Dev Journal
Real development journeys documented from concept to launch. Every decision, pivot, and lesson — in real time.
Ten Sprints: From Crystal Shader to World Select
Glyntfall hit Sprint 10. What started as one crystal and one shatter is now a multi-world game with 5 orb types, 5 evolution abilities, surge difficulty, a meta-upgrade tree, and 488 tests. Here's what ten sprints of solo game development actually looks like.
Turning Personal Trivia Into a Daily Game
A new Playbook project: KnowYou turns questions about friends and family into trivia games within private groups. Four game types, 200 questions, daily rounds, and a Lightning Round modifier. Built with SwiftUI and Supabase in five sprints.
The Gate Sprint That Greenlit Everything
Sprint 2 was the gate. The entire concept phase ended with a Conditional Go: if crystal destruction doesn't feel satisfying at 60fps, stop. One sprint, one session, 30 new tests, and a verdict that turned a conditional concept into a real project.
Four Spikes, Zero Surprises (That's the Suspicious Part)
I budgeted 24 hours across four technical spikes for Glyntfall. I used about six. Every spike validated. Most finished under half their time box. The architecture got simpler, not more complex. Either pre-production specs really do de-risk this well, or I'm about to learn something painful in production.
MCP Servers as a Development Toolchain
Four MCP servers installed before any game code exists. How AI image generation, UI mockups, design tooling, and sound design became part of the development toolchain, mapped to Playbook phases.
Why I'm Using CSS to Build a Game UI
Unity has a built-in UI system. I'm not using it. How pain from Fizzics, muscle memory from SwiftUI, and a dark-on-dark aesthetic led to a three-system UI architecture for a mobile game.
How I Use CLAUDE.md to Keep AI on the Rails
The single file that shapes every AI coding session. How a global CLAUDE.md file turned chaotic AI conversations into something that actually ships working code.
Prompting for Architecture, Not Just Code
Most people use AI to write code. The bigger leverage is using it to think through what you're building before you write anything. How the Playbook's phase structure turns AI into an architecture partner.
Sprint Workflow With an AI Pair
How sprint retros, journal entries, and session handoffs create a feedback loop that makes AI coding sessions better over time. The workflow I use across every project.
What AI Tools Get Wrong (and What to Do About It)
After 9 projects built with AI coding tools, here are the failure patterns I keep seeing. Hallucinated code, over-engineering, confidence without context, and the corrections that actually stick.
From Napkin to Conditional Go in One Session
Running the full Playbook concept phase for a new game, an idle-action crystal destruction hybrid. How a vague 'ad-friendly game idea' became a themed concept with competitive positioning, technical architecture, and a clear gate for production.
Sprint 4 Retro: When Construction Becomes Convergence
Planned 30 tasks, delivered 105. The sprint after the walking skeleton is always different. Three sprint types, a first-playthrough ritual, and concrete playbook changes.
The Playbook Goes Public
Open-sourcing the Development Playbook on GitHub. 6 phases, 39 step guides, 22 templates, MIT licensed. The methodology is now free for anyone to use.
Adapting the Playbook for Agency Work
What happens when a methodology designed for solo indie apps gets dropped into a marketing agency engagement. Six phases became four. Internal gates became client approvals. The screenshot workflow nearly broke me.
Sprint 4: Making It Look Like a Real Game
From functional prototype to visual identity. 5-layer compound explosions, SDF molecular tier indicators, neon UI, beaker fog architecture, and the first device build on iPhone.
Packaging the Playbook as a Consulting Deliverable
The landing page was one project. The AI development package — CLAUDE.md, 9 skills, adapted playbook, 5 guides — is a product that serves every future project. Here's how I built it.
Sprints 1–3: From Beaker to Game Feel
Three sprints of building Fizzics. Container physics, merge mechanics, chain reactions, VFX, haptics, and 205 passing tests.
Requirements Deep Dive: 7 Epics, 20 Stories
Breaking down the full feature set into manageable epics and user stories before writing a single line of code.
Walking Skeleton: First Deploy to Cloudflare
Getting the thinnest possible version of the site live. A walking skeleton with CI/CD and a domain.
Kicking Off Phase 0: Why Build in Public?
The decision to document every step of building The Dev Playbook, and why transparency beats perfection.
Architecting Fizzics: Manager + ScriptableObject Events
Why I chose an event-driven architecture for a physics-heavy casual game, and what happened when I tried to apply a web-app Playbook to game development.
Can We Render Fluid Physics on iPhone?
The critical technical spike that validated Fizzics' core visual promise. Metaball shader rendering at 60fps on real hardware.
Fizzics: From Suika Clone to Fluid Physics Puzzler
How a casual puzzle game concept evolved from 'Suika with liquids' into a visually differentiated physics puzzler with a neon mad scientist aesthetic.
Building a Route Pipeline from OpenStreetMap
How I validated that curating a complete trail route (geometry, milestones, photos) takes under an hour, not a week.
RoamAbout: Turning Steps Into Adventures
Why 'you walked 8,000 steps' is the least motivating sentence in fitness, and how I'm turning physical movement into virtual trail progress.
App Store Rejection: The Infinite Splash Screen
How a race condition in async sign-in code created an infinite splash screen that killed V1.0's App Store submission.
Freely: The Pivot From Diabetes App to Allergy Tracker
How a calorie tracker concept died twice before finding the gap nobody else had filled: allergen detection meets nutrition tracking.
Turnstone: What If Minesweeper Had a Soul?
How a childhood classic became a nature exploration game with real species, hand-illustrated biomes, and a guaranteed-solvable algorithm.
Shipping Pulsecheck: From Idea to Live SaaS
What it took to go from zero to a live multi-tenant SaaS with billing, notifications, and an embeddable widget. 18 phases, one developer.
Halfsie: Making Finance Apps Feel Human
Why I built an expense-splitting app that prioritizes feeling over function, and what 'delight has a budget' means in practice.
PackFox: Building Weather Intelligence Into a Packing App
How I built a packing app that actually checks the weather for you, suggests gear based on conditions, and does it all on-device in 5 languages.
Pulsecheck: Edge Computing on a Budget
Why I built a SaaS on Cloudflare Workers + D1 instead of a traditional server, and what constraints forced better architecture decisions.
Dishlist: 400 Family Recipes Needed an App
Why I built a recipe app after trying a dozen that couldn't handle camping trip meal planning, and how 400 family recipes from a food blog became the seed content.