Notes from SquareCat on building and shipping web and mobile apps.https://squarecatmedia.com/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/badges-without-counters/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/badges-without-counters/How we added tiered badges to Braineos with one new table, no stored progress counters, and a backfill that had to share a database with three live sites.Thu, 29 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/lessons-in-steps/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/lessons-in-steps/How we split CertBrain and Finance Brain lessons into steps without touching a word of their content, and added reader text settings that never flash the wrong size on load.Thu, 29 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/shipping-a-web-game-as-its-own-android-app/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/shipping-a-web-game-as-its-own-android-app/How Brain Defense went from a canvas game on braineos.com to its own Play Store app, reusing the game's rules byte for byte and rebuilding only what the phone needed.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/learner-analytics-from-data-you-already-have/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/learner-analytics-from-data-you-already-have/How we gave Braineos learners a Progress page and profile totals without a schema change, a chart library or a single estimated number.Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/balancing-a-tower-defense-game-where-gold-comes-from-flashcards/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/balancing-a-tower-defense-game-where-gold-comes-from-flashcards/How we turned an old idle tower defense prototype into a quiz game for Braineos, and used a headless bot to tune it so knowing the cards wins and ignoring them loses.Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/certbrain-on-google-play/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/certbrain-on-google-play/CertBrain's Android app is live. The third app built from one React Native codebase was mostly configuration, plus one new feature, a diagnostic you can take before you sign in.Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/scoring-exam-readiness-from-spaced-repetition/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/scoring-exam-readiness-from-spaced-repetition/How we turned Leitner review boxes into a per-domain readiness score for CertBrain, why one weak domain blocks "ready", and the cramming bug we had to fix first.Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/finance-brain-on-google-play/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/finance-brain-on-google-play/Finance Brain's Android app is live. Here's how one mobile codebase now builds two apps with their own names, icons and Play listings, and what we fixed on the way.Mon, 19 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/introducing-certbrain/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/introducing-certbrain/CertBrain is our new study site for the AWS Certified AI Practitioner exam. Here's how a third product launched on the same platform, and why we treated the content as the hard part.Mon, 19 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/one-codebase-several-products/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/one-codebase-several-products/How we turned a flashcard app into a platform that launches focused learning sites, without forking the code or maintaining two apps.Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/what-google-play-checks-before-launch/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/what-google-play-checks-before-launch/The forms, URLs and testing rules that stand between a finished Android build and the Play Store, from a studio that ships its own apps through them.Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/learn-a-codebase-with-flashcards/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/learn-a-codebase-with-flashcards/We built a Claude Code plugin that turns a folder of code into a spaced-repetition deck of its key concepts. Here's why, and what makes a good card about code.Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/one-pipeline-many-sites/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/one-pipeline-many-sites/How a small studio deploys several independent apps from one CI server and one modest droplet, and the scheduling gotcha that silently stopped a site from deploying.Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/what-we-measure-with-posthog/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/what-we-measure-with-posthog/Why our apps track only a sign-up and one meaningful first action, why we chose PostHog Cloud over self-hosting, and the questions that small setup answers.Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/running-a-team-of-ai-agents/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/running-a-team-of-ai-agents/Several Claude Code sessions working at once, across several apps. The roles, the shared issues repo, and the status files and decisions log that keep them coordinated.Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/ai-features-without-surprise-bills/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/ai-features-without-surprise-bills/Quotas, cheap models for small jobs, and features that fail quietly. The patterns we use to put AI into apps with predictable costs.Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://squarecatmedia.com/blog/async-development-with-remote-control/https://squarecatmedia.com/blog/async-development-with-remote-control/Starting agent work at the desk and checking in from a phone. How we use Remote Control to keep long-running coding sessions moving away from the keyboard.Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT