An iOS app built in half a day to de-risk features with real data

Our core product had become something we were scared of touching — taking the systems down was a real risk. So someone in my team built a more flexible API layer on top of it, and I used this to vibe-code an iOS app in about half a day.

The app used a map with missions for people to complete — a way for us to crowdsource data collection. We wanted to test how the whole thing felt: what was missing, how the interaction with missions would work, what made sense and what didn't. We tested internally first, then shared it with our partners who were developing the full iOS app, and also used it ourselves to quickly test new features and ideas.

This setup gave us three things: the core product stayed clean and uncompromised, the exploratory work became super fast and flexible, and we could test assumptions and make changes on the spot with a real app connected to real data. What started as a half-day prototype became a tool we kept using to de-risk decisions before committing to the real product.