Tamika: Meds, Garden & Sea

Through days of treatment, easier tracking and little joys. Turn conversations into health notes. Keep track of your meds. Grow a garden. Fill your sea with life.

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About Tamika

Inspiration

Tamika combines medication and health tracking with the enjoyment of conversation and a game where you grow vegetables and raise fish.

I want to make everyday life during treatment a little easier and give people something to look forward to.

But I did not start with a goal that big. I simply wanted to help my mother. That is why I started building this app.

In May 2026, my mother, Tamiko, was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer. That same month, she underwent surgery and began chemotherapy.

It took time for me to come to terms with her illness. I wanted to help, but I did not know what I could do.

My mother carefully recorded how she felt and what happened during treatment in a diary provided by her hospital. But chemotherapy side effects, including numbness in her hands, made her unable to keep writing. Her entries stopped.

“I want my mother to be able to keep a record of her days in her own words.”

If writing by hand was difficult, could she keep a record by talking instead? That thought led me to build an app that turns everyday conversation into a record of the day.

Yet there are days when even having a conversation feels like too much. On better days, taking medication or making an entry can slip from mind.

I wanted Tamika to be an app people would feel like opening on both kinds of days.

Someone might come back for another conversation simply because they enjoyed the last one. Or they might visit the garden or sea, curious to see how much their vegetables or fish have grown. While they are there, they might check their medication schedule or leave a few words about their day.

When treatment brings things people have to do every day, I wanted to give them a few more things they could look forward to. That hope became part of an app I had originally started building to help my mother keep a record.

I hope Tamika can bring small moments of enjoyment and support to the daily lives of others facing treatment, as my mother is.

What it does

Tamika brings medication, health notes, and everyday moments together in one place. It helps people manage their medication, keep track of treatment and appointments, and look back on their days.

When writing feels difficult, a conversation can be an easier place to start. People can speak or type naturally, and Tamika uses AI to organize what they share into health and daily-life notes. They can also add entries by hand, revisit their records, and export a PDF to bring to their next appointment.

There is something to enjoy beyond keeping records, too. People can use the coins they earn to buy seeds and welcome fish from a shop with a new selection each day. The seeds grow into vegetables and fruit in their garden, and the fish join their sea. No tending is needed. Even a small moment counts. Logging a rest or a moment spent looking at the sky earns coins, too. Whether they come to leave a note or simply watch their fish swim, people can return at their own pace, with a little more to look forward to.

Monetization

Tamika is available through a monthly subscription, with a one-week free trial for eligible users. The RevenueCat SDK handles subscriptions and restores access when needed. Coins are earned through everyday moments, never bought.

How It Was Built

Tamika was built entirely through vibe coding with Codex. I described what I wanted to create, tried the resulting app, and explained what needed to change. That cycle shaped the app.

I often developed ideas while walking on a treadmill at the gym. As I walked, I imagined experiences people might enjoy, pictured the screens and movements, and used Codex remotely to turn those ideas into working features. Back home, I would test the app, then think through the next improvements while walking again. Walking became a regular part of how I explored ideas and moved development forward.

My mother used the app through TestFlight, and we spoke on the phone every day as I continued refining it. What should she be able to record? What kinds of conversations and interactions would feel comfortable? Her feedback helped me work through those questions, one by one.

Tamika is a native iOS app built with SwiftUI. It uses OpenAI for conversation, with Cloudflare Workers handling server-side requests between the app and the AI service.

Tamika includes a OneSignal integration for a special fish visit to the sea. A Cloudflare Worker can send the visit notification through the OneSignal API, and the app has a path from the notification to the sea.

Challenges

Balancing confidence in a health app with a sense of comfort

I struggled with the home screen UI. As an app for recording medication and health, Tamika needed to feel clear and dependable. I also wanted it to feel comforting when someone opened it—a place they would want to return to.

I adjusted the layout and spacing, looking for a balance between making essential information and actions easy to understand and creating a sense of calm.

Keeping what people said, without adding what they did not

Sometimes, health details shared in conversation did not appear in the saved records. I needed to handle information that did not fit predefined categories, as well as replies that contained several different events.

I used AI to classify the content while grounding the records in what the person had actually said. I refined the process to preserve their original wording when categories were not enough and to avoid adding anything they had not shared.

Making sure rewards do not encourage unintended behavior

I considered awarding coins every time someone logged taking medication. But I reconsidered: could the reward motivate someone to register more medications or take them more often?

Instead, I made the medication reward available only once a day, after all scheduled medication for that day had been logged. Adding more medications or doses, or checking off an entry again, does not increase the reward.

Creating fish people want to keep watching

The early fish all swam in similar ways and looked like flat pieces of paper when they turned. Small, young fish also looked as though they were simply farther away.

I gave individual fish different swimming speeds and resting behaviors, then adjusted their tail movements and the camera that follows them. I also separated growth in body size from the apparent size caused by distance, refining the movement and display to make them feel more lifelike.

Accomplishments

A follower on X told me that the smiling face on Tamika’s home screen brings them comfort. My mother told me that the app helps her feel less alone. Hearing those words has been one of the most meaningful parts of building Tamika.

Lessons

Testing through TestFlight and talking with my mother each day helped me compare the experience I had imagined with the experience she was actually having. That gave me a starting point for the next improvement.

One thing she told me stayed with me: when writing by hand, she tended to focus on what hurt or what felt wrong. Through conversation, she could also talk about something delicious she had eaten or something she had enjoyed.

“It makes me smile. I feel less alone.”

At first, I wanted to help my mother keep records by talking when writing had become difficult. Her feedback helped me realize that changing how someone records their day can also change what they want to record.

There was room for more than how she felt physically. There was room for the happy and enjoyable moments of her day, too. Her words helped me see a little more clearly what I wanted to preserve in Tamika.

What's next

Next, I want to make the first conversation and medication check-in even easier to start, especially on difficult days. I will keep testing the experience with my mother and make the garden and sea richer and more expressive, giving people more to enjoy each time they return. Alongside that, I want to put more effort into sharing Tamika on social media and reaching people who could benefit from it.

Award Categories

I am entering Tamika for the RevenueCat Peace Prize, RevenueCat Design Award, and Keep Them Coming Back Award presented by OneSignal.

RevenueCat Peace Prize

For people going through treatment, keeping records can be important without always being easy. Some days, they feel too unwell to have the energy to write. On better days, they may forget to record anything. There can be a gap between the days they want to remember and the days they manage to record. I wanted to make that gap a little smaller.

In Tamika, talking is a way to begin a record, and enjoying the garden and sea is another reason to open the app. Rather than having to make an effort just to track their health, someone can come to watch the fish and leave a little note about their day while they are there. That is the kind of relationship with the app I hope to make possible.

Resting or looking at the sky is also an important part of a person’s day. Small moments of enjoyment belong not only to days when something is accomplished, but also to days spent resting. I hope those moments, over time, can become a source of support in everyday life alongside treatment.

My mother told me that using Tamika helps her feel less alone. This is one person’s experience, not evidence of a broader effect. Even so, I feel her words reflect the value I hope this app can offer: not only making records easier to keep, but also bringing comfort and enjoyment into the everyday lives of the people who use it.

RevenueCat Design Award

In designing Tamika, I focused on making interactions with the character feel reassuring. I paid attention to the timing of its blinks and smiles, as well as the tone of the conversation, to create an atmosphere where people can feel a little more at ease when they talk. Icons and color coding help people find the information they need. My aim is to balance clarity with an atmosphere that makes people want to open the app again.

Keep Them Coming Back Award (OneSignal)

I wanted Tamika to be a health-recording app that people would want to open for enjoyment, too. OneSignal helps deliver that invitation.

Ten colorful, imaginary fish called Coin Fish can occasionally visit the sea. A OneSignal notification is a small invitation to meet the visitor. Tapping it opens the sea, where the user can meet the fish and receive 100 in-game coins. The question “Which fish has come to visit?” gives people a reason to return beyond making another health entry.

A Cloudflare Worker manages the visits and sends notifications through the OneSignal API. Fish arrive at random intervals of 7–10 days, with at most one notification per visit. If the user has already seen the fish, the notification is suppressed, and no last-minute reminder is sent before the visit ends. Notifications are optional, and fish still visit when notifications are turned off. The aim is to offer something to look forward to while respecting each person’s pace.

These notifications have been sent through the OneSignal API, and I have also received one in the publicly released App Store version. I use OneSignal to bring a small moment of enjoyment from Tamika’s world to the user, creating a welcoming reason to open the app again.

Built With

  • cloudflare-workers
  • codex
  • ios
  • openai
  • revenuecat
  • swift
  • swiftui
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