Coffee Roasting AI App

We all took up a weird hobby during COVID lockdowns and one that has persisted with me has been roasting my own coffee. I started with a small circular roaster that was gifted to me, and currently rock the Fresh Roast SR800. One of the things you start doing in this hobby is keeping a journal of your roasts. Factors like outside temperature, humidity, roasting temperature, and time all play in to chasing after flavor profiles. I’ve been quite happy keeping a paper journal that helps me keep track of variables as I experiement with different controls.

I looked in to some apps that I could run on my phone to store this information and make it somewhat easier to look back at notes I’ve made for various coffees I’ve tried. I was a little disappointed, but unsurprised. There’s not a big market apps in this space.

I started playing around with Swift in order to figure out some UI elements as this is effectively a journaling app. I dove in to SwiftUI and got some working components, but wanted to add support for adding weather. This is where I ran into an issue as getting access to the WeatherKit framework required me to purchase an Apple Developer license and I just wasn’t willing to shell out the $99 to maybe develop an app that I expect to make $0 on.

I have a lot more experience developing in web frameworks, and I’ve been interested in React for a while. I’ve also been reading about AI-driven development and wanted to give these tools a shot.