Shipping an MVP in 10 weeks: what we cut, what we kept

A look inside how we scoped, designed, and built a cross-platform app with a small team and a hard deadline.

Week one is always discovery. We interview users, map the core loop, and define the single metric that matters. Everything else is a nice-to-have.

We cut native builds and went with React Native. We cut custom UI and used a design system. We cut real-time sync and went with optimistic updates.

What we kept: onboarding, push notifications, and offline support. Those three features moved the retention needle more than anything else.