What ProofPack was
- My first real mobile app — not a tutorial project, not a prototype.
- An actual app that I built, submitted, and published on the Play Store.
- It took longer than I expected and broke more than I wanted.
- It taught things no course could — because real things break in ways tutorials do not.
The biggest thing I got wrong: scope
- My original idea for ProofPack was enormous — I wanted it to do ten things.
- I ended up building the version that did one thing well.
- Even that took three times longer than I expected.
- The ten-thing version would have taken forever and probably never shipped.
- Start smaller than feels right. Then start smaller than that.
The second thing I got wrong: how I used AI
- For the first few weeks I treated Codex like a magic wand.
- I would paste enormous blocks of code and ask it to "fix everything."
- The results were unpredictable — sometimes helpful, often worse than before.
- The fix was simple: ask for one change at a time, every single time.
- That one rule changed every session that came after.
What I got right: GitHub from day one
- I committed after every working change from the very beginning.
- This saved me at least four times during the build.
- Once when Codex rewrote half my navigation by accident.
- Once when an updated dependency broke everything.
- Once when I deleted a file I thought I no longer needed.
- GitHub was the difference between losing a week of work and losing an afternoon.
The habit I am most glad I kept: documenting as I went
- Every prompt that worked — written down.
- Every error I hit — recorded.
- Every fix that solved it — noted.
- That documentation became the foundation for what I now share on NonDev Apps.
- If you are not documenting your working prompts, you are rebuilding from scratch every session.
What I would do differently if I started today
- Start with a much smaller idea than feels right.
- Commit to GitHub every thirty minutes instead of once a day.
- Write prompts as if explaining the problem to a careful friend — not shouting at a magic box.