The Tessera playbook

I've written up the whole of Tessera as a playbook on my own site: every stage from the first sketch to a paid launch, in the order I did it, with the decisions and the mistakes that mattered.

I built Tessera on the side. For most of the 168 days between the first commit and the app launch I was working full time, and moving house in July took me out for six weeks. So the playbook is about what one person can ship in the gaps, with AI tools doing the work of a small team.

What's in it

• Design as a system, not a style
• Front end, back end, and an economy players can't cheat
• Going native: one spec, one Flutter app, two stores
• Sign-in without passwords, payments, coins and ads
• Getting through App Review and Google Play
• CI/CD on a budget, and watching it all run
• Automated marketing, email, press, and paid ads on £1,000
• How I worked with Claude Code, and 18 tips I'd give anyone doing this

Read the playbook on pjcooper.design

It's written for designers and builders who want to know whether one person can ship a whole product now. If that's you, I hope it saves you some of the traps I fell into. If you're here for the puzzle, today's is waiting on iPhone and Android.

Paul