Blogs

Last Week Last week was about trying to get Shokken ready for the “real world” instead of just the “builder world”. The alpha builds are in a good place on both Android and iOS, and I’m still shipping weekly updates as bugs and rough edges show up from testers. The big non-app milestone was the product website: getting it to the point where it explains what Shokken is, what problem it solves, and what the next step is for a restaurant that’s curious....

Last Week Last week was about building a real “front door” for Shokken: the product website. The layout, content, and overall structure are in a good place, but I still need the assets that make it feel real—screenshots and a short demo video that show the app in motion. On the app side, the theme is still the same: the alpha builds are usable, I’m shipping updates, and testing keeps surfacing bugs and rough edges that I didn’t anticipate....

Last Week Last week was about turning “this app exists” into “this product exists”. I got my Google developer account converted from an individual account to an organization account (Apple is still in review), and I started doing the early work on a real product website: figuring out what a landing page needs to communicate, what trust signals matter, and what the next step should be for someone who’s curious enough to try Shokken....

Last Week Last week was about clearing the biggest blocker to real-world testing: guest notifications. I formed an LLC, got an EIN, and provisioned a toll-free number so Shokken can send SMS reliably without depending on a host device. That got the project out of “email deliverability limbo” and back into a place where the app can actually be evaluated by restaurants in the way it’s meant to be used....

Last Week Last week was about getting unblocked on a problem that ended up being bigger than “just swap email for SMS”. Shokken’s guest notifications were reliably landing in spam, which makes a waitlist product feel broken at exactly the moment it needs to feel dependable. Switching to SMS meant walking into telecom compliance, and compliance meant I needed to be a verifiable organization. The two concrete goals were: form an LLC, and use that newly formed LLC to apply for toll-free SMS access with my upstream provider....

Last Week Week 52 was mostly about removing friction for testers: automated TestFlight distribution, and federated login so onboarding didn’t depend on email OTP deliverability. The plan for the follow-up was polishing—tightening the UX and smoothing out the rough edges now that both Android and iOS builds were broadly installable. Instead, I ran into a different kind of deliverability problem: not “can users log in?”, but “can guests actually receive the waitlist notifications?...

Last Week Week 51 ended with two competing realities: iOS testing finally went live, but the very first step in the funnel (logging in) was brittle because email OTP deliverability is not something you can “design your way out of” with better copy. I also had too much iOS release work that required sitting down at a Mac and clicking through App Store Connect. This week was about reducing those two sources of friction: automate iOS distribution so I can ship without ceremony, and give testers a login path that doesn’t depend on a brand new sending domain being trusted by Gmail....

Last Week Last week was about getting iOS out of the “it builds on my machine” phase. I moved the CI/CD pipeline off expensive hosted macOS runners, set up a self-hosted runner that can reliably archive the Compose Multiplatform iOS app, and worked through App Store Connect’s metadata and policy checklist so TestFlight wouldn’t be blocked on paperwork. The big open question was whether Apple would force Sign in with Apple even for an early testing build....

Last Week Week 49 ended with two unfinished promises. I picked Codex as the long-term Kotlin Multiplatform copilot and got the first iOS archive to upload through GitHub Actions, but that victory came with a warning label: hosted macOS runners eat ten times as many minutes, and I only had 2,000 free credits to burn. I also committed to finishing the App Store Connect onboarding so TestFlight could mirror the Android alpha track....

Last Week Week 48 was the long-postponed reset after a month of travel. I dusted off the Kotlin Multiplatform repo, replayed the Android alpha build, and made a very public promise: stop treating the weekly vlog as postcards and start shipping again. That entry ended with two concrete goals for this week. First, I needed to pick a long-term coding copilot so I could lean on the same assistant every day instead of juggling trials....