u/Fragrant-Match-7058

Quick post for fellow iOS devs. Shipped a movie recommendation app called Slate a few months back, wanted to share technical notes that might save someone time.

Stack: SwiftUI, Firebase (Auth + Firestore), TMDb API

What I'd do differently:

- Add Crashlytics from day 1, not after the first crash

- Don't ship without account deletion - I got rejected and had to scramble (this is now a hard requirement)

- Test deep linking before launch

- AsyncImage caching is rough for image-heavy apps

What worked:

- Building features as MVP first (swipe gestures, half-star ratings) and iterating on feedback

- Used Claude Code for boilerplate, kept architecture decisions manual

If anyone's about to ship their first app, ask away.

App link in comments.