Notes from Max Shved on Android development, building Clarity (habit tracker & mood journal app), AI-assisted dev workflows, and shipping software.
One AI agent can't QA a whole app: it tests what it happens to open and grades its own fixes. QA Cycle splits the job the way a QA team would, with one agent per feature, fixes in git worktrees and a different agent verifying every fix.
Why streak counters backfire for a lot of people, what a habit tracker without streaks does instead, and which apps skip streaks — free and paid.
Screen-time blockers, sobriety counters, and detox logs solve different problems. What each kind of detox app does, and when a simple detox log is the better fit.
Why stacked @Preview annotations don't scale, and how compose-auto-preview turns one annotation into every device × theme × state of a screen, plus a browsable map of your whole app.
An honest side-by-side of Clarity and seven of the biggest habit tracker and mood journal apps — who each one is for, and where Clarity fits.
A first post — what Mash Lab is, what I'm shipping, and what to expect from this blog.