How long App Store and Play review actually take in 2026
Neither store publishes an SLA. Here is what the clocks actually look like in 2026, and how a dual-store release calendar is built around that.
Writing
Notes from the studio
What I've learned building and shipping products — for the founders and CTOs who have to make the call.
Casita Amarilla: a static site in 20 languages that keeps publishing itself
Client work for Casita Amarilla. An hourly hotel in Barcelona whose old site was dated and slow, rebuilt as a prerendered static site in 20 languages — with a content agent that keeps the blog moving.
Fiestas de Gràcia: shipping our neighbourhood's festival guide in a week
Our own neighbourhood's festival, a District programme trapped in a PDF, and a hard deadline that doesn't move. A short story about shipping something small, useful and on time.
Global Citizen: an activism app built for festival-scale spikes
Client work with L+R for the Global Poverty Project. A movement app where the traffic pattern is the hard part: quiet for weeks, then a stadium's worth of people at once.
Spireworks: a phone that changes the New York skyline
Client work with L+R. An app where the output device is a skyscraper — which makes latency, turn-taking and scheduling the entire product.
Nidra Technician: an app that programmes a medical device
Client work for Noctrix Health. A Medical-category app where the user is a trained specialist, the output is a therapy device, and "probably fine" is not a state you are allowed to ship.
Deuxmoi World: turning an editorial voice into a searchable database
Client work with L+R for Deuxmoi Media. The interesting problem is not the celebrity gossip — it is keeping an editorial voice intact once you put a filter UI in front of it.
Alexander: an audio app where the writing comes first
Client work with L+R. Original audio from award-winning writers and performers — which puts the entire engineering burden on playback that never loses your place.
Cleaner Go: finding duplicate photos without uploading any of them
Client work with LabHouse. Similarity scoring across tens of thousands of photos, on the phone, fast enough that nobody puts the app down while it thinks.
What building an MVP actually costs in 2026
Most MVP quotes are answering a different question than the one you asked. Here's what the number is actually made of.
Hire a CTO or outsource? A founder's decision framework
The question isn't which is better. It's which risk you can least afford to carry right now.
The CEO↔CTO translation problem: why your roadmap keeps slipping
The roadmap isn't slipping because engineering is slow. It's slipping because two people are using the same words to mean different things.
Fixed price vs time and materials: which contract actually protects you
One of these transfers risk to your supplier. The other transfers it to you. Neither is generous.
Why agencies take six months to do three weeks of work
Nobody is being lazy. The six months is designed in, and mostly by accident.
Native vs Flutter vs React Native in 2026
Twelve years of shipping all three. The honest version: the framework matters less than the team, right up until the moment it matters enormously.
How to audit a codebase before you buy, fund, or inherit it
You have two days and no context. Here's the order I look at things, and which red flags are real.
AI-first delivery: what actually got 10× faster, and what didn't
The speedup is real and it is not evenly distributed. Here's the part nobody puts in the pitch deck.
I was a founder before I was a CTO. Here's what I got wrong.
I built the product beautifully and ran out of the thing that actually mattered. Twice.
What Yuzz and NEXT taught me that still holds up twelve years later
Two programmes, one year, one company that didn't make it. Four lessons that outlived all of it.