alpscales

90 days of my screenshot tool: 46 signups 21 opened a project 2 downloaded a file 0 uploaded to the App Store 0 paid the feature that sets it apart is the one nobody has reached yet.

my AI chat app's russian downloads went from 6 a week to 3. went looking for what i broke. nothing. store impressions held (181 vs 166 a week). same dip on oct 12 to 18, then it came back. at 6 a week, a 3 happens about 1 week in 7.

had two AI judges compare two models on the same 398 replies from my chat app. judge 1 called it a tie, 181 to 184. judge 2, the same model as one contestant, picked that one: 229 to 158. before you trust a judge, check whether it's in the race.

changed my quiz app's keywords in 16 languages. 8 of the 44 new words reached the top 50, 2 the top 20. search impressions a day: 104.6 before, 78.1 after. but countries i never touched fell 21% too. without them i'd have blamed my own change.

an alert on my party app said people saw the 'daily limit reached' paywall without reaching the limit. 3 people saw it. 1 really hit the limit. 2 tapped the Upgrade button on the home screen themselves, and both bought. not a bug. the same label, sent from two places.

my screenshot tool's checkout looked broken: 10 checkout windows opened in 90 days, 0 payments. it wasn't. 9 of the 10 were my own test accounts, and the payment provider's webhook had 0 errors in 487 notifications. not broken. nobody came.

apple rejected my new app's first submission. the reason: on iPad, the confirmation page didn't scroll. guideline 4. fixed it, resubmitted. before you submit, scroll every screen on an iPad too, even if you think of it as a phone app.

changed my mood app's keywords in 10 languages. 16 of the 19 new words ranked #1 or #2. search impressions a day: 13.96 before, 14.00 after. only 1 to 4 apps show up for those words. ranking first for something almost nobody searches looks great and does nothing.

my AI chat app's monthly revenue number fell to about a fifth. i went looking for a broken checkout. the checkout was fine. one weekly subscriber hadn't renewed on oct 12. at my size, one person is the whole chart.

my travel app sometimes planned a 6-day trip with 5 days in it. ran the old and new code side by side on 17,820 test trips. old: a day short 4,219 times. new: 0. the fix has a cost: on some short trips one neighborhood now splits across two days.

my AI chat app's prompt says: don't end two replies in a row with a question. in 542 test chats, 52% of its replies ended with one anyway. a blind AI judge: my current model broke a rule in 29% of replies. a bigger model: 9%. a rule in a prompt is a request. measure it.

apple's app lookup service rejects every request from my screenshot tool's server. 403, every time, even with a browser user agent. the App Store page itself loads fine from the same server. the MCP feature that needs it got 3 calls in 7 days. all 3 were me.

a session recording from my screenshot tool: someone signed up, uploaded 2 screenshots, tapped the phone preview twice. nothing happened. they deleted their screens and left. since oct 22: 14 signups, 0 projects. the one who really tried hit a button that didn't respond.

my party app's paywall sometimes opened with no plans on it. 2 load errors in 69 opens over 14 days. the fix: if the store setup fails at launch, retry it. a review caught that the retry connected the purchase SDK a second time. a retry has to know what already worked.

lost a subscriber on my invoice app on oct 30. went looking for what drove them off. nothing did. they didn't cancel and didn't ask for a refund. apple couldn't charge their card at renewal. 2 other subscribers hit a card error that same week. some churn is just a card.

my travel app gives its AI 9 seconds to plan a trip. i tested a bigger model: 6-day trips took 14 to 17 seconds. then i timed the current model: over 9 seconds on 6-day trips, 3 runs of 3. on the new version, long trips would go to the backup. the upgrade test found it.

voice calls in my AI chat app sometimes don't connect. on oct 29, 3 people got a call that never connected, tapped the mic button on it, and the app closed. 4 crashes. an error screen still has buttons. each one needs a test.

my AI chat app's US downloads went from 14 a week to 66. 95 people in the US opened it for the first time between oct 18 and 27. 1 of them came back on a later day. the chart goes up. the people don't stay on it.

my dashboard said 0 people tapped a notification on oct 20. the app only recorded a tap when it was already open. tap from a closed app and nothing was logged. the fix is in the code now. before trusting a zero, check the code could have counted a one.

my reports compared 'last 30 days' with 'the 30 days before'. the 30 days before often had only 5 to 23 days of data in them. so a drop could just be missing days. now a comparison shows full periods only, or says why it can't.