I'm excited to announce that MuseKat, my curiosity-based learning companion for parents and young kids, is now in private beta on iOS. You can sign up here: https://musekat.com/
MuseKat helps families learn about the world through real-time audio stories told from the point of view of Miko the Meerkat. Just scan something interesting (think: a mural, museum artifact, or even a flower) and Miko tells your child a short story about it, plus questions to prompt your kid to dig a little deeper.
It’s designed to be screen-light, story-rich, and endlessly curious. I built it for my own kids, and I'm hoping it's useful for some of yours, too.
Now I’m looking for families to test MuseKat on iOS and share feedback in the weeks ahead. In particular:
🧡 Busy parents looking for lightweight, informal learning moments
📚 Homeschooling parents seeking new tools for experiential learning
🧠 Parents of neurodivergent learners who may benefit from calmer, flexible modes of personalized learning
If this is you (or someone in your network), please sign up here!
For more details on the how I got from web app to mobile app, keep reading...
How I Built This
Don't get too excited. No, I didn’t vibe code the entire database rearchitecture and mobile app. (Even I have limits.)
As I've learned, while it's entirely possible to vibe code a mobile app, building that way (without any gut intuition around things like security, database architecture, or scale) is sort of like building a house without a basement. Maybe it'll last through the summer, but it's not going to get you through the seasons. And it certainly leaves a lot of potential gaps for security breaches or breaks.
What I decided to do instead was a baton pass handoff.
I hired a contract developer to take the entire codebase I'd vibe coded myself (which is still live today) and turn it into a legitimate mobile-first foundation. The web app is a Python-based Flask app. The mobile version is in React. It's all just...better.
This transition took about a month. We concluded with a multi-hour walkthrough of my new codebase, so that I could document every workflow of my new technical architecture. After all, I needed to make sure me (and my AI's) knew push changes.
(Painful? Yes. Important? Absolutely.)
While initially I felt a little bit like I'd been left with a giant stack of wood on my driveway and a hole in the ground, I'm happy to report that now, I can:
Push updates via TestFlight
Manage server-side changes
Make progress without crying into my coffee
This hybrid vibe code → handoff → refine and resume model might be unconventional, but I believe it’s a glimpse of how more of us "non-classically trained engineers" will build in this AI-first era.
I'll be sharing more about this new way to build in the weeks ahead. Until then, if you're a parent (or are friends with one), please sign up for the waitlist to get in my private beta.
(I can't promise you that I'll be able to make all the changes you want on my own, but let's see what happens.)
