DEV Community: Dhairya Chandra

Building Stepzy with Google Gemini - How AI Helped Me Ship a Real iOS App Faster

Dhairya Chandra — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 20:11:25 +0000

This is a submission for the Built with Google Gemini: Writing Challenge

What I Built with Google Gemini

Over the past month, I built Stepzy, a lightweight iOS app designed to help people stay consistent with their daily movement. The goal was simple: create a clean, fast, distraction‑free step tracker that motivates users without overwhelming them.

Most step‑tracking apps are either too bloated or too boring. I wanted something minimal but encouraging, something that makes you want to hit your daily goal.

How Google Gemini Helped

Google Gemini became a core part of my development workflow:

SwiftUI scaffolding: I used Gemini to generate initial UI components, layout ideas, and simple animations.
Debugging HealthKit logic: When step queries or permissions behaved unexpectedly, Gemini helped me reason through the logic and edge cases.
Copywriting & UX: The tagline “Track Steps. Stay Motivated.” came from an iteration with Gemini, along with some microcopy for empty states.
Feature ideation: I explored habit‑building frameworks with Gemini and used those insights to shape Stepzy’s streak system and motivational nudges.

Even though Stepzy is a native iOS app (not deployed on Cloud Run), Gemini acted like a teammate throughout the entire build.

Try Stepzy

Explore features, insights, and updates on our official website:

👉 Website: https://stepzy.suvysoft.com/

TestFlight Access

Want to try Stepzy before release?

📩 Email us at apps@suvysoft.com to request TestFlight access.

What I Learned

Technical Lessons

Faster SwiftUI prototyping: Gemini helped me quickly explore different layouts and component structures without getting stuck on boilerplate.
Better reasoning about HealthKit: It was useful for thinking through how step counts update, how to handle permissions, and how to avoid double‑counting.
Architecture conversations: Asking Gemini to “think like a senior iOS engineer” led to useful suggestions around separating concerns and keeping views lean.

Soft Skills & Workflow Lessons

Prompting is a real skill: The clearer my questions, the better the answers. Vague prompts led to vague code.
AI accelerates, but doesn’t replace judgment: I still had to review every line, test on device, and decide what actually shipped.
Iteration over perfection: Using Gemini made it easier to try multiple approaches quickly instead of over‑planning.

Unexpected Lessons

Gemini sometimes suggested non‑existent APIs or mixed UIKit and SwiftUI patterns.
It occasionally leaned on outdated patterns for state management.
Those mistakes forced me to double‑check everything, which ironically made me more intentional and careful as a developer.

Google Gemini Feedback

What Worked Well

Great for scaffolding: Generating SwiftUI views, basic models, and simple helpers was fast and surprisingly solid.
Strong at debugging logic: When I described a bug in detail, Gemini often helped narrow down the root cause or suggest better logging.
Helpful product thinking: It contributed ideas around streaks, gentle nudges, and how to keep the app motivating without being noisy.
Multi‑step reasoning: When I framed problems as multi‑step (“first do X, then consider Y, then Z”), the responses were more structured and useful.

Where I Hit Friction

Hallucinated APIs and frameworks: I had to verify everything against Apple’s docs or Xcode’s autocomplete.
Verbosity: Sometimes I had to explicitly ask for “short, focused answers” to avoid walls of text.
Inconsistent best practices: Not all suggestions aligned with modern SwiftUI patterns, especially around @State, @ObservedObject, and navigation.
Context drift: Long conversations occasionally lost focus, so I’d start fresh threads for new subproblems.

Looking Forward

For future versions of Stepzy, I’d love to:

Add AI‑generated weekly summaries of your movement.
Experiment with on‑device personalization using smaller models.
Explore a watchOS companion app to make step tracking even more seamless.

Building Stepzy with Google Gemini reminded me that AI isn’t here to replace builders - it’s here to amplify us. It helped me move faster, think more broadly, and ship a real app that I’m proud of.

If you read this and end up building your own Gemini‑powered project, I’d love to see it.

NEPTI Script v1.01

Dhairya Chandra — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 18:51:28 +0000

Github Project- https://github.com/navjots7/NETPI-v1.01

This is our first script and it is based on the basic networking tools that are already available on Kali Linux. But instead of opening different terminal windows for different tools, this script will save your time.

While writing this article, the script contains 6 features namely:

IP Address - Know your IP Address
MAC Address- Know your MAC Address
Turn off the Interface- Turn off the interface
Gateway IP- Know the Gateway IP
Whois- use whois tool and the output will be saved in a different file named as Output.txt
Hostname- Know the hostname So for this script to work, you need an interface with state as up. If the interface is down, this script will initially try to change the state of the interface.

At first, it will list all the network interfaces which are in the up state. If you see your choice of Network interface in that list, you need to write down the interface to continue. Else just mention the specific interface you want to use, it will try to bring that interface in the up state and if that is successful then you will further proceed with the script or it will show an error if the interface is not present (This will result in exiting of the script.).

Once you are done with this, just use the script with these tools. We will add some more tools in the near future.

If you find any issue with the script, do mention it in the “issue” tab.

WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE HOW YOU ARE GOING TO USE THIS SCRIPT. PLEASE BE ETHICAL, LEGAL AND USE IT FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.

CREATORS

Twitter-
@navjot7s - https://twitter.com/navjot7s
@dhairyachandra - https://twitter.com/dhairyachandra

Github-
@navjots7 - https://github.com/navjots7
Dhairyachandra - https://github.com/dhairyachandra
@Singhm-n - https://github.com/Singhm-n

Starting my 100 Days of Code Challenge

Dhairya Chandra — Sun, 07 Jul 2019 19:51:14 +0000

Hello Everyone,

I’m publicly committing to the 100DaysOfCode Challenge starting today! I will share my progress report on Twitter daily. You can tweet me on @dhairyachandra for any queries and questions. Daily logs and work will be uploaded on GitHub. Also I’ll be sharing my daily learning on my blog.

I’ll be starting learning Swift language and then I’ll design iOS apps all my work will be shared on Twitter, GitHub and my website.

What is 100 Days Of Code Challenge ?

100 Days of Code is a challenge/community, where you publicly commit to code for 1 hour for the next 100 days (it is however more flexible than that). You also become a part of a large friendly dev community.

Two Main Rules:

– Code minimum an hour every day for the next 100 days.

– Tweet your progress every day with the #100DaysOfCode hashtag.

iOS 12 Cool New Features

Dhairya Chandra — Wed, 29 Aug 2018 06:21:09 +0000

Apple’s annual iOS update, iOS 12, will be hitting devices later this year. It’ll bring things like your standard performance improvements, new Animoji features, Memoji — since everyone has always wanted to turn themselves into an Animoji — group FaceTime, camera effects, ways to limit your screen time, Augmented reality, digital wellness, Siri shortcuts, and a focus on sharing your experience with fellow iOS users are among the key highlights of the update.

Here’s a list of the new features added in iOS 12:

Performance in iOS 12

Apple put a big focus on speed with iOS 12, making it faster to load apps and take photos. An iPhone 6S running iOS 12 will launch apps 40 per cent faster, bring up the keyboard 50 per cent faster and take a photo from the lock screen 70 per cent faster compared to the same phone running iOS 11.Tweaks to the CPU software should mean that these speed upgrades don’t come at too high a cost to battery life. The CPU ramps up when it detects that more power is needed (if you start scrolling, for example), and ramps down again to conserve battery life afterwards. In times of high load, these CPU tweaks should mean that apps last twice as fast.

Animoji and Memoji

A huge hit last year, Apple decided to add a few more emoji upgrades for the latest version of its iOS. New animoji include the ghost, koala, tiger and t-rex, and you’ll be glad to hear they all include tongue-detection so you can wag your tongue to have your ghostly digital replica do the same. With Memoji, Apple has also given users the ability to create tiny digital avatars of themselves.

Screen Time Widget
In the Widgets section, accessible by swiping to the right on the Home screen, there’s a new Screen Time widget where you can see how much time you’ve spent on your iOS device lately, and what you’ve been doing. You can also see your full Screen Time usage metrics in the Settings app.

Augmented reality
Apple announced the second version of its augmented reality develop kit – ARKit 2. This includes improved face track, better 3D object detection and adds the ability for multiple people to experience the same virtual environment simultaneously. The Measure app will also allow people to measure objects in augmented reality, by dragging their viewfinder across an object in the real world.

Do Not Disturb

With iOS 12, Apple is giving users the tools to balance their time on and off the screen with the new Do Not Disturb and Screen Time features. Based on your when the users go to bed, the DND mode will be activated automatically, dim the display, and hide notifications. When you wake up, you get the option to unlock notifications. With Screen Time, Apple will let you assign time per app to prevent overuse. The feature will also prevent you from spending too much time at night indulging in social media. Parents will also get multiple features to manage their kids’ usage and manage it with remotely from iOS’ Family Sharing feature.Managing notifications is easier too with new notification stacks that bundle all alerts app-wise to declutter the notification center.

Scan QR Code in Control Center

There’s a new Control Center shortcut for scanning a QR code.

Battery Info

In the Settings app, the battery usage chart shows usage for the last 24 hours or the last 10 days instead of the last 7 days. There’s also a whole new chart that displays battery usage information.

Group Facetime

Facetime now supports group video calling with up to 32 users and users can join even during an on-going call. Facetime is now integrated into Messages and you can directly jump into the video call from a chat group. During the video call, Facetime automatically determines which of the members is speaking and their tile automatically comes to the fore while others make room.

Managing notifications also gets easier

Apple is finally bringing grouped notifications to iOS 12 in a huge and long-overdue step. The next big iOS update, which started seeding to developers today, will support grouped notifications, and you can dismiss all alerts from the same app easily to save yourself from notifications hell. Grouped notifications will be stacked on the lock-screen and from there you can banish certain apps to the ‘Quiet’ section in the Notification Center. You can also turn off notifications from certain apps more easily.

Measure App

Apple is launching a new Measure app in iOS 12, which leverages ARKit 2 to quickly gauge the size of real-world objects just like you would with a tape measure or a ruler. Measure can also automatically provides the dimensions of objects such as picture frames, posters and signs. With Measure, iOS users can take a photo and share it along with its accurate dimensions for their work or any other purpose.

ARKit 2

The final push when it comes to Augmented Reality is the second major version of the company’s ARKit. In case you don’t know, ARKit is used by third-party developers to create immersive experiences.The most significant new feature of ARKit 2 is the ability to use two or more iOS devices to create a single AR mixed world experience. For example, two or more iOS devices will be used to make sure their owners are seeing the same thing running the same app.

Shortcuts App

Apple didn’t want app developers to have all the power over Siri. Thanks to a brand new app called Shortcuts, you’ll be able to create your own Siri integrations. In practice, it seems like more advanced iOS 12 users will like this feature the most. If your favorite app doesn’t offer the kind of Siri integration that you want, you can make your own shortcut. This is all based on your needs and habits. Even though this process requires a bit of work, it has the potential to pay off in the long term really.

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