ACCEPTING WORK — Q3 2026
appden.
§ 001 — INDEX vol. 02 — issue 06 / 2026

Apps with weight.

Appden is a two‑person studio building software that earns its place on your home screen. We ship our own products and take on a short list of client work each year.

Begin → hello@appden.ca
Est.
2024
Based
Toronto, ON
Headcount
02 / two
Booking
Q3 — Q4 / 2026
Shipped
2 products · 9 client launches
§ 002 — DOCTRINE five things we believe

We started Appden because most software felt disposable. We wanted to build the other kind.

  1. 01

    Less, but uncompromised.

    One menu. One screen. One job done unreasonably well. We argue ourselves out of features more than into them.

  2. 02

    Taste is a technical decision.

    Type, motion, copy, latency, error states — all engineering. A pixel out of place is a bug. So is a sentence that’s too long.

  3. 03

    The work is the marketing.

    We don’t do funnels. We make the thing as good as it can be, then we tell people what it does in plain language. That’s usually enough.

  4. 04

    Small team. Strong opinions. No layers.

    You talk to the people writing the code and drawing the screens. There is no account manager. There never will be.

  5. 05

    We say no, often.

    To projects that don’t fit. To features that don’t earn their keep. To being everything to everyone. It’s the most generous thing we do.

§ 003 — DISCIPLINES what we make, end‑to‑end

Three things, done together. We do not subcontract the parts that matter.

A

Product Design

The shape of the thing. What it is, who it’s for, and the dozen small decisions that make it feel inevitable.

  • Product strategy & positioning
  • Interaction & interface design
  • Identity, type, motion systems
  • Prototypes in real code
B

Engineering

Built by the same people who designed it. Native where it matters, web where it’s honest, infra that doesn’t wake you up.

  • iOS — Swift, SwiftUI
  • Android — Kotlin, Compose
  • Web — TypeScript, edge-rendered
  • Backends, payments, telemetry
C

Launch & After

The unglamorous part. The store listing, the first 100 users, the email that goes out when someone hits an error at 2am.

  • App Store & Play submission
  • TestFlight cohorts, beta loops
  • Launch copy & press
  • Quarterly refinement, in perpetuity
§ 004 — METHOD how an Appden project runs

A project takes 8 to 16 weeks. We work in small loops, in public, and we ship the boring parts first.

  1. 01 Week 0

    Frame.

    A week, sometimes less. We sit with the problem until we can describe it in one paragraph. If we can’t, we don’t take the work.

    • One‑page brief
    • Working budget & cadence
    • The shortest version of the thing
  2. 02 Weeks 1–3

    Sketch.

    Rough, fast, often on paper. The goal is to throw away the wrong ideas before they get expensive. You see every direction we considered.

    • Flow maps, key screens
    • Identity & type direction
    • Prototype you can hold in your hand
  3. 03 Weeks 3–12

    Build.

    Real code from day one. Weekly demos, monthly milestones. You always have a working build to show your partner, your investor, your mum.

    • Native apps in TestFlight / Internal Track
    • Production infrastructure
    • Friday demo every Friday
  4. 04 Weeks 10–14

    Ship.

    Store listings, screenshots, launch copy, the lot. We don’t consider a project done until it’s in front of real users and behaving itself.

    • App Store & Play live
    • Analytics, crash & error pipelines
    • Day‑one support runbook
  5. 05 Forever

    Refine.

    We keep a quarterly retainer with most of our clients. One week per quarter, we come back and make the app a little better. Compounding, like interest.

    • Quarterly review & release
    • OS upgrades handled
    • Roadmap, kept short
§ 005 — CURRENTLY SHIPPING our own products, in market
CHNKS — now playing screen on iPhone
2025 — present iOS · Android

CHNKS

A listening app for people who finish what they start. Audio in chapters, not feeds. No infinite scroll, no “for you”, no autoplay you didn’t ask for.

chnks.app →
Caster — actor profile and open calls dashboard
2024 — present iPad · Web

Caster

Casting calls without the casting agency. Actors keep one profile; productions post one brief; submissions take ninety seconds. Built with five working actors.

caster.studio →
§ 006 — START say a sentence about your idea

Tell us
what you’re building.

hello@appden.ca

Two or three paragraphs is plenty. Who you are, what you want to make, when you’d like it in the world. We reply within two business days, always with a real human sentence.