Retrospectives and numbers
Looking back over a period of work: what went fast and what went wrong, with numbers we counted ourselves from the git history and QA reports.
Notes
Daily users rose after the redesign while organic D1 retention fell from 15.2% to 11.2%
After an August 2025 redesign, D1 retention of our spelling app's organic cohorts fell from 15.2% to 11.2%; 70% of lost daily users were 31-365 days old.
We built three photo apps before checking the market: this year's new apps had a median of 1,166 installs
We scraped Google Play only after building three photo apps. The 32 compress apps from 2026 had a median of 1,166 installs; 11 apps were logged as on hold.
A year of AI coding in 701 commits: from "complete" to cause and verification
701 commits recounted: after adopting AI, messages grew from 26 to 233 characters, but fixes stating a cause went from 1 of 29 to 56 of 73 only a year later.
How we shipped four Android apps in 20 days with an AI coding agent
A solo developer and Claude Code put four Android apps on Google Play within 20 days of the first commit. 52 of 59 commits were co-authored with the agent.