The Rocky Road to Clarity: Defining My Travel Safety App as a Mom-Coder in the Mountains

(and yes, that process has a name!)

Hey wanderers and builders! 👋 I’m a housewife and solo developer living in the breathtaking but treacherous mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), juggling code, motherhood (my 6 and 3 year-old tornadoes 😅), and the daily chaos of mountain life. Today, I’m sharing the first brutal truth of building my travel safety app: the agony of defining what this app should actually DO.

That Exhausting Back-and-Forth? It’s Called Product Discovery.

You know that phase where you’re drowning in ideas, scribbling features on napkins, questioning every choice, and wondering if any of it solves real problems? That’s Product Discovery the critical process of defining:

• What your app does (and doesn’t do).

• Which features genuinely solve user pain points.

• Why it deserves to exist.

For weeks, I’d put my kids to bed, open my notebook, and spiral:

“Should it just track location? Or also send SOS alerts? What if there’s NO signal? How do I make it work offline? Should it notify emergency contacts automatically? Wait—is this even technically possible?!”

Back and forth. Forth and back. Mom guilt knocking (“Should I be sleeping instead?”). Doubt whispering (“Who am I to build this?”). The mountains outside my window stunning yet deadly reminded me why I started: after seeing news of travelers found dead in ravines days after vanishing. GB’s beauty hides peril: no network, crumbling roads, and zero margin for error.

Why Product Discovery Felt Like Hiking Through a Blizzard

As a solo dev with limited time (naptime = coding time!), every decision carried weight:

1. Feature Triage: I wanted EVERYTHING live tracking, offline maps, automated checkins. Reality check? I’m one person. I forced myself to ask: “If I build ONLY ONE THING, what saves lives?” Answer: Offline location tracking with automated emergency alerts. Everything else? V2.

2. Tech Stack Panic: React Native? Flutter? Pure native? With spotty electricity and a toddler climbing my lap, I needed:

   • Cross-platform (I can’t maintain two codebases).

   • Shared logic (backend + web + mobile in one place).

   • Speed.
     So I chose: TurboRepo + React Native + Express.js. One monorepo to rule them all (shoutout to NPM workspaces!).

How I Tamed the Chaos (Sort Of)

1. Embraced the “Minimum”: My MVP (Minimum Viable Product) became painfully simple:

   • Logs your route offline via GPS.

   • If you miss a checkpoint, it alerts your emergency contacts when signal returns.

   • No fancy UI. No social features. Just a digital lifeline.

2. Leaned Into Constraints:

   • Time? I code during preschool hours and after bedtime.

   • Resources? My “office” is the kitchen table. My “team” is my husband’s feedback after kids sleep.

   • Connectivity? I test in GB’s dead zones (which, sadly, are everywhere).

Progress So Far: Monorepos & Mom Wins 🚀

I’ve set up the bones:

travel-safe-app/  
├── apps/  
│   ├── mobile (React Native)  
│   ├── web (Next.js)  
│   └── backend (Express)  
└── packages/  
    └── shared (Typescript utils, DB models)

TurboRepo is my sanity-saver. One npm install to rule them all? Yes, please.

Why This Matters to Me (And Maybe You?)

I’m not just building an app. I’m coding against helplessness. Every time I hear about a missing hiker in these mountains, I think: “Could my app have given them a fighting chance?”

To every solo dev, mom, or dreamer staring down a mountain of doubt:

Product Discovery isn’t procrastination it’s laying the foundation.
Your constraints? They’re your superpower.

Next Up: How I’m hacking offline GPS tracking in zero-network zones! (Spoiler: It involves file syncing and sheer stubbornness 😤).

Follow my journey here on Hashnode! I’ll share code snippets, mom-fails, and the raw reality of building tech where the wifi stops but the cliffs don’t. ✨

P.S. What’s the hardest part of your Product Discovery phase? Share below—let’s suffer together! 👇

🌍 About the App: "Safe Trails GB" aims to reduce traveler fatalities in remote areas by providing offline location tracking and emergency alerts. Built with love (and chaos) from the mountains of Pakistan.