After successfully completing cf.me engagement, I began working with the startup on an hourly basis as they transitioned from cf.me branding to shades.news branding to reach a broader target market. The product remained mainly unchanged, but the team aimed to make their iOS-only application function identically to their web application and expand their presence in mobile markets by deploying on both iOS and Android platforms. The CTO opted to use React as the development framework, and the startup expressed interest in hiring me again for their product.

The goal of this second engagement was to rewrite the mobile application using the same code repository as the Next.JS application developed in the previous engagement. Therefore, we chose to utilize a technology evolved from the Ionic framework called Capacitor. Capacitor allowed us to package our web application as a PWA and deploy it on both iOS and Android platforms. Adapting our web application, which originally utilized Static Site Generation to regenerate content at intervals, posed a significant challenge in the Capacitor environment. We had to overhaul the content generation logic to support incremental generation, ensuring that content updated by our content team in Sanity was reflected in the mobile app.

Another technical challenge in this project was achieving native-like animations using only JavaScript. To address this, we extensively utilized Framer Motion and React Spring, resulting in an application that demanded substantial computational resources.

Despite these challenges, we managed to release the new mobile application in nearly three months, a milestone that enabled the startup to secure its seed round of funding. With the seed round finalized, the team requested my assistance in building a team of developers, a task I successfully completed while also assisting in resolving bugs and implementing new features. After assembling their developer force, we mutually agreed to conclude our engagement.