Project File / 11 / Native utility
I made the lock screen do the reminding
A commitment becomes a wallpaper, placing the thing I said mattered on the screen I already see all day.
I can dismiss a reminder without reading it. I can clear a notification and forget the promise underneath it. The failure is not scheduling. It is that the reminder appears in a place designed to disappear.
Background Reminders moves one commitment onto the lock screen. The phone becomes the delivery surface because it is already the object I look at without being asked.
11.01
The wallpaper is the product
The user writes a short commitment, chooses or generates a background, adjusts the composition, previews it inside real device geometry, and exports lock and home screen versions.
The editor is deliberately narrow. This is not a general poster maker. The text needs to survive clock areas, notification zones, crops, safe areas, and the visual noise of the phone itself.
Product testCan the sentence still interrupt me on the hundredth glance?
11.02
Device previews exposed the real bugs
The first web compositions looked correct until they were scaled into narrow screens. Source grids overflowed, preview transforms used the wrong width, and the editor ignored iPhone safe areas.
Those fixes mattered more than adding another template. A wallpaper app fails if the export is beautiful in the editor and awkward on the actual device.
11.03
Native means different rules on each platform
The project uses Capacitor shells. Android includes a local plugin that can set the lock screen, home screen, or both through the platform wallpaper manager. iOS has a verified simulator build, but the operating system still requires a user-driven save and set flow.
The current Mac toolchain also has an asset-catalog issue on its newer macOS version. The app code and web bundle compile and launch in the simulator, but a clean archive with the final asset catalogue needs an updated Xcode. That caveat belongs in the project, not under the rug.
Native realityOne product promise can require two different platform contracts.
11.04
Generated backgrounds need a budget gate
The product can connect to image generation, but the endpoint is quota-protected and fails closed when authentication or budget configuration is missing. A pretty demo is not permission to create an unbounded paid loop.
At publication, the safety, generation, and compositor tests pass. The useful next step is a small private beta that measures whether people keep a commitment wallpaper long enough for the behavior to change.
What survived
Three things I would carry into the next build
- Put the reminder where attention already happens.
- Preview fidelity is core functionality when the output leaves the app.
- Native platform differences should shape the promise early.