CRIENE

Today, Criene is live on the Play Store.

I built this because standard planners have a fatal flaw: They rely on you to have the willpower to check them. When you lose motivation, you just stop opening the app.

Criene is different. It is an "Anti-Planner" designed to force execution.

Why you should try it:

🧠 1. AI-Generated Roadmaps ("The Brain") Don't know where to start? Tell the AI (Ciara) your goal (e.g., "Learn Python"), and it instantly generates a day-by-day roadmap for you.

🩸 2. Loss Aversion ("The Stakes") This is the core mechanic. You get 3 "Lives" per month. If you skip your strict goals, you lose a life. If you lose them all, your streak is killed. It gamifies the fear of losing progress.

📊 3. GitHub-Style Heatmaps ("The Flex") I built a custom contribution graph that tracks your consistency visually. It turns your daily life into a "green squares" grid.

🕵️ 4. The Audit A "Time Travel" feature that lets you debug your past days to see exactly where you succeeded or failed.

If you are tired of abandoning projects by Day 3, this OS is for you.

Download here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.criene.app

#launch #productivity #android #reactnative

Last week (Feb 8th), I stood in front of my college Dean at an exhibition and froze. I couldn't explain Criene. The users were confused. I got 0 downloads.

I spent the last 6 days aggressively fixing the holes:

1. Manual Roadmaps: I stopped forcing "AI" on everyone and let users build their own paths.

2. Interactive Tutorial: I built a guided tour so the app explains itself.

Today (Feb 14th): I presented the new version at our college AI Summit.

The Result: I won the "Appreciation Award."

The code didn't change much. The User Experience did.

Now that the product is validated, I have a new problem: Marketing.

I’m a developer. I know how to write React Native. I have no idea how to get my first 100 users outside of my campus.

What is the first marketing step for a B2C productivity app with ₹0 budget? Content? SEO? Cold DMs?

#comeback #studentfounder #marketing #startup #winning

After my expo disaster on Feb 8th, I realized a hard truth: If I have to be standing next to the user for them to understand the app, the UX is broken.

I can't be everywhere. So I spent the last 48 hours building an Interactive Tutorial.

The 2-Day Sprint:

• Feb 10 (Implementation): I wired up the tutorial library. I highlighted the "Create Goal" button, the "Penalty" settings, and the "Daily Check-in." It was functional, but clunky.

• Feb 11 (Optimization): A tutorial that interrupts you is annoying. A tutorial that guides you is helpful. I spent yesterday smoothing out the animations, reducing the text.

Now, when a new user opens Criene, they don't see a confusing dashboard. They see a "Path."

The app now explains itself. No pitch required.

#buildinpublic #ux #onboarding #reactnative #studentfounder

Feb 8th was supposed to be my big break.

I set up a booth at a local school exhibition to show off Criene. I had the standee, the build was ready, and I was ready to pitch.

The Result?

• Users Acquired: 0.

• Confidence: Shaken.

• Pitch: I choked.

When the Dean and the MBM team came to my stall, I fumbled. I couldn't explain the "Discipline OS" concept clearly. My app felt out of place among the other projects. My professor actually had to step in and explain my own product for me.

It was embarrassing. I left feeling pretty demotivated, wondering if the app would even work.

But I woke up on Feb 9th and started coding.

I realized: If I can't explain the app in 30 seconds, the app needs to explain itself better.

The Pivot (Today's Work):

1. Manual Roadmaps: I realized users want control, not just AI magic. I built a feature today to let users create their own discipline roadmaps manually.

2. Interactive Tutorial: I’m building a hand-holding onboarding flow. If I choke in person, the code will do the talking for me.

I’m down on confidence, but I’m up one massive lesson in resilience.

#buildinpublic #failure #startup #studentfounder #learning

Mid-terms are over. I’m back.

The first thing I did was audit the backend code I wrote weeks ago.

The Realization: When I started Criene, I wrote the backend first. I over-engineered generic endpoints "just in case."

Now that the Frontend UI is finished, I realized how much of that backend logic was useless.

• Unused parameters.

• Redundant database queries.

• Endpoints that the UI never calls.

The cleanup: I spent today syncing the API to the actual UI needs. I ended up deleting 2/3rds of the codebase.

The app is now lighter, the logic is sharper, and I released the Alpha v1.

Want to break my app? I need brave souls to test the Alpha. Join here: https://groups.google.com/g/criene-testers

Next up: Building the Onboarding Tutorial (because apparently, users need to know how the app works). 🎥

#buildinpublic #refactoring #backend #alpha

Yesterday, my body gave me a hard signal: A massive headache.

I’ve been sprinting on Criene—migrating backends, fighting bots, and filling out Play Store forms. But I’m also a student, and my Mid-Term exams start today.

I’m building a "Discipline OS," and real discipline isn't about working until you collapse. It’s about knowing when to switch focus.

The Plan:

• Now - Feb 5th: 100% Focus on Exams. No Code.

• Feb 5th: Return to the codebase.

• Feb 7th: CLOSED BETA LAUNCH.

The code is frozen. The "Internal Testing" track is live. I just need to clear these exams so I can launch with a clear head.

See you on the other side. 📚

#studentfounder #mentalhealth #buildinpublic #exams

I spent today fighting the "Last Mile" of Criene.

1. Store Listings: I’m a developer, not a copywriter. Trying to summarize my "Discipline OS" into 80 characters for the Play Store "Short Description" was harder than writing the backend logic.

2. Internal Testing: I pushed the build to a few friends for internal testing.

The Result: They found bugs in 5 minutes that I hadn't seen in 5 weeks.

• A crash on the Settings screen.

• Text overflowing on smaller screens.

• A weird jitter in the animations.

It’s humbling. You think your app is perfect because you know exactly how to use it. But real users (even friends) find the cracks immediately.

Spent the rest of the day squashing them. No new features today, just polish.

#buildinpublic #googleplay #bugfixing #indiehackers

I spent today rewriting the core monetization logic for Criene.

Originally, my flow was:

1. User pays via App Store.

2. Store sends Webhook to my Server.

3. Server updates DB.

4. App queries DB -> "Okay, you are Pro."

The Problem: Webhook latency. In testing, I realized there’s a gap. If the webhook takes even 5 seconds to fire (which happens), the user pays but sees a locked screen. That creates panic and bad reviews.

The Fix: I ripped out the DB check and integrated the RevenueCat SDK to handle the "Source of Truth" on the client side.

• Now, the app asks RevenueCat: "Does this user have an active entitlement?"

• It unlocks instantly.

• My database syncs quietly in the background later.

The unexpected pain: The rest of the day vanished into the black hole known as the Google Play Console. Screenshots, privacy policies, tax forms... it never ends.

The code is fun. The admin work is the real killer.

#revenuecat #saas #monetization #buildinpublic

I haven't posted in over a week.

I’d like to say I was on vacation, but the truth is I fell into a "Coding Fugue State." I broke things, fixed things, got attacked by bots, and added AI.

Here is the breakdown of the last 192 hours building Criene:

• Day 1: The Face Lift. Finally added real app screenshots to the landing page (criene.com). No more placeholders.

• Day 2: The Migration. Moved the backend to Render for stability.

• Day 3: The Attack. 💀 tried to set up a custom domain on Cloudflare with Render as backup. Almost immediately, my endpoints got swarmed by bots. I tried to patch it, realized I was outgunned, and retreated. Removed the custom domain for now. (Future me’s problem).

• Day 4: UI Polish. Fixed those 1px misalignments that annoy me.

• Day 5: The Money. Integrated Payments & Push Notifications. The app can now charge you and annoy you.

• Day 6: Bug Hunt. 12 hours of pure debugging.

• Day 7: The Brain. Added an AI Recommendation Engine to the onboarding flow to build custom experience for users.

• Day 8 (Today): Refactor. Cleaning up the mess I made on Days 1-7.

Silence isn't always bad. Sometimes it just means you're actually working.

Back to daily updates. 🫡

#buildinpublic #sprint #indiehackers #security

Today was about closing the loop on quality.

1. The Visuals: I spent the morning refining the UI. Polished the margins, fixed the font weights, and made sure the "Dark Mode" actually looks like a premium "Discipline OS," not just a black background.

2. The Safety Net: I realized that relying on just one error reporter wasn't enough for a React Native app.

• Crashlytics: Great for catching the hard native crashes (when the app instantly dies).

• Sentry: Added this today specifically for the JavaScript layer. It handles Source Maps way better than Firebase, so I can actually see which line of code failed instead of reading minified gibberish.

Some might say running both is overkill for a solo student founder.

I say: I don't have a Customer Support team. If a user faces a bug, I need to know exactly what happened immediately, so I can fix it before they churn.

Paranoia is a feature, not a bug.

#buildinpublic #sentry #reactnative #quality