Crumbo

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  Crumbo keyscreens

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Inspiration

Every food app I tried wanted me to log everything I ate, including calories, macros and barcodes, and I quit them all within a week. Nutrition wasn't what I wanted to watch. I wanted to notice how often I reached for junk. So I built the inverse of a nutrition app, where you don't log what you eat, only what you shouldn't have. It had to take one tap a day. It also had to be fun to look at, so I'd keep it because I liked opening it and not because it lectured me. The look comes from printed matter: a tiled diner wall, a tray liner and a sticker sheet.

What it does

Crumbo lets you keep track of your snacks and treats in a visual calendar. View trends of your eating patterns and collect stickers of your junk food. It's a reversed food tracker without the calories and grams.

How we built it

Stack. SwiftUI and SwiftData on iOS 17+. Cutouts. Vision subject lifting cuts the food out of the photo. Shaders. Custom Metal shaders via layerEffect do the die-cut sticker border, the clean-tile shimmer, the wall gleam and the laminated sticker sheen. Sync. CloudKit mirrors the data in the private database. Purchases. RevenueCat handles Crumbo+. It is the only third-party dependency and the only other network call the app makes. Workflow. I built it with Claude Code as a pair programmer. It took about five weeks from the first commit on 10 Aug to App Store approval on 17 Sep.

Challenges we ran into

App Review asked for more information. Apple sent a Guideline 2.1 "Information Needed" request. I had to supply a screen recording from a physical device and detailed notes. I also learned that replying in the Resolution Center doesn't put you back in the queue. You have to press Resubmit.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A unique retro design and fun to use App.

What we learned

Restraint is a feature. Most of the best decisions were things I took back out: the red tiles, the wordmark, the animated sponge and a settings screen full of switches.

What's next for Crumbo

A home-screen widget showing the wall and the apple. Shareable month posters, so you can export your tiled wall as an image. More languages. More to find on the wall, such as seasonal tiles and more things to peel off and play with.

Built With

• claude
• crumbs
• love
• swift