Scaling Apps Beyond the Chat Window: Part 3, Mobile Apps, Games and Growth

What's inside

1. Level 1: Four Ways to Go MobileFree
   Learn what a progressive web app, an Expo and React Native app, a wrapped web app and a fully native app each are, and how they differ in cost, effort and what they can do on a phone. The next lesson goes deeper on native with an AI coding agent; refer to other lessons by name, never by number.
2. Level 2: Going Native with an AI Coding Agent: Swift and KotlinFree
   Why building fully native iOS and Android apps was long avoided, what AI coding agents change about that trade-off, what they do not change, and how to try it on a small screen. Taught straight after the lesson that introduces the four ways to go mobile, and before the lesson on choosing one; refer to other lessons by name, never by number.
3. Level 3: Choosing Your Path and Testing on a Real Phone
   Use a short checklist to pick one of the four mobile approaches for your own project, including fully native with an AI coding agent, then run it on your own phone and check how it behaves. This lesson follows the lessons on the four ways to go mobile and on going native; refer to other lessons by name, never by number.
4. Level 4: Developer Accounts, Builds and Store Submission
   Understand the steps from a working app to a submitted store listing: developer accounts, app signing, production builds and store listing details.
5. Level 5: App Review and Why App Stores Are Harder
   Learn how app store review works, the common reasons apps are rejected, and why releasing and updating through a store is slower and stricter than releasing on the web.
6. Level 6: Choosing a Game Engine
   Compare browser game engines such as Phaser with full engines such as Godot and Unity, and choose one that fits your game and your AI-assisted workflow.
7. Level 7: Game Assets and Their Licences
   Find art, sound, music and fonts you are allowed to use, read their licences correctly, and keep a record that proves your right to use them.
8. Level 8: Saved Games, Accounts and Leaderboards
   Store player progress, sign-ins and high scores in a hosted database, with access rules that stop players from reading or changing other players' data.
9. Level 9: Publishing Your Game, and Why Multiplayer Waits
   Publish a single-player browser game on the web and on itch.io, and understand why realtime multiplayer is much harder and usually belongs in a later version.
10. Level 10: Payment Basics and Checkout in Test Mode
    Learn how online payments work through a provider such as Stripe, and add a hosted checkout page that you test safely with test keys and test cards.
11. Level 11: Confirming Payments with Webhooks
    Use webhooks so your server, not the browser, confirms a payment before it unlocks anything for the customer.
12. Level 12: Subscriptions and App Store Fees
    Understand recurring billing, cancellations and failed payments, and how app store in-app purchase rules and fees affect what you earn.
13. Level 13: Logging and Error Tracking
    Add useful logs and an error tracking service so you find out about crashes and bugs before your users report them.
14. Level 14: Uptime Checks and Analytics
    Set up external uptime monitoring that alerts you when your app goes down, and privacy-aware analytics that show how people use it.
15. Level 15: Backups and Practising a Restore
    Learn what your hosted database backs up for you, add your own backups, and prove they work by restoring one to a separate copy.
16. Level 16: Staging, Safe Releases and Rollback
    Use a staging copy of your app to test changes before they reach real users, release in small steps, and roll back quickly when something goes wrong.
17. Level 17: Changing a Database That Has Real Users
    Make database changes through reviewed migrations, using safe patterns that keep existing users' data intact and the app running.
18. Level 18: What Breaks First, and Database Indexes
    Find the real bottlenecks when users grow, which are often slow database queries, and fix the most common ones with indexes.
19. Level 19: Caching, Queues and Background Jobs
    Reduce load and speed up responses by caching repeated results and moving slow work, such as emails and image processing, into background jobs.
20. Level 20: Cost Control, Abuse Limits and Free Tier Ends
    Protect yourself from runaway bills and abuse with spending caps, budget alerts and rate limits, and plan for the moment a free tier no longer covers you.
21. Level 21: Personal Data, Privacy Policies and GDPR Basics
    Learn what counts as personal data, the basic GDPR principles, and what an honest privacy policy must explain, with a clear note to get legal advice for your own situation.
22. Level 22: Knowing When to Get Human Help
    Learners spot the signs that an AI-built app needs a person to check it, such as code review, a technical debt cleanup or a security audit, and learn how to prepare for that help and keep building their own skills as the app grows.
23. Level 23: Getting Your First Users: Launch, Feedback and Iterating
    How a novice finds the first real users for a live app or game, learns from them and decides what to change next, so the launch plan in the final challenge rests on something practical.
24. Level 24: Final Challenge: Your Product Launch Plan Exam
    Learners bring the whole course together by writing a dated launch plan for their own product. The plan covers platform, payments, monitoring, costs, data rules, launching, and gathering feedback to improve the product after launch.

Access

The first 2 levels are free with a free account. Every level, the podcast edition and the AI tutor come with All Access at £4.99/month or any Creator plan — see pricing.

Start free →