes, so now I need testers

I showed Gabby the focus map and asked her straight out whether she understood it or whether it was too complicated. She got it. That is one person. What I want to know is what most people see. If you have a tester for us, let us know.

24:58

“That's to me. I want to hear what most people.”

Patterns is the section that still needs work, and I cannot finish it from the outside. I need to see people's patterns actually show up before I know what to change. That is where the next week goes. I also want to look up the research on visuals, because there is a correlation between vision issues and ADHD, and I want to know what colours and shapes actually work.

The log screen is deliberately plain. Nothing shouts until you tap it. Then what you selected pops, and you can scan the whole day in one look. That is the direction, more colour coded, more obvious at a glance.

Sophia listens, a human still signs off

Sophia is my AI assistant. She sits in on this, picks up the ideas we throw around, and turns them into work. Every note in this episode becomes something in the build. None of it ships untouched.