What it actually looks like to build a production app solo — with an AI anyone could mistake for the person who's going to make the whole thing happen.
Here's what I gave Claude. Here's what came back. Pretty impressive.
Breaking up a direct-to-database PWA, and the debate over how carefully to do it.
Using Claude AI to plan, wireframe, and brief Claude Code before writing a line.
Diagnosing silent database errors that fail without telling you.
Staying oriented across Claude sessions with a living TASKS.md.
Documenting gotchas in CLAUDE.md isn't enough — you have to tell Claude to check them.
Marking a latest stable build milestone in solo development.
Diagnosing and fixing a race condition in a React Native / Firebase app.
Claude is confident. Here's how to calibrate so you don't spend hours believing a wrong hypothesis.
Ask Claude what debugging infrastructure to set up before you start diagnosing.
How reframing the problem collapsed hours of debugging into seconds.
Gradle's stale cache problem, gradlew clean, and the build timestamp that catches it early.
Project files vs. auto memory vs. chat search. Only one travels with your codebase.
Why you should always ask Claude for concerns and gaps, not just validation.
Claude Code fixes bugs in isolation — you have to explicitly ask it to scan the whole codebase.
How Claude Code created /session-start and /session-wrap to manage its own context across sessions.
One paragraph typed on a phone. One follow-up. A complete onboarding feature.
The consent screen is unglamorous, legally required, and one of the most important things you'll ship.
One open-ended question. A precise worst-case scenario. A fix that was already there.
Surface errors. Group them. Wait for a decision. Three steps from a catch to a permanent process.
Why "did you actually check?" is a question worth asking out loud.
Finding a gap that was invisible because everything around it was so well designed.
Breaking up a direct-to-database PWA, and the debate over how carefully to do it.
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