MIZU

for solo fun app developers

A memo, more or less as I first wrote it.

I wish someone had built a tiny app exclusively for solo-fun app developers. I really like to test the iOS apps I build on my device itself instead of the simulator. I can give reasons for why but to be honest, I just enjoy it more. Everything feels more real. More fun. More exciting. And since I am a solo fun developer, those things matter a lot. Would I use the simulator if this was for a day job? I don't know. Probably. But wasn't my last day job fun? Totally! I think testing my app on device encourages me to get lost in it in a way the Simulator doesn't. And even at the best day job, you have a lot of constraints that keep you from getting lost in it. So much of the work is fixing one problem after another. There isn't anything wrong with that. If one of my solo fun projects takes off, it will probably feel like a great day job and who knows, may be I will make Simulator my primary test device vs my own device?

So when I am testing my apps on my own device, there are things I find very annoying to describe to Claude. Things like…

To have Claude fix problems like these, I primarily rely on 1) screenshotting and pasting into Claude on my computer 2) building a feature into every app for creating a debug file that I can airdrop into my Mac.

The problem is that pasting over wifi cross device isn't always reliable. Neither is airdrop. This issue applies to screenshotting and debug zip file approach as well. It often results in my turning wifi off and on, bluetooth on and off, trying airdrop when copy paste doesn't work etc.

The second thing that annoys me is that when I discover an issue on the instance on my device, I can't just talk to Claude about it and know it has awareness. This is something I really, really miss. There are so many steps and then you realize "oh something isnt in debug file" and then you restart the process. Then you realize you need a timeline of something you didn't think was related to the issue and well, you don't have it. So Claude puts more logging and then you try to rerun and hope it triggers again.

Oh, and there is a third thing. In almost every app, I am using LLM. And there is a chat interface. And the way I build stuff is by running into the problem IRL while using the app and coming across something I want to do the app doesn't support yet. I wish again that this product could be integrated by Claude to detect when the user is trying to do something not supported yet and then gracefully "interview" or collect info from the user. And then as the developer let me review this list and build…and then if the feature ships, let the user who reported it know and keep metrics on its use. Stuff like that.

I am of course familiar with the tools out there. And they are bloated as fuck. They aren't made for fun and they are definitely not made for a solo developer that is hacking on dozens of ideas at any given time.

I wish there was a very light product, probably built on top of something like Cloudflare, that I could go into and create a new app and it would give me a key to use. And from there on, Claude would take it away. Really, this product…everything about it from the website onwards would be built to be near headless meaning Claude itself should be able to signup on behalf of someone who is running into the same issue/feelings as me.

I am not saying the UI isn't important. I think the UI can be pretty cool in seeing my app development process and product validation process. I fucking hate those terms. It could be cool to be able to visualize how bit by bit the original idea became what it is today. Like you'll have a log of what I was trying to do when I found a feature missing…a feature that is no longer missing because of that moment.

So I'm building it

Get started

Tell Claude:

set me up with mizu.dance

Claude reads mizu.dance/agents.txt and takes it from there.

Private alpha. If Claude says it needs an invite, Claude is right.