Route drawing promoted to a full section. The key point is that road-snapped
shortest path needs a routing engine, and that is the whole decision -- OSRM,
GraphHopper or Valhalla self-hosted, or commercial with a key in the app.
Profiles matter more than usual here, since a motorcycle route and a bicycle
route between the same pins genuinely differ, which is where activity type pays
off. Also flagged that a routing engine's ETA is based on posted limits, not on
how fast the rider actually goes -- and the app already stores enough history to
do better.
Group rides, accounts and paid cloud backup moved out to a new v4 section. They
are one programme, not three: each needs a server, identity and a privacy stance,
and none is worth building alone. Recorded that live positions want a websocket
alongside the existing batched uploader rather than replacing it, since the batch
path is what guarantees no fix is lost -- and that location sharing is a consent
question, not a feature.
Renamed V3-BACKLOG.md to BACKLOG.md, since it now covers both, and made the
split explicit up front: v3 is everything buildable with no server, v4 is
everything that cannot be. That means v3 can proceed indefinitely without anyone
deciding to run infrastructure or hold other people's location data.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Written for where the app actually is -- you and friends riding -- rather than
jumping straight to a store listing.
Stage 0 is today: on Android, messaging friends the APK is a complete answer and
may always be. On iOS it is not, because free signing gives 7-day builds and needs
your Mac each time, so anyone riding with an iPhone forces the next stage.
Stage 1 is the one that fits a riding group: $99/yr for TestFlight turns install
into one tap with 90-day builds, and $25 once covers Play internal testing. Both
need a privacy policy URL before any tester touches them, since the app records
location.
Stage 2 covers public listings, and flags that background location is the common
rejection on both stores -- pre-empt it with a demo video of a real ride.
Stage 3 lays out monetization honestly: paid up front, a one-time unlock for local
extras, or a subscription for cloud features. The last one is the only model that
justifies recurring money and the only one that brings servers, accounts, GDPR
deletion and Apple's in-app account deletion requirement. Recommendation is to
stay free now, and reach for a one-time unlock before a subscription.
Also noted a positioning question worth settling before any store listing: the
pipeline is activity-agnostic, and whether Rippr is a motorcycle app or a general
ride recorder decides the category, the screenshots and the audience.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
