Inspiration
I was super young when I first saw porn, way too young. It really messed with how I saw relationships, intimacy, and my own self-worth during those growing-up years. It's not uncommon either, the average age young people first see it is around 12. It's destructive and not frequently discussed or seen as bad most of the time, at least in my experience. There aren't many solutions for people looking to recover either. In an attempt to provide an experience that isn't just another boring tracker app, I've blended my love for movies with the psychology of recovery.
What it does
Every day, you get a new GIF from a film or show that inspires me. The design feels modern taking inspiration from iOS 26 for a glass morphism type style. It makes you actually look forward to the next day because you don't know what cool celebration is coming. Daily quotes from influential figures that help motive you, as well as my own personal quotes for when users hit milestones. A community tab where people will keep each other accountable and lean on one another for support. Finally an AI Coach backed up with the facts and a tough love attitude to keep you on the path to recovery.
How I built it
I'm a vibe coder all the way through, I didn't write a single line of code myself. I used Claude Code for most of the development, and when I hit bugs or got stuck on how to structure something, Gemini and Perplexity were awesome for research and brainstorming. All the neuroscience facts and addiction stats came from Perplexity. The app's built in SwiftUI with a glass morphism design I feel isn't getting enough love from the 2 friends I showed. Data syncs through CloudKit so progress follows you across devices. The AI coach runs on OpenAI's GPT-4o mini (took forever to nail the prompt), and the panic button uses your phone's front camera to show you yourself when you're tempted along with a rolodex of call to action type quotes to help you break free from temptation in the moment. I personally handpicked cropped and quality enhanced all GIFs from movies and shows I love and set up a system to cycle them daily. RevenueCat handles the subscriptions so I never have to think about it.
Challenges I ran into
Literally Everything. Before this Shipaton I had never written of programmed anything in my life, I had to learn all of this from scratch. CloudKit sync made zero sense to me at first. I didn't understand why my data wasn't syncing, how private vs public databases worked, or why upvoting a post would break everything. I spent days creating things, then figuring out I made them wrong entirely, then restarting from scratch. Then there was figuring out how to even get GIFs working in Xcode they need specific formatting and handling or they won't animate. Xcode itself was completely foreign to me. I didn't know what any the panel did, how to read error messages, or why my builds kept failing. The panic button camera feature took forever because I' didn't understand camera permissions or how to get the feed cropped and displaying properly. Getting the AI right was trial and error for days every time I changed the prompt the whole personality would shift, and that was only after I figured out how to connect it. I basically learned iOS development by building this app, which was terrifying, exciting, exhausting, but finally rewarding all at the same time.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I built an app. Like, an actual functioning app that's live on the app store. That alone feels surreal because 2 months ago I didn't know a single line of code and lowkey, I still don't really know code. But I built something real that people can download and use. The biggest moment was checking my RevenueCat dashboard and seeing my first purchase. Someone I've never met saw my app, decided it was worth paying for, and hasn't canceled yet which hopefully means it's actually helping someone right now. Something I created with absolutely nothing but brute force delusional optimism and a ton of tokens is making a difference in someone's life. That's wild to me.
What I learned
You can just do things, I learned you don't need to be a "real developer" to build something that matters or has an impact. If you have a you're willing to grind through the confusion, you can ship actual products and help people. Also Cloudkit is both magical and infuriating I'm not sure I'll ever fully understand it.
What's next for SINNR APP
I think its time to actually market the app, all my impressions and downloads came straight from ASO(omg) so I want to try and get some eyes on the app for real, thank you so much Shipaton, without this event I probably never would have done this, and never would have actually seen success from it.
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