Planout: Evening Planner

Can't decide where to go tonight? Answer four quick questions and Planout plans your whole evening with real places near you.

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Inspiration

Every evening starts with the same question: "Where should we go tonight?" You open a map, scroll through dozens of restaurants and bars, compare reviews — and half an hour later you're still on the sofa. Too many options make the decision harder, not easier. I wanted an app that simply decides for you and hands you one good evening.

What it does

Planout asks four quick questions — who you're with, your mood, your budget and how far you'll go — and builds one complete evening plan from real places nearby: somewhere to eat, something to do and somewhere to end the night, with suggested times and walking distances between stops.

  • One plan, not a hundred options, picked for your mood, company and budget
  • Stops that fit the hour: 1–3 stops depending on the time, so no museums at midnight
  • Swap any stop or rebuild the whole evening in one tap
  • Explore great places by category, near you or in any city you choose
  • Directions in Apple Maps or Google Maps with a single tap

How I built it

  • SwiftUI for iOS 26, with native Liquid Glass tab bar and materials
  • MapKit for real place search and CoreLocation for nearby results
  • SwiftData for saved evenings and weekly plan limits
  • Sign in with Apple and Google sign-in (OAuth with PKCE)
  • RevenueCat SDK with StoreKit 2 for subscriptions
  • A dark, warm "evening" design: the icon is a P whose bowl is a setting sun, the splash animation draws it on, and onboarding tells the story in the same sunset language

Challenges I ran into

  • Opening hours: Apple Maps doesn't provide them, so I built typical hours per type of place to avoid suggesting places that are likely closed.
  • Late-night planning: when most places are closed, the app offers a night-in plan instead of an empty screen.
  • Shipping as a first-time developer: signing, subscriptions, paywall rules and App Review, all within the hackathon.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

  • Shipping a complete, native iOS app to the App Store, from idea to live, within the hackathon
  • A full subscription flow with RevenueCat: paywall, free trial, entitlements, restore and Customer Center
  • A distinctive visual identity, from the sunset "P" icon to the splash animation and onboarding
  • Plans built from real places that actually respect the time of day

What I learned

How to design a paywall that meets App Store rules, how entitlements, offerings and paywalls fit together in RevenueCat, and how much of shipping an app happens outside the code: store listings, privacy labels, review notes and testing on real devices.

What's next for Planout: Evening Planner

Smarter plans with AI

  • AI-powered planning that understands requests in plain words, like "a cosy first date under $50" or "somewhere lively for a birthday"
  • AI place descriptions explaining why each place fits your evening (already prototyped with Claude, launching after 1.0)
  • Personalised suggestions that learn from the plans you keep and the stops you swap

Better place data

  • Real opening and closing hours from a places data provider, replacing typical hours
  • Ratings, price levels and photos for every stop
  • Booking links for restaurants and events

Plans you can keep and share

  • Save favourite plans and places to reuse later
  • Share a plan with friends and let them vote on stops
  • Reminders before the evening starts

Reach and quality

  • Localisation into more languages, starting with the countries with the most users
  • UI improvements based on user feedback and bug fixes from real-world use
  • iPad and home-screen widgets for tonight's plan
  • Growth experiments with RevenueCat: testing trial length, pricing and paywall design

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