Forge is a gym workout tracking app that I designed, built and launched on my own. It’s now live on the App Store and Google Play. It’s a full-stack project covering product design, engineering and business, and it started from a simple belief: I could do a better job than the big gym apps.
I train regularly, and the leading gym apps kept getting in the way: [too cluttered / too slow to log a set / paywalled basics]. As a product designer, I could see how much better they could be.
How might one designer take an app from idea to both app stores, with a product good enough to pay for, without a team behind it?
[Describe the core design principles, e.g. logging a set in as few taps as possible, readable mid-workout, works one-handed. Name 1–2 decisions you’re proud of.]
[What it does and why it’s designed that way.]
Forge uses the Anthropic API to [describe what the AI does for the user].
I built Forge almost from scratch over a few months of iterative development, writing it almost entirely with Claude Code. That included setting up the third-party services, where Claude Code guided the configuration as well as the code.
One codebase ships natively to iOS and Android, so a solo builder can support both stores.
Authentication and data storage, so workouts sync and stay safe across devices.
Subscription management across both app stores, which is what makes Forge a real business rather than a side project.
The AI features inside the app. [One line on what it powers.]
Forge would not have been possible to build solo without AI. It changed what I think one designer can own: the research, the interface, the code, the infrastructure and the commercial model, all in one head.
It also made me a better design lead. Building every layer myself gives me a much sharper sense of what’s cheap, what’s expensive and where design decisions really land in the code.