GrillTask

The idea

Tasks between people who trust each other die at the follow-up. A parent asks, a roommate promises, and then everyone forgets until it becomes a fight. GrillTask makes the loop explicit: you assign a task to someone, they submit photo proof when it’s done, and you approve it to release points toward rewards you both agreed on. It works for parents and kids, partners, roommates, and small teams — anyone tired of being the person who follows up.

What I built

Everything. I architected the app end to end: the data model, the task and approval flow, real-time sync, and photo storage. It runs on Firebase — authentication, real-time database, and storage — behind a serverless backend, with custom security rules doing the real access-control work across tiered subscription plans. Stripe handles subscription billing, and a separate admin panel lets me manage users, plans, and content without touching the database by hand.

Being a one-person team forced honest engineering choices. Serverless, because I can’t be on call for a fleet. Security rules as the enforcement layer, because client code can’t be trusted with plan limits. An admin panel early, because support without tooling doesn’t scale past the first user.

Where it stands

GrillTask is feature-complete and heading to the App Store, with the landing page live at grilltask.com. It’s the first product where I’ve owned every layer — positioning, architecture, code, billing, and the App Store paperwork — and it set the bar for how I want to ship: small surface, finished properly.