Re-exported at 46a0726, which adds README.md plus docs/ARCHITECTURE, DEVELOPMENT, TESTING, v1 history including the original brief, and a v3 backlog. 112 files, and the bundle now carries 19 commits. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
v1 — the original recorder
v1 was specified as MotoTrack, a "bare-bones, highly resilient" recorder to capture GPS telemetry during motorcycle group rides. Renamed to Rippr partway through.
The original brief is preserved verbatim in original-spec.md.
Design priority, quoted from the brief: "Unbreakable execution over UI beauty." That framing drove every architectural choice and still holds.
What shipped
A single-screen app with an un-killable foreground service writing GPS fixes to Room, plus a REST uploader. Validated on a real ride — including max speed, which the emulator cannot produce.
Deviations from the spec, and why
The spec was written as complete, paste-ready code. Most of it was sound; these parts were not, and were changed deliberately.
| Spec said | What shipped | Why |
|---|---|---|
super.onCreate() in MainActivity |
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState) |
Would not compile |
kapt for Room |
KSP | kapt is 2–3× slower and unreliable on modern Kotlin/JDK |
Hardcoded material3:1.2.1 beside a Compose BOM |
Version catalog + BOM | Version conflict |
insertPoint() per fix from the callback |
Unbounded Channel + batched writer |
A coroutine per fix gives no back-pressure guarantee; disk latency could block GPS |
Activity-local isRecording |
Process-wide state (later, in v2, the database) | Lied after process death |
| 1 Hz polling of two suspend DAO queries | Room Flow |
Push, not poll |
| No stop action on the notification | Stop action + tap-to-open | |
| Nothing countering Doze / OEM killers | Battery-optimisation exemption prompt | A multi-hour ride must survive |
No Theme.MotoTrack, no launcher icon |
Generated both | Referenced by the manifest but never defined |
| "Streams over HTTP/REST" in the goal, no task for it | Full uploader: synced column, batched POST, retry, offline-safe |
Stated as a goal, so it was built |
Verification
The emulator harness built here was reused throughout v2:
- Merged manifest checked inside the APK —
foregroundServiceType=0x8(location) confirmed - 25 synthetic GPS fixes fed; final stored coordinate matched the fed value exactly
- Foreground service confirmed via
dumpsys(isForeground=true, ongoing notification) - Stop path verified: service gone, notification removed, final flush landed, 81 contiguous point ids
Speed was never verified in v1's automated testing — the emulator reports zero velocity. It was confirmed only on Dylan's first real ride.
What v1 lacked
Feedback after that ride, which became the v2 brief:
"app is simple and clean. I like that but it's missing stuff. There is no reset or pause button, there is no concept of a trip, it captures speed data but not path data."
Three of those four were the same missing concept — no Trip boundary. The fourth was a
misconception worth recording: path data was already being captured. Every point stored
latitude, longitude, altitude and bearing at 1–2 Hz from day one. What was missing was a
map to draw it on.
Icon work
The launcher icon was designed in this phase. Five motorcycle-themed concepts were generated locally as SVG, using Google Material Symbols (Apache-2.0) as reference geometry; Dylan picked Route — a switchback trace inside a ring.
Lesson from that round: the first attempt hand-authored bezier paths without ever rendering
them, and they were poor. Building a rasterise-and-look loop (rsvg-convert) changed the
output quality completely. Generators live in design/.