Solo? Yes, everything. Design, code, marketing, support. No team, no outsourcing. Last few months Claude Code has been a huge help for brainstorming, copywriting, and rubber-ducking code problems.

Product or tech first? Product first, 100%. Started with the problem: my kid needs access to more music, but I don't want to hand over Apple Music. Tech decisions followed from there. SwiftUI because I wanted native performance, Realm for offline, etc.

Tests/CI/CD? Honestly, test coverage is thin. I have unit tests for critical parts (subscription logic, playback state) but not full coverage. No CI/CD - just manual builds and upload to TestFlight. Good enough for a solo project.

Legal? Self, mostly. Apple's standard EULA covers the basics. The app doesn't collect anything.

The difference: Muky separates the audio player from the admin area. Kids get a locked-down player showing only playlists you created – big artwork, tap to play, nothing else. Parents manage everything in a separate admin area – create playlists, add content, adjust settings.

Spotify means infinite browsing, algorithm recommendations, and "Dad, how do I get back to my song?"

Plus with 4.0 there's a Browse tab with curated content for kids, so you don't have to search through millions of songs yourself.

Think of it as a "view" on top of your existing subscription. Parents curate in the admin area, kids see only what you want them to see.

Subscription journey: Started with one-time payment, but hard to justify ongoing development time. Switched to subscription. Not everybody was amused.

First model was freemium – one playlist with max 10 tracks for free. Felt too limiting for new users trying to understand the app.

In December I changed it: all features free to explore, unlimited playlists, all content. Subscription only kicks in when you open the audio player – with 1 month free trial. Since then, good numbers daily with users worldwide. Feels more honest and converts better.

Tech side: I use both iOS SDK and Web API. Users create their own Spotify app in the developer dashboard to connect – keeps me out of API quota issues.

For me, I had bad experiences with React Native in the past and already built another iOS app in Swift. Knew the ecosystem, liked SwiftUI, so sticking with native felt right. Less context switching, and I can use Apple frameworks directly – MusicKit for Apple Music integration and native offline playback would've been painful to wrap.

Cross-platform definitely makes sense for many projects – just wasn't the right fit for me this time.

Also shout-out to flutter_rust_bridge and a video[0] on YouTube from a conference explaining how to fit it in, I get to use Flutter and Dart for the UI parts and everything else in Rust. Another great thing because of Flutter's hot-reload I get to avoid the sucky parts of waiting for Rust code to compile to see UI changes. I've also had good (not great) success getting Gemini 3 Pro to sketch out the initial UI and the boilerplate and that also allowed me to move a bit faster than I would've otherwise.

[0] https://youtu.be/yZ0XHRfU7Ao?si=JQXHS61ycxVSq9GF

Exactly. The mental model thing is brutal. You know every corner of the app, so everything feels obvious. Then you watch someone use it for the first time and they're completely lost. Need to do that more often, perfect way to learn.

And yes - QR sharing was about bringing back that "here, just take it" moment. Sending library export as JSON, explaining how to import... too much friction. Scan and done feels right.

MP3s aren't supported right now – Muky only works with streaming content. But you're not the first to ask. Adding local files to the roadmap, maybe in the future.

Old model: freemium with 1 playlist, max 10 tracks. Paid unlocks more. Felt limiting.

New model: everything free to explore. Build your playlists, add all content. Subscription only kicks in when you open the audio player to hand it to your kid – 1 month free trial included.

Since then daily signups are solid, users worldwide. Feels more honest – people see the full value before paying. Still indie scale, but growing steadily.

Curious how you handle when AI makes mistakes on production systems?

For speakers, I just got my daughter the Wonderboom 4 – pairs via Bluetooth, sturdy, sounds good. Combined with an old iPad it's a solid setup.

Explicit tag filtering is a good idea. Right now parents manually curate playlists, so you control what goes in. But auto-filtering based on explicit flags could help. Adding it to the list - thanks for the suggestion!

Honestly, still figuring this out. Tried social media (Instagram, Threads, Bluesky) and reaching out to blogs/reviewers. Gets some traction but reach is limited. A German print magazine review helped, and the first HN post brought a spike.

What's funny – parent to parent word of mouth has been really helpful. I get lots of emails from parents with ideas or bug reports. They found the app through friends or family. That feels more sustainable than any marketing trick.

But I still need to find better channels with more reach. Most growth so far has been organic via App Store search. Open to suggestions if anyone has ideas! ;)