I'm a developer in transit. I'm constantly switching between coding courses and boot camps when I hit roadblocks. In my defense, linear learning is hard when you're neurodivergent.

But artificial intelligence makes it easier to iterate until I nearly reach perfection. It's why I was confident going into vibe coding, and how I wound up building a breast self-exam app for .

Building mobile apps with AI

Trivia challenge

                From code generation to on-device models — find out how much you really know about AI-powered mobile development.

Which AI-powered coding assistant, developed by GitHub and OpenAI, became one of the most widely adopted tools for generating mobile app code?

What is the name of Google's on-device AI runtime that allows machine learning models to run directly on Android devices without a network connection?

Which Apple framework allows iOS developers to integrate trained machine learning models into their apps and runs exclusively on Apple devices?

In the context of mobile AI development, what does the term 'model quantization' primarily refer to?

Which cross-platform mobile framework introduced 'AI-assisted UI generation' features through integrations with tools like Firebase Genkit and Vertex AI?

What is Prompt Engineering in the context of building AI-powered mobile apps?

Which chip component, found in modern smartphones like the Google Pixel and Apple iPhone, is specifically designed to accelerate AI and machine learning workloads?

When a mobile app sends user data to a remote server to process an AI request and return a result, this approach is commonly called what?

Your Score

Thanks for playing!

There are no malignant bugs in my system

Only clean, healthy code allowed here

My sister is a breast cancer survivor. Her surreal healing journey pulled our family into her orbit, and forced us to recalibrate our lifestyles.

Before, the illness was something that happened to other people. Experiencing it up close changed how I think about health.

Since then, I've encouraged my sister to document everything, especially her pursuit of a natural cure. It mattered enough to both of us that we kept returning to the idea.

We wanted to offer hope to others going through the same thing. Yet, everyday life kept pushing it down the list.

Then Simple Design's My Calendar app gave me a reason to revisit the original e-book concept and improve it.

I've used the Android app for years because it's simple, syncs across devices, lets me share cycles with my partner or track a friend's, and makes it easy to send my history to my gynecologist.

Recently, it added a breast self-exam feature. I grinned when I saw it because most period apps focus on ovulation and conception.

The feature is bare-bones, but a recent reorganization gives each symptom its own entry. I'm a sucker for tiny details in apps I often use, so this small change makes a huge difference.

Braska is concerned about your everyday wellness

Because everyone deserves dedicated health tools

Women's health remains largely underfunded and underresearched, and breasts as a topic continue to receive shaming.

A 2025 Novartis and The Harris Poll survey of over 3,000 US women revealed society influences more than half of women's views about breasts.

One in three women is uncomfortable discussing their health outside a doctor's office, and only one in three performs monthly self-exams.

I may not close the research gap, but I can create a solution that allows people with chest tissue to check in on themselves daily and freely.

The idea, at its simplest, is a companion similar to a period app. Its name is a play on "bra" and "asker," yet tentative while I ponder a proper way to represent broader user groups.

You'll enter what you noticed after each exam, and it compares your answer with past logs. Separately, there's a gallery of common variations for you to compare symptoms against.

The Future Me journal is where you reflect on your history when anxiety makes new sensations frightening. You may document tenderness you've experienced before and what happened afterward.

It reminds you of harmless patterns and offers some reassurance. You don't want health scares affecting your quality of life before you seek professional consultation.

I built my app with React Native and Expo

It features interactive features and 3D anatomy

I needed the best AI for my sister’s app, so I let Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini weigh in. ChatGPT and Gemini recommended Claude, while Claude gave a more nuanced answer about the strengths of each model.

So, I used ChatGPT and Gemini as my design directors. I turned their suggestions into a project brief, which I then gave to Claude.

Claude generated two versions of Braska. The first was a clickable React web prototype that I previewed in Chrome. It proved that the concept was largely feasible.

I moved to the three horsemen of my unglamorous developer journey: React Native, Expo, and TypeScript.

React Native turns the code into an iOS or Android app, Expo handles much of the setup, and TypeScript catches coding errors as I build.

I focused on the guided exam and adding a haptic pressure guide. It pairs light, medium, and firm modes with an animated breast ring and matching vibrations.

Optional voice narration exists through Expo Speech and lets you complete the exam hands-free. The AR mirror uses the front camera as a live reflection with guides showing where to examine.

I deliberately skipped pose detection and computer vision to ensure the app never captures or stores images.

The 3D anatomy model was my favorite part to discuss with Claude because the AI generated the model in Three.js from basic shapes.

So, visualize spheres for lobules, cylinders for ducts, and smaller shapes for the nipple, areola, and lymph nodes. You can rotate it and tap structures to learn what they do.

You have to understand that anatomical accuracy is a much higher bar than making something look like a body part.

Although I wouldn't treat this as a medical-grade model, I love being able to create it from primitives rather than sourcing a model from somewhere else.

It's the best way for me to sidestep asset licensing concerns and match every structure to Braska's color palette.

Your privacy should come first on any app

Encryption-level protection is my standard

Braska encrypts user data with XChaCha20-Poly1305. It generates a key on first launch and stores it in the phone's secure storage through iOS Keychain or Android Keystore.

Any corrupt data becomes unreadable rather than falling back to plain text. Claude's code was impressively clean from what I could verify, but I took time to review the UI copy.

The last major hurdle was updating my MacBook to macOS Tahoe 26.6.2 so that I could install the Command Line Tools.

A previous Apple update wrecked my old Intel Mac, so I checked forum feedback before upgrading. This time, it went smoothly.

I then installed Homebrew, using it to install Node and later Java 17 when Android Studio's newer Java version proved incompatible with my React Native project.

Then I created a virtual Google Pixel 10 and ran my first build after installing Android Studio. It took more than 10 minutes with nothing cached, but Braska ran successfully.

There are rough edges I need to fix. For one, the AI check-in currently only follows pre-written scripted responses and can't handle user input yet.

Regardless, I'm thrilled to have gotten this far. With more testing and debugging, the next step is putting the code under version control and pushing it to GitHub.

Good vibes make better code

Coding is less intimidating as AI handles more mechanical work. It's capable enough that you can even like Gemini.

Yet, it doesn't undermine developer efforts behind app building. You always need to have a clear sense of what you're trying to achieve.

Otherwise, you'll make a fully functional app with no compelling reason to exist. So, don't lose sight of your software's purpose between prompts.