Two and a half months ago, I had never published an app before.
Today, my zero-based budgeting app, Cashgaroo, is live on the Apple App Store.
I’m proud to say I’ve moved from being “just” a product manager into becoming a product builder, yayyy~
Why I Built My Own App
I started my budgeting journey in 2024 and it helped me significantly in gaining financial clarity and planning for money goals. I first used a Google Sheets template. It worked well, but I wanted something more powerful and convenient.
With recent advancements in AI, I explored using AI coding agent to help me build a budgeting app. The journey was not an easy one but the result was great! Now I can manage and view my finances anywhere. I could also input transactions in batch with AI extracting transaction information from my bank account screenshots.
It took me two and a half months to build the first publishable app. Now I’m continuing to improve existing features based on user feedback I have received.
Lessons Learned Building with AI
With the rise of AI coding, more people will start coding tools for themselves. Hence, I want to share some of my learnings with those who are on the same journey.
#1 Monitor your services usage
My Supabase usage suddenly spiked and I accidentally exceeded the free tier limits without noticing.
This is caused by a bug that kept calling Supabase endpoint due to failure return. I spent 2 days just to figure out the reason and then it was solved by AI.
#2 Review the implementation plan with another AI model
I’m using claude code and codex to code.
I usually use one AI model to create the implementation plan, and another to review it critically.This is extremely efficient to spot the gaps and risks before implementation.
With this approach, I rarely run into major bugs later on.
#3 Use skills
Here are my favourite skills to use
- Grill me: Interview the user relentlessly about a plan or design until reaching shared understanding, resolving each branch of the decision tree. Use when user wants to stress-test a plan, get grilled on their design, or mentions “grill me”.
- Frontend design: Use this skill to design web pages and application.
- UI UX Pro Max: This skill spends more token than frontend-design, because it refers to multiple design systems and can create professional UI/UX across multiple platforms and frameworks.
#4 App review
I see a lot of people complain about app review taking long, the process was smoother than I expected. I got a reply within 24-48 hours.
Some of the mistakes I made that you could avoid:
- Did not have account deletion
- Miss out subscription info and legal terms in app meta data
#5 Upskill yourself with AI skills
Software industry has been disrupted by AI capabilities significantly in the last 24 months, and it will spillover to other industries.
Picking up AI skills to build a budgeting app not only helps me personally in finances but also professionally. This allows me to understand AI software development lifecycle on firsthand, improving the collaboration with engineers and other stakeholders at work.
Not only that, it also sharpens my product sense as I have to build everything by myself.
#6 Distribution is the harder part
Personally, I haven’t figured this part out yet.
Building the app was difficult, but getting users consistently is an entirely different challenge. Distribution, content, SEO, social media, and retention matter just as much as product quality.
Even though distribution is still my biggest challenge, building Cashgaroo has been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve worked on.
AI coding tools lowered the barrier for me to build something real, and I believe more people will start creating software for themselves in the coming years.
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