MentalMind

Summary

Meditation and self-development app with onboarding, content discovery, playback customization, habit reminders, progress tracking, and subscription paywalls. I joined late when the existing codebase was incomplete and low quality, rewrote the app from scratch to hit a fixed deadline, and handled App Store release. Key highlights:

• Full rewrite under a tight timeline to ship a production-ready v1
• Audio player with voice + background sound selection
• Subscription flow with server receipt validation and restore handling

Quick facts

• Role: Sole iOS Developer (project takeover + rewrite)
• Timeframe: 1 month delivery window
• Platform: iOS (iPhone)
• Status: Discontinued (was live on the App Store for years)
• Team: Solo (handoff from previous developer)

Problem

• Project was ~30% done with low-quality code and a near-term launch deadline.
• Needed a stable content app with many screens, offline/error states, and subscription access control.
• Required multiple auth methods and localization (RU/KZ) without time for a heavy architecture refactor.

Solution

I rebuilt the app from scratch with a pragmatic MVVM/MVC hybrid and RxSwift to keep feature delivery fast. The app shipped with a clean navigation structure (Home/Tools/Create/Profile), content catalogs and detail screens, a configurable meditation player, reminders, progress history, and StoreKit subscriptions with server-side receipt posting. I also drove App Store publishing and post-launch stability work.

• Focused on reliability and scope control over long-term maintainability due to the deadline

Architecture

• UIKit app with MVVM/MVC hybrid: ViewControllers own ViewModels and bind via RxSwift subjects
• APIPoint + router-based networking on Alamofire with typed Codable responses
• Localization stored in app settings and propagated via Accept-Language headers
• Meditation playback uses AVPlayer for narration + AVAudioPlayer for looping background sounds
• StoreKit subscriptions: product fetch, purchase flow, transaction queue handling, receipt upload to backend
• Profile/history features use calendar-based UI and server-backed history models

Tech stack

• iOS: Swift, UIKit, RxSwift, StoreKit, AVFoundation
• Architecture: MVVM/MVC hybrid, Router-based networking, Codable models
• Backend/Infra: REST APIs, server receipt validation for subscriptions
• Tooling: CocoaPods, Alamofire, SnapKit, Kingfisher, Firebase (Analytics/Crashlytics/Messaging)

Hard problems solved

• Decided to rewrite instead of refactor to de-risk delivery under a one-month deadline
• Built a stable audio session: switching narrator voices, syncing durations, mixing background audio
• Implemented subscription flow end-to-end: purchase, transaction handling, receipt posting, duplicate protection
• Coordinated many dependent API calls with predictable UI state using Rx (loading/error/ready signals)
• Kept localization consistent across UI and server behavior (language picker → headers → content)
• Shipped resilience states (no internet, retry, generic errors) across the critical flows

Impact / Results

• Delivered a complete v1 from an incomplete codebase within the remaining deadline window
• Released to the App Store and kept the app running in production for multiple years
• Established a working baseline for content catalogs, playback, and subscription access control