> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.oakminder.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Who built this
> Meet the person behind Oakminder.
I needed a reminder app that didn't make me open it just to snooze. That's it. That's why Oakminder exists. I've been using productivity tools every day since 2016, and I've tried nearly every reminder app out there. They all share the same problem: they assume you have time to open an app when you're already busy. So I built something that works differently.
If you're curious about the person behind the app, here's the story.
Oakminder is a solo project. One person designed it, built it, and ships it. Everything on this page is my actual background, not a team bio or a company origin story.
## The long version
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I was three years old, sitting in front of an old computer, drawing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in MS Paint. I didn't know what "design" or "software" meant. I just knew I liked making things on a screen. That feeling hasn't changed in over twenty years.
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I started learning painting and art properly. Won several awards for it. Then I discovered graphic design, animation, and 3D concepts. I ended up working on four national-level education projects before I was a teenager. The pattern was already there: I liked building things that other people could use.
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Where I'm from, the "smart" path is medicine. I picked computer science instead. Started a bachelor's in CS and got into competitive programming contests. It was the first time I realized that writing code and designing interfaces were two sides of the same thing. You're solving someone's problem either way.
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I built full-stack programs and apps from scratch. Pure HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP. No frameworks, no shortcuts. Just raw code and a lot of Stack Overflow. It was painful and slow, but I understood how everything worked underneath. That matters more than most people think.
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I found UX design and Figma, and something clicked. I also picked up modern dev frameworks and mastered Webflow. Started helping small and medium businesses worldwide build their web presence. Design and code stopped being separate disciplines for me. They became the same craft.
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Started a master's in CS. Joined Uhttention as lead designer, lead Webflow developer, and staff web developer, working with US and European brands and startups. This is where I learned what production software actually means. Not just "it works," but "it works for thousands of people who don't care how you built it."
}>
Claude Code, Cursor, custom agent configurations, LLMs, RAG pipelines, knowledge graphs. I went deep. Not as a curiosity, but as a way to build better software, faster, without cutting corners on quality. Oakminder is the result of that approach.
If you count it up, that's roughly two decades of making things on screens. The medium changed (MS Paint to Figma to Expo) but the impulse didn't. I like building tools that solve real problems.
## My take on AI
I've been designing since 2009 and coding since 2016. I care about this stuff. But when I started using AI seriously, everything changed. My productivity didn't just improve, it multiplied. What used to take me months now takes weeks. What used to take days takes hours. The learning curve for new frameworks, the speed of prototyping, the ability to ship a full cross-platform app as one person, all of that became possible because AI 10x'd what I could already do.
Before Oakminder, I'd already been building with React and React Native through AI-assisted projects. I helped a friend prototype a React Native app and worked through the patterns myself on side projects. So when I decided to go all-in on a native app, I wasn't starting from zero. I had the reps. AI just let me move through the unfamiliar parts faster.
I use Claude Code (Opus) as my main coding agent. I wrote a 60+ rule CLAUDE.md file that teaches the AI how my codebase works. Custom agent skills. Custom MCP integrations. It's not about asking the AI to do the thinking for me. It's about having a tool that keeps up with how fast I want to move.
Oakminder was built in about three weeks, from first commit to TestFlight, by one person. The design decisions, the UX instincts, the "this doesn't feel right, fix it" moments? Those come from years of caring about the details. AI didn't give me taste. It gave me speed. And that combination is why I think everyone should be exploring AI, whether you're a designer, a developer, or both.
} color="#79B33B">AI didn't teach me how to build good software. It let me build it 10x faster. That's a difference worth understanding.
## How I found Expo and RevenueCat
I spend a lot of time on X keeping up with tech founders and developers. That's where I first came across Expo. I had React and React Native experience from earlier projects, plus years of design work, but I hadn't gone all-in on building and shipping a native app myself. This was the first time I committed to taking something from zero to the App Store. Expo kept showing up in conversations I trusted, and it looked like the right way to do it.
What I didn't expect was the sheer volume of platform-specific gotchas. iOS has its own rules about what notifications are allowed to do, which background tasks can run, how billing integrations behave, and what libraries actually work. Some frameworks handle these differences for you. Some just silently break. You don't find out which is which until you're deep into a build and something stops working. Expo simplified that discovery process significantly. It didn't eliminate the complexity, but it gave me a sane path through it.
RevenueCat came later. Subscription billing is one of those things that looks simple from the outside but would have taken weeks to build correctly from scratch. RevenueCat abstracted that away and let me focus on the actual product. The SDK handles receipt validation, cross-platform entitlements, trial eligibility, grace periods, and cross-device restoration. Things I would have spent weeks building from scratch. Having the right tools that made it possible for one person to handle billing, notifications, background tasks, and cross-device sync, that's what turned the idea into an actual app.
Here's what caught me off guard: building a cross-platform app isn't hard because of the code. It's hard because every platform has its own rules about what you're allowed to do, and those rules aren't written down clearly anywhere. Expo and RevenueCat abstract most of that pain away.
## Previous work
} href="https://forbiddentrust.com/codex/matchabymaryam" cta="See the case study" arrow="true">
Redesigned a matcha brand's web presence. 65% trust boost and actual brand deals.
} href="https://forbiddentrust.com/codex/ai-memory-hallucination-solution" cta="See the case study" arrow="true">
Career assistant that reduced hallucination rate from 24% to under 3%.
} href="https://forbiddentrust.com/codex/ecosmartloop-ai-waste-classification" cta="See the case study" arrow="true">
AI-powered waste sorting for California's SB 1383 compliance.
} href="https://forbiddentrust.com/codex/personal-software-era-ai" cta="See the case study" arrow="true">
5 apps in 4 weeks. What happens when design experience meets AI-assisted development at speed.
## What's next
I've finished my master's in CS, actively looking for roles where I can combine design and engineering, and connecting with people who care about building good software. If you're reading this and that sounds interesting, I'd like to hear from you.
Oakminder isn't going anywhere. Apple Watch, iPad, macOS. The ecosystem is growing, and I'm building it all. I've been using productivity tools daily since 2016, close to a decade of forming opinions about what works and what doesn't. I even built mini versions of calendar and Kanban tools on the web through a project called YouSoul. The frustration with reminder apps existed long before Oakminder, and it's going to exist after. I'm going to keep shipping.
If you've ever been frustrated by reminder apps that make simple things complicated, or if you just want something that respects your time and gets out of your way, that's exactly who this is for. The roadmap is driven by what I actually need, what users ask for, and nearly a decade of opinions about how productivity tools should work. User feedback will drive feature priorities going forward. Not assumptions, not trends. What people actually tell me they need.
} href="/support/why-oakminder">
The full story behind Oakminder: the frustrations, the philosophy, and what makes it different.
## Connect
} href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/whoisoak/">
Professional profile
} href="https://x.com/ForbiddenSteve">
Updates and thoughts
} href="https://forbiddentrust.com/">
Portfolio