Notes from the workbench while I build Camaïeu, a breath pacer and focus timer for iPhone, built from slow generative shapes you compose yourself — open questions, motion clips, and honest accounts of what shipped and what broke.
Built in public for RevenueCat's Shipaton 2026. New here? Start with Building Camaïeu in public.
Camaïeu 1.2 is out with the three-mode rework, a rewritten How to Use page and a shorter name on the store. It is the last change before Shipaton closes, so this entry is mostly a thank-you to the people whose replies changed the icon, the onboarding, and how I think about the next app.
A week of using Camaïeu instead of testing it, and the same complaint every time: too much on screen. The next update rebuilds the chrome around three modes, compose, breathe and timer, with one switch at the bottom and nothing stacking. Saved looks now remember what they were for.
Camaïeu 1.1 fixes a drifting image and carries my first ever performance pass. Two suspects I had worried about for a month, a Metal HUD and Instruments session that cleared them both, and the one test I would not have thought of: pretending the phone is overheating.
Camaïeu is on the App Store. A small app for taking a break: a slow-moving picture with a focus timer and a breath pacer living inside it. The free tier is free for as long as you like; a subscription opens the rest, with a seven-day trial to see it all.
The paywall week. Subscriptions are new territory for me, and the first version asked before the app had shown a single free thing. Three small moves to fix that, hints instead of onboarding, a bug that was the sandbox clock, and Camaïeu is submitted for review.
A few seconds of motion: the breath pacer running the relaxing 4-7-8 pattern over the sea. One look among many, since the ring, the pattern and the picture are all yours to change.
Most of Camaïeu explains itself: open it and a picture is already moving. But two features are near-invisible — compose mode, and the fact that the breathing curve is draggable. Hints, a tour, or nothing at all?
Nothing broke this week. The icon is decided: the sea. A second UI pass, a rebuilt breath pacer you can set in half-second steps, and a ring you can move and resize until it becomes part of the picture.
A few seconds of motion: recoloring a loop in Camaïeu while it runs. Same gears, same seed, you choose the colors.
Camaïeu needs an icon, and it's the one place in the app where nothing can move. Two candidates, a frozen cell and a frozen sea, both layered in Icon Composer. Which one still reads as alive while standing still?
Camaïeu exports a Live Photo, but iOS refuses to animate it as a wallpaper — the requirements are undocumented, and the known workaround doesn't work either. Three trips to the device, an experiment deleted the same day, and why the Live Photo export is retiring.
Monday's free-tier question got no replies online, so I asked people around me, triptych in hand. The offline answer was unanimous: cell. One of them, breathing. Sound off, let it loop.
The free tier ships with exactly one shape family, and it has to carry the whole app alone. Three candidates (cell, gear, and the newly landed wave) side by side in one video, same hue and mood. Which would you keep?
A tour of everything Camaïeu can already do: two shape families, instant recolor, breathing sessions, shareable look codes, Live Photo export. And the debug chrome it's all still hiding behind.
I avoid social media, and I've entered a hackathon judged on building in public. Introducing Camaïeu, a generative ambient art app for iPhone, and the devlog that will follow it to the App Store.
Found something useful, missing, or unclear? Your feedback is welcome.
