I built an iOS wellness coach app in 30 days — here's what I learned

Hi,

This started out as a challenge to teach myself iOS development — and I wanted to see if I could ship something meaningful in ~30 days.

I built MelloPal, a tiny GPT-powered wellness app that helps you:

- log meals with natural language

- reflect gently on your eating patterns

- get mood check-ins from an AI wellness coach

What surprised me: even a “simple” app has a LOT more complexity than you’d expect — subscriptions, App Store review gotchas, etc.

I ended up learning:

- prompt tuning with GPT/Claude

- real-world solo dev tradeoffs (done vs perfect)

Available on the App Store (iPhone only):

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6748720668

Would love to hear:

- Does the core idea make sense?

- What would you add or change to make it more valuable?

Thanks for reading! 🙌

— Haoran