Monday preparation #5: Story Valley, Mac app and Study Brew app

I'm back on track. If anything, I came back ahead of schedule.

I didn't finish everything from my last Monday prep. But on Friday, I gave myself a simple weekend plan: write some content, plan the Mac app further, and start auditing the current state of the Study Brew app.

Read also: Friday rundown: it's a winning week

The weekend went sideways (as usual)

Parts of the weekend went a bit sideways, as usual. But the most important part got done. I planned the Mac app from A to Z, and early this morning, I started building.

Two sessions, 20% of my weekly limit

Two sessions in, and I've already burned through 20% of my weekly usage on Claude.

That alone tells me how complicated vibe coding a fully native application is. I now understand why so many serious devs are on the $100 or $200 Claude plan instead of the $20 Pro plan I'm on.

It also made me realize I need to plan better. I've been here before. There was a stretch where I burned through limits like crazy and hit the weekly cap over and over again.

Read also: Hitting my Claude weekly limit again. Another pivot to balance life and work.

After a few adjustments, I got it under control, and I've managed my limits well ever since.

So the problem isn't new. The variable is.

Why a native Mac app eats limits

The new variable is that this is a Mac app built with Claude Code, and going 100% native apparently means thousands of background tests.

When I read through Claude Code's progress, I can see it checking scenario after scenario, making sure every single one is covered. Every one of those checks costs something.

This is also the first time I'm vibe coding a Mac app at all. So I'm guessing my planning needs to adjust too, especially with 185 features on the list.

So far, around 20 are done. Some on Friday last week, the rest today. Maybe I aimed for too many at once.

But even then, the math on paper is ugly. If 20 features cost me 20% of a week, the other 165 don't fit in any week on a $20 plan.

Except it's not that simple. Claude chat already warned me that turning the current docs editor, which runs on TipTap, into a fully native Swift editor without shortcuts is the biggest challenge of the whole build.

The good part is that most of the limit I've burned so far went into exactly that: the editor functions.

So the most expensive part is being paid for first. The rest of the list should cost less per item. At least, that's what I'm counting on.

I'm going to tough this one out, re-plan in smaller steps where I can, and make sure I survive until the end of the week on my limit.

Taking a break from the Mac app

That said, I'm taking a break from the Mac app for a day or two, so I can revisit my planning before I touch Xcode again.

That won't stop me from building.

Maybe a two-day break isn't a bad thing. I'm so deep into Story Brew, Study Brew, and Story Valley right now, and the results are far more positive than I expected. But that deserves a separate post. Again.

Read also: Study Brew: planning, deconstructing, and thinking ahead

Back to the Study Brew app

The break is also a good "excuse" to pick up where I left off with the Study Brew app. I need an audit of the current state of development, and a plan for what needs to be done, what gets erased, and what gets rebuilt.

Building this one eats far less of my limit than the Mac app, so balancing both this week feels doable.

Story Valley: 26 recorded, October covered

I went full steam ahead on Story Valley this weekend. After the huge decluttering with Apple Numbers, I've recorded 26 episodes so far, and I'm already set until October 31st.

Now the main goal is to record as much as possible, so I can reach 150 episodes as fast as possible. That was the plan before the weekend, and it's still the plan this week.

I'm hoping to record at least another 20 to 30 stories this week. Schedule one episode every two days. That's 40 to 60 days of schedule, which covers the rest of the year.

Story Valley is the one channel where that kind of volume is realistic. The stories are short and simple, and I can record six to ten in an hour. Doing the same with Study Brew or Story Brew would take me days. So it makes sense to front-load this one while the momentum is there.

Read also: Story Valley went live on Spotify: what's my plan here?

Writing, marketing, and random shit in between

Between all this, I'll write two more blog posts for TWO Docs this week and catch up on that side.

I'm also still working on a marketing plan for TWO, plus some random shit in between.

More confident than last week

I feel confident about what I can achieve this week. Far more confident than last week, or the week before, when I was just winging it.

Last week, the plan was to go slow and see what happened. This week, almost everything has a number attached: 150 episodes, two blog posts, 185 features. Numbers I can check on Friday.

Right now, I can see clearly where to focus, and how.

No more postponing

This is also the week I decide what to cut loose and what I still plan to build.

I've been postponing those decisions for too long. Last Monday, I gave myself another week to settle down and re-evaluate, thinking more time would give me better insight.

It did the opposite. The longer I waited, the more I doubted, and the more indecisive I became.

Every week I don't decide, every project on the list still takes up a bit of my head, even the ones I'm not touching.

But no fucking more.

Final note

Story Valley recordings, the Study Brew audit, two posts for TWO, a revised plan for the Mac app before I open Xcode again, and one decision I've been dodging for weeks.

A Mac app eating 20% of my limit in two sessions sounds like a problem. Mostly, it's a reminder that I'm not building small things anymore, and the planning has to grow with it.

I'll know on Friday whether I made that decision or found another reason to push it. I'd rather not have to write that version.