Find Solace
An AI journaling app for iOS, taken solo from zero to the App Store.
The question I was chasing
Could I take a native iOS app the whole distance alone, not a prototype, but something through App Store review with real subscriptions live?
Lots of things demo well. Far fewer survive review, payments, and the long tail of native polish. I wanted to know if I could own that entire lifecycle on my own.
Why it exists
Journaling helps, but a blank page is intimidating. Daily prompts plus AI that reflects your patterns back lowers the barrier to actually doing it. I wanted it to feel calm and personal: a companion, not a clinical tool.
The constraints
Native Swift, App Store review, real subscriptions, and an emotional-data product where privacy and tone are everything. Voice and text input both had to feel effortless. And the AI's tone had a tiny margin for error: get it wrong by a degree and the whole thing feels invasive instead of supportive.
The decisions that mattered
Native Swift over cross-platform, for the feel: this is an app you're meant to sit with.
RevenueCat for subscriptions instead of hand-rolling StoreKit, so billing was solid without becoming the project.
Tune the AI for warmth, not advice. The instinct is to make it helpful; the right move was to make it reflective. It mirrors your patterns back rather than telling you what to do. That's what keeps it trustworthy. Tracking emotional patterns over time means the app gets more useful the longer you stay with it.
What it is
A shipped iOS journaling app: daily reflection prompts, emotional pattern tracking over time, voice and text input, personalised AI responses, custom themes and subscription payments.
Built with: Swift, Xcode, Cursor, Claude Code, Supabase, RevenueCat, Resend
Where it landed
Live on the App Store: my proof that I can own the full native lifecycle solo, review and billing included. The thing I'd revisit is onboarding, which asks for too much before it's shown the user any value.
Part of the Rolling Waves work archive.