I built an app to make myself finish it.😎
Sounds absurd. But once it finally got a coach, that coach started calling me every morning to ask what I’d done the day before. That’s how I finished building it. Yesterday it went live on the App Store.
It all started with something odd I noticed about myself.
I always finished client projects. My own were hit and miss: some I saw through to the end, others I dropped halfway. I asked my friends, and it turned out it was the same for almost all of them. And the difference, as I see it, is simple: when you work for a client, there’s always someone who’ll ask. On your own project, there’s no one.
With the arrival of AI, this has got worse. When you can make a website, a design or music in ten minutes, you start everything at once and finish nothing. Opportunities stopped being scarce. Focus became the scarce resource.
we remember unfinished tasks twice as well as finished ones: the brain keeps them “active” and won’t let them go. In other words, every unfinished project drains your resources simply by existing.
A hundred years ago, there were only a handful of these. Now there are dozens.
It all began with notifications. A year ago, I installed a motivational app, and it worked: it kept my spirits up. But the quotes were about someone else, not about me. Then it struck me: what if you made them custom, so they worked with your own thoughts? Say you’re trying to quit bingeing on sugar: you choose the driver that motivates you, whether that’s a calm explanation of the biology, stories from people who’ve already done it, or tough talk about the consequences.
Those drivers took us ages to work out. Brainstorming with Dmytro Kotsyl, we tried one angle after another: what kinds of drivers even exist, and what really hooks a person? I’m grateful to him for those conversations; a lot of what came out of them is still in the product.
That’s how MotiNoti was born. After that, everything came together through conversations.
My friend Volodymyr Ferhard took a look and asked a simple question: “Cool, but where do I write my goal?” That’s how the app got goals, the “why does this matter to you?” question and a step-by-step plan.
And the idea of a coach who calls you was born in a conversation with my brother Serhii Shpak. I wouldn’t say it’s a hundred per cent mine: it’s ours. Actually, I think his best ideas just come to him on their own.
For the last three months, Pavlo Buriachenko has been on the project, and before the app had a coach, he did the same job by hand💎: he’d call and ask what had been done. He came on board as a volunteer, unpaid, simply because he was curious, and he’s been carrying the project with me ever since. I consider him a co-founder.
The deepest part of the app is the energies. For a long time I couldn’t figure it out: people know their next step, they understand it all in their heads, and they still don’t take it. The thing is, a step takes energy rather than knowledge, and a different kind every time. Thanks to O.G. Torsunov for the ideas and inspiration.
Some interesting numbers:
~1,200 hours,
72,000 lines of code (113 screens, 21 server modules, 15 background services)
178 work sessions,
73 builds before the one that passed Apple’s review, and
about $5,000 on AI tools
What an agency would charge: ~$54,000
My route to building the app with AI went roughly like this: Rork → Bolt → Base44 → Emergent → Claude.
Alongside that, for design and research I used:
Gemini & ChatGPT.
For testing I used:
Sandbox, Expo Go, TestFlight.
What the app can do: gainers.app
The app is in beta right now. I’m deliberately not advertising it, because testing and debugging are still ahead. There’s a free plan; if you’d like to try everything, message me and I’ll unlock it for you.
The aim of this app is to help people focus on their goals in every possible way and finish what they’ve already started.
For now we’re testing on Apple, with Android planned later. Download it here:
📲 https://apps.apple.com/app/id6780529033
I’d be delighted and grateful if you left a review on the App Store :)
