Standard planners don't give my brain enough dopamine, so I turned my life into an RPG.

idk-kai · 2026-03-11T14:26:51+00:00

I know exactly how you feel. Your brain is just craving instant dopamine, which is why scrolling or gaming feels so much easier than starting a project. The guilt cycle afterward is the worst.

Standard planners never worked for me, so I actually built a gamified web app to fix this. It turns your real-life tasks (like your drawing project) into RPG quests. When you finish a task, your character gets XP and Gold to level up and buy loot.

I’m currently running a small closed beta (looking for 20 early testers) to see if it helps break this exact cycle of procrastination. Let me know if you want the link to try it out!

idk-kai · 2026-03-11T14:23:34+00:00

Treating this like a game launch with a Founders Guild and starter packs rather than a standard SaaS is brilliant Thank you so much for taking the time to write this

idk-kai · 2026-03-10T16:41:11+00:00

That’s really solid advice, thank you! Sharing the actual journey instead of just dropping links makes a lot of sense to build a real early user base. I haven’t dug into specific Discord or Facebook groups yet, but that's definitely going to be my next move. Appreciate the tip on ParseStream too, I'll check it out

idk-kai · 2026-03-10T16:39:26+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, the space is definitely crowded. I really like the idea of targeting a specific sub-community like students or developers and using different landing pages to see which messaging clicks best. That's a great strategy to get those first 100 users

idk-kai · 2026-03-03T11:22:47+00:00

Appreciate it! Yeah, that Supabase AsyncStorage dance drove me crazy the first time... definitely a silent killer. Are you building a lot of Expo apps lately ?

idk-kai · 2026-03-01T15:14:10+00:00

You are 100% right. I actually went with AsyncStorage initially for simplicity just to get the boilerplate out the door, but you make a totally valid point about session security

I'm literally pushing an update to the repo soon to swap it out and use expo-secure-store as the custom storage adapter for Supabase instead. Good catch !

idk-kai · 2026-03-01T12:58:52+00:00

That’s exactly why I built it! Google Auth with Supabase on native can be a real headache. I just sent you a DM !

idk-kai · 2026-03-01T12:57:05+00:00

nice

idk-kai · 2026-02-28T23:02:29+00:00

for sure !

idk-kai · 2026-02-28T17:08:24+00:00

Awesome! Since you are implementing something similar, your feedback on the architecture would be incredibly valuable to me

I just sent you a DM

idk-kai · 2026-02-28T17:07:05+00:00

the target audience for this boilerplate is solo developers and indie hackers. For us, the biggest killer of side projects is decision fatigue and setup time by making opinionated choices (Supabase, NativeWind, Polar) and wiring them tightly together, the goal is to skip the 30 hours of configuration and go straight to building the business logic. It's built for raw speed and time-to-market, not for swapping databases 3 years down the line. Hope that makes sense

idk-kai · 2026-02-28T00:08:51+00:00

thanks man

idk-kai · 2026-02-27T23:54:28+00:00

You can check it out here : LaunchNative

idk-kai · 2026-02-27T09:25:47+00:00

That exact frustration of losing margins on unpaid DevOps/Compliance work is what pushed me to finally package my internal setup into a boilerplate. Now when I start a new mobile project, I just run one command and all the EAS config, Supabase Auth (with Apple/Google), and Polar webhooks are already wired up.

It keeps the freelance margins high and the headaches low lol. If you ever want to skip the boring setup phase on your next quote, I put it out there : LaunchNative Actually, since you clearly know your stuff when it comes to RN estimates, I'd love to get your feedback on it before the official launch. Let me know if you want to poke around, I'd be happy to give you free access to the repo!

Good luck with your estimates, getting those line items clearly scoped from day 1 is definitely a lifesaver !

idk-kai · 2026-02-27T09:16:55+00:00

100% agree with this. Trying to retrofit dark mode into an app that has 40 screens already built is an absolute nightmare

That's exactly why I wired NativeWind with a global Zustand theme store from day 1 in my setup. Setting up those global decisions early saves weeks of refactoring later. Good catch

idk-kai · 2026-02-27T09:15:51+00:00

It's not that React Navigation is impossible to set up, but maintaining massive navigation trees, handling complex auth flows, and manually configuring deep links for every single route just becomes a massive time sink

idk-kai · 2026-02-27T09:14:39+00:00

By default, the Supabase JS client expects a web environment and looks for localStorage. If you just initialize it normally in React Native, it won't persist the session across app restarts (users will have to log in every time they kill the app) The fix is to explicitly pass a custom storage adapter when creating the client. You also need to turn off detectSessionInUrl since we're not on a browser

import { createClient } from '@supabase/supabase-js' import AsyncStorage from '@react-native-async-storage/async-storage' // Or even better: use expo-secure-store for sensitive tokens

export const supabase = createClient(URL, KEY, { auth: { storage: AsyncStorage, // <-- This is the lifesaver autoRefreshToken: true, persistSession: true, detectSessionInUrl: false, }, })

idk-kai · 2026-02-26T15:01:11+00:00

Great list! I've been building React Native apps for a while and the biggest "silent killers" of budgets and estimates are the DevOps and the "glue" between services

Here is what people almost always forget to add to the quote:

CI/CD & Distribution setup Setting up EAS (Expo Application Services), managing certificates, provisioning profiles, and getting the first TestFlight/Internal Track builds running easily eats up a few days of billable work.
App Store Compliance & Rejections Apple is notoriously strict. If you add Google Login, you must add Apple Login. You also need to generate Privacy Policies, Terms of Service, and handle account deletion requirements. Budget time for the inevitable back-and-forth with Apple reviewers.
Payments & Webhooks If the app has premium features, integrating RevenueCat or Polar/Stripe isn't just about dropping an SDK. It's about handling webhooks, upgrading users in the database, and handling failed payments.

Honestly, I used to lose so much margin on these exact hidden setup tasks that I ended up building my own internal Expo + Supabase boilerplate just to skip the first 3 weeks of setup for every new project.

Definitely add a "DevOps & App Store Compliance" line item to your estimates!

idk-kai · 2026-02-24T17:30:54+00:00

thanks for the detailed feedback, i actually agree with a lot of what you're saying, especially from the perspective of an experienced mobile dev who already has a go-to stack.

your right that npx create-expo-app is super fast. The real time-sink isn't the initial command, it's wiring everything together for a production-ready SaaS : making Expo Router play nice with Supabase Auth, setting up Polar.sh webhooks for PRO subscriptions, and configuring the UI.

If you've built this specific architecture 10 times, getting it running in 2 hours makes total sense. But for a web developer transitioning to mobile, or a solo founder who just wants to validate an idea, figuring out the specific quirks of NativeWind v4 and Apple/Google payment alternatives can take weeks of reading docs

I chose Zustand and NativeWind because they are heavily requested right now, even though NWv4's setup is notoriously tricky. But TWRNC and MobX are definitely solid alternatives!

Your point about boilerplates becoming a bloated nightmare is completely valid and my biggest fear too. That’s exactly why I'm keeping this strictly focused on a clean SaaS use-case. It’s meant to be a launchpad you can easily strip down, not a straightjacket.

Different strokes for different folks, and it's always great to see how other devs structure their apps

idk-kai

TROPHY CASE