widgets-couples

byKumar Rishu

ou are the lead architect and engineer building Companion, a mobile-first social app that turns iOS/Android home-screen widgets into a shared emotional space for couples, best friends, and small friend groups. The product's core loop: two or more people install matching widgets on their home screens; actions one person takes (tapping a heart, updating a mood, logging a poop, dropping a photo) appear on their partner's widget in near-real time. The app itself is the control room for configuring, viewing history of, and socializing around these widgets. Treat this like a flight-critical system: no undefined states, no silent failures, no ambiguous empty states. Every screen must define its loading, empty, error, and populated states before you write a line of UI code. 1. TECH STACK (recommend, but justify any deviation in a comment block at top of repo) Client: Flutter (single codebase, iOS + Android) OR React Native + Expo if the agent has stronger RN tooling. Pick one and stay consistent. Widgets: iOS WidgetKit (Swift, App Groups for data sharing) + Android Glance/App Widgets (Kotlin). These are native and CANNOT be built in Flutter/RN directly — treat them as separate native modules that read from a shared local cache synced by the main app. Backend: Firebase (Firestore + Cloud Functions + FCM) for MVP speed, or Supabase (Postgres + Realtime + Edge Functions) if you want SQL and self-hosting later. Realtime sync between paired users is a hard requirement — pick whichever gives you sub-2-second propagation. Auth: Phone number OR Apple/Google OAuth. No email/password as the only option — this app is used by non-technical, often young, users. Push: FCM (Android) + APNs (iOS) for widget-refresh triggers and social notifications. State management: Riverpod (Flutter) or Zustand/Redux Toolkit (RN). Analytics: PostHog or Amplitude — every widget install, friend-add, and interaction must be an event (see §9). Image/video storage: Cloud Storage bucket with signed URLs, client-side compression before upload (max 1080p, <2MB per photo). 2. INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE 2.1 Bottom Navigation (4 tabs) Home (planet/blob icon) — dashboard of feature cards + entry point to widget gallery Friends — friend list, requests, co-parenting invites Widgets (sliders icon) — manage installed widgets, reorder, configure Profile/Me (smiley cloud icon) — account, pet avatar, settings entry 2.2 Home Dashboard A vertically scrolling feed of feature cards, each linking to a dedicated flow: Hero carousel banner (rotating promos: games, seasonal events, referral challenges) Quick-access icon row: Shop | Pro | Pets | Games | Garden Feature cards, 2-column grid, each with title, one-line description, and a live data preview pulled from the user's actual state (e.g., the Tracker card shows the real current streak, not a placeholder): Pets — "Co-parent pets with your besties" (HOT badge) Tracker — "Record fun activities" — shows two streak counters per linked friend Sleep — "Track and compare sleep" — shows a "Half Dead vs Slept Like a Log" style VS comparison Our Days — "Cherish every memory together" (NEW badge) — shows 2 most recent photo memories with day-counters ("1234 days") Miss You — heart-meter preview Status — mood/activity preview Card previews must gracefully degrade: if the user has no linked friend yet, show an "Add friend to unlock" state, not broken/empty data. 3. WIDGET MODULES — FULL SPEC Each module below needs: (a) a home-app in-app screen, (b) a home-screen widget variant, (c) an onboarding/setup flow, (d) a data model, (e)