How We Built Miiro: From Side Project to the App Store

Miiro started because my wife and I were annoyed.

Not at each other. At the fact that running a household together required five different apps, a shared Google Calendar, a WhatsApp thread for "can you grab..." messages, and a collection of bookmarked recipes spread across three browsers.

We weren't looking to build an app. We were looking for an app. And when we couldn't find one that did what we needed, I started building one.

This is the story of how that happened.

The problem

My wife and I have always been pretty organized people. But after our son Miles arrived, the number of things to keep track of multiplied overnight. Pediatrician appointments, daycare schedules, meal prep, groceries, and all the regular household stuff that didn't stop just because we now had a baby.

We tried Cozi, Todoist, Google Calendar, shared notes, WhatsApp lists. Every tool did one thing well but nothing held everything together. The information was scattered, which meant one of us had to be the person who remembered where everything lived.

That's the mental load problem. Not the tasks themselves, but the invisible work of tracking and coordinating all of it.

The first version

I work in marketing, not engineering. But I've always been curious about building things, and I'd been tinkering with React Native in my spare time. So one evening in May 2025, I opened my laptop and started building.

The first version was rough. A shared task list and a basic calendar. Nothing fancy. I deployed it to TestFlight and handed my wife's phone to her. "Try this."

She used it for a day, then gave me a list of everything that was wrong with it. This became the pattern for the next 4 months.

The name

Miiro is rooted in the Japanese word "miru," which means to see. It's also a nod to both our names combined. Our tagline is "See what matters."

We wanted a name that felt warm and personal, not corporate or productivity-focused. This app isn't about being more productive. It's about seeing your life together more clearly.

What we built

Over 4 months of evenings and weekends, Miiro grew into a full household coordination app:

A shared timeline (My Day) where both of us see tasks, events, and meals in one view. No more switching between calendar and to-do list.

A shared calendar with day, week, and month views. Tasks and events live together because that's how real life works.

A recipe saver called Toru. Paste any recipe URL from the web and it extracts the ingredients and steps. No more bookmarked recipes you can never find.

Meal planning that connects to your recipe collection. Pick your meals for the week and the ingredients flow to your grocery list automatically.

A grocery list auto-sorted by store section. Produce, dairy, meat, pantry. Shopping trips got noticeably faster.

And the feature I'm most proud of: Tell Miiro. An AI-powered input where you can type everything on your mind in natural language. "Pick up Miles at 3, we're having tacos Friday, buy avocados and limes, dentist next Thursday." Miiro sorts it all into tasks, events, meals, and grocery items automatically.

The hard parts

The biggest technical challenge was getting real-time sync right. When my wife adds something to the grocery list at the store, I need to see it instantly at home. Firebase handles this well, but getting security rules, data ownership, and offline persistence working smoothly took more debugging than any feature.

The hardest non-technical challenge was scope. Every week I'd think of a new feature that would be "really cool." My wife would remind me that we still hadn't shipped the app. She was right every time. We cut features ruthlessly and focused on getting the core experience right.

The numbers

4 months from first commit to App Store submission. 270+ tasks tracked in our project management system. 30 TestFlight builds. Countless evening sessions after Miles went to bed.

The tech stack: React Native with Expo, Firebase (Firestore, Cloud Functions, Auth), RevenueCat for subscriptions, and the Anthropic API (Claude) for Tell Miiro's AI parsing.

What we learned

My wife is the most honest tester you could ask for. She doesn't care about the code. She cares about whether the app makes her morning easier. That perspective is worth more than any product framework.

Building for yourself is a superpower. Every decision was easy because we were the users. "Would this annoy my wife?" was our entire product strategy.

Ship when it's good, not when it's perfect. There are features we want to add (voice input, smart nudges, widgets) but the core experience is solid. Perfect is the enemy of shipped. For a deeper dive into the technical and product lessons, read what I learned building Miiro in 4 months.

What's next

Miiro is live on the App Store. We're using it every day and so are our early testers. The roadmap is long: iPad support, calendar import, voice input for Tell Miiro, smart proactive nudges, and more.

But for now, the nightly "what are we eating?" conversation is gone. The grocery list builds itself. And neither of us has to be the household project manager anymore.

That's what we set out to build. And it feels pretty good.

Frequently asked questions

Can I really build an app with no engineering background?

Yes, but it takes patience. React Native and Expo have excellent documentation, and tools like Firebase handle a lot of the backend complexity. The learning curve is real, but if you're motivated by a problem you personally want to solve, that motivation carries you through the hard parts.

How much did it cost to build Miiro?

The main costs were the Apple Developer account ($99/year), Firebase (free tier covers most usage at launch), and the Anthropic API for Tell Miiro's AI features. RevenueCat for subscription management is free up to a revenue threshold. Total out-of-pocket was under $200 before launch.

What would you do differently?

I'd consider Supabase instead of Firebase from the start. Firestore's NoSQL model caused our hardest debugging sessions around data ownership and security rules. For more on the technical lessons, read what I learned building Miiro in 4 months.