A dev journal, mostly true to the commit log

Our Story

I really like Disneyland — probably more than is reasonable.

The name’s a bit of a pun: ParQwish, built to cut down the time spent waiting around in the actual park Queue — standing in line, trying to remember what we’d agreed to do that day, hunting through a text thread for a dining reservation time. That one annoyance turned into thinking about a Disney trip as three separate moments: planning before you go, the day itself in the park, and looking back on it after — which is roughly how this is organized today: ParQwish Planner for the before, ParQwish Pal for the during, and a Publish page (inside Planner for now, maybe its own app someday) for the after.

Trip data is personal — where you are, who you’re with, photos of your kids — so keeping it secure mattered to me from the start, but so did being able to share it: with the people you’re actually traveling with, or later, a recap you’re proud to post. Everything lives on your device first; syncing is opt-in and end-to-end encrypted, private unless you decide otherwise.

The other honest part: I’d never actually built and shipped an app before this. I know a fair amount about how software should behave and how a real development process works — I just hadn’t done the writing-and-deploying part myself. This project doubled as learning that, working alongside Claude Code the whole way, closer to a genuine collaborator than autocomplete. Which is also why this story is dated as precisely as it is — pulled straight from the actual commit history, and a lot of those commits are me figuring it out in real time.

620 commits · one person · nights, weekends, and park days · Oct 2025 → today

The idea

Oct 2025 — Jan 2026

  1. A blank scaffold

    Ran create-expo-app, got a default tab layout and a placeholder icon, and then didn't touch it again for three months. No plan yet — just a name on a folder.

  2. DLand Wishes, for real this time

    Started building an actual wish list for Disneyland trips — rides, dining, shows, all in one place instead of scattered across Notes and half-remembered plans.

  3. In my own pocket

    Nine days after the first real commit, a TestFlight build was on my phone at the actual parks. Rough, but mine, and working.

Learning to walk

Feb — Apr 2026

  1. Building for more than just me

    First pass at multi-user support, so a family could plan one shared trip instead of everyone keeping their own separate list and comparing notes at breakfast.

  2. A companion on the web

    Started a browser-based planning app to go with the mobile one — a bigger canvas for the trip-planning part, meant to live on a laptop the weeks before a trip. This eventually became ParQwish Planner.

  3. One way to sync, not three

    Had accumulated three different half-working ways to move data between the phone and the web app. Threw all of them out for one file-based transfer system that just works, no account required.

  4. A real name

    DLand Wishes became ParQwish — the mobile app is Pal, the web planner is Planner. Small thing, but it stopped feeling like a prototype and started feeling like a thing other people might actually want.

  5. Walking the parks, digitally

    Added GPS trail recording, so the app remembers where you actually walked that day — not just what you'd planned to do.

Getting serious

May — Jul 2026

  1. Starting to feel real

    v1.1.0 — proper onboarding, a drag-and-drop day timeline, a trip report at the end. This is roughly when it stopped feeling like a side project and started feeling like an app.

  2. The unglamorous App Store prep

    Screenshots, a real description, a privacy policy, version numbers that actually mean something. None of it fun, all of it necessary before anyone besides me could install this.

  3. Cloud Sync, opt-in and encrypted

    Your data can sync across your own devices now, if you turn it on — end-to-end encrypted the whole way, off by default. Nothing leaves your phone unless you say so.

  4. Seven bugs from one park day

    Took the app to Disneyland and actually used it, start to finish. Came home and fixed seven things it got wrong — timezones, wait times, a filter that lagged. The best bug reports are the ones you find yourself, standing in line.

  5. Everything syncs now

    GPS trails, photos, the day's schedule — all of it flowing between devices and family members. Trip planning finally works the way it should've from the start.

Today

Aug 2026

  1. Getting ready to share it

    Real App Store screenshots, a description that leads with what actually matters, a proper guide explaining how it all fits together.

  2. Splitting in two

    The web planner became its own public, open-source repository — separate from the mobile app's code, free to look at.

  3. Where I am right now

    A trip map that shows your actual path with GPS correction, an AI export for turning a day at the parks into a recap post, and a way to pull photos straight from your camera roll into the trip. Still shipping, roughly every day it's true to write that.