Ruby

PM building apps with AI & figuring out how to get people to use them.
Current focus: GoodFinds ( Histoline (

[Ruby @imrubytang]

Week 2 review: two food creators got their own GoodFinds map. First pins now show in 1.6–3.3 s, down from 10–15 s.

Claude now tests each build on my phone, and 7 reviewers found 151 problems in the code. Most are fixed for the next update.

#buildinpublic

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@kushmergedeck Yup!

[Ruby @imrubytang]

Claude wrote me a 45-minute checklist to test my app on my iPhone. I asked it to do the testing instead.

It tapped through the app from my Mac with iPhone Mirroring: 16 checks passed, 8 rough edges, then a bug that wiped restaurant prices...gg

#buildinpublic

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@faruk_talmac Thanks for the heads up! I haven’t tested it on a slow connection yet, adding it to the list. Thanks for the concrete example!

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@R0YWAN Mostly polish: a count of items on a list page that included places off-screen, a picker that took too long to open, a rank label that read the wrong way round. A couple were real breaks, like shared links not opening when the app was closed.

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@aitorapps 100%. That’s exactly how it slipped through. Every screen looked fine, the data underneath changed. Stealing this for the next round 🙏

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@kushmergedeck Yeh the checks nearly missed it. We were testing if all the pages worked correctly and they did. But opening a page quietly refreshed its details from Google, and when Google came back without a price, we saved the blank over the price we already had 🙃

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@dxiaolong Yeh it was supposed to just be updating data but it updated with blanks 😓

[Ruby @imrubytang]

Yesterday morning I DMed 12 food creators about GoodFinds, my restaurant map app. 3 replied.

One asked for a map of her own.

Her map in her bio sends her followers to GoodFinds. Free, evergreen marketing.

Week 1: 5 of 33 replied.
This time: 3 of 12.

#buildinpublic

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@apify Thanks ❤️ Claude pulled via Apify!

[Ruby @imrubytang]

A month after my last follow-up, a Hong Kong food creator with 67k followers finally replied to my DM yesterday.

That evening I built her a map: 19 months of posts, read by Claude on Apify for 48 cents, 116 places.

https://t.co/dCy3npupZU

#buildinpublic

[Ruby @imrubytang]

Embarrassing: I’d already emailed 100+ food creators about the app I built.

Then I opened it on a test account in a new location. It didn’t work.

I asked Claude what other cases could lead to users seeing nothing. It found 11.

Fixes in App Store review. Been nearly 24 hours 😬

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@raroque Thanks for looking at my post!! ❤️

[Ruby @imrubytang]

Week 1 review:

GoodFinds:
1/new feedback board inspired by @raroque
2/Claude found ~400 food creators via TikTok "[city] food" searches
3/Claude emailed 58 food creators

Histoline: created own IG/TikTok after ~500 views on my personal account (@historyonhistoline)

[Ruby @imrubytang]

I had Claude pull 730 of @josephkchoi X posts, tag each by format and compare likes to his baseline.

Biggest jump: switching topics to how consumer apps grow on TikTok: 9 -> 88 median likes in 4 months.

Reply-for-access offers: 3.3×
Founder interviews: 3×
Personal posts: 0.3×

[Ruby @imrubytang]

How do you fit a restaurant list and a map on a phone?

On a laptop they sit side by side. On a phone there’s no hover, and not enough room for both.

So for mobile web, I took a cue from Airbnb: map or list, with one button to switch.

https://t.co/J1JVNy3IG7 #buildinpublic

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@KindnessCFdn Now it names the person ("Picked by Ritu Dalmia") with Viator as the source. That turned out to affect 600+ picks across the map, so thanks for catching it! For android, unfortunately I haven't gotten around to creating it yet

[Ruby @imrubytang]

I built GoodFinds as an app. But an influencer’s feedback said asking strangers to install it before they could judge it could be a bit much.

After 2 days Claude build the web version, without a login. https://t.co/J1JVNy3IG7 #buildinpublic

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@KindnessCFdn Thank you for looking! Both were bugs and are fixed now. Those Delhi pins are actually Ritu Dalmia's picks, from Viator's guide to her Delhi. She only had a quote on one of them, and when there was no quote the map credited the publication instead of her.

[Ruby @imrubytang]

@Joshua_WD I've been messaging food influencers to see if GoodFinds would be useful to their followers, and there have definitely been more visits and page views since people could try it on the web instead of having to download the app first. Downloads have been trickling in 1-2 at a time