Friends Intelligence App

A book can explain your patterns, but it can't check on you. Readers finish Friends Intelligence, nod, and go back to their week. The ideas needed a form that could ask questions, remember answers, and keep a gentle rhythm going after the last page.

Built solo, alongside the book itself — the same seven-pillar framework expressed twice: once as chapters, once as software. Idea № 138 in the garden says books are software and readers compile them; this is the compiled edition.

The core decision is restraint: a 35-question assessment (five per pillar, about eight minutes) produces one focus pillar, not seven dashboards. Depth over breadth — you work on the pillar that will move first, with one small daily practice at a time.

Drift detection without nagging: the app notices when you fade and makes it easy to return, but it never guilt-trips. And pricing is a statement — a lifetime Plus at A$19 instead of a subscription. A wellbeing tool that charges rent forever felt wrong for a book about sustainable defaults.

Next.js App Router on AWS Amplify, with DynamoDB behind it (separate tables for core state and return visits). Auth and payments are real — this is a full product, not a landing page with a form.

The repo runs with team-grade discipline despite one person: no direct pushes to main, feature branches merge to staging first, and a CI branch-policy check enforces it. Future me is the second engineer on this team.

Shipping the book and the app as one system beats shipping either alone — each sends people to the other, and the framework got sharper every time it had to survive being turned into questions and scores.

Solo products still deserve staging environments. The branch policy has caught more late-night mistakes than any code review would have.

Deeper practice content per pillar, and closing the loop with the book's coming editions — the audiobook listener and the app user should meet the same system.