DEV Community: Romi ADHD

This week at Romi #3 - Building Multi-Platform App Connectivity

Vlad B. — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 01:34:13 +0000

When we first launched our app, simplicity was our guiding light. We started with the absolute basics, built our core features, and steadily grew our user base. But as any developer scaling an application knows, user growth brings new expectations and friction points.

If users encounter friction during authentication or onboarding, they drop off. Over the past couple of years, our approach to app connectivity and authentication evolved significantly to meet our users where they are.

Here is a look back at our journey of adding sign up and calendar connection methods step by step.

Phase 1: The Foundation (Email and Password)

In the first couple of months, we kept authentication as straightforward as possible. We relied solely on traditional email and password sign ups.

Why we started here: It required the least amount of external configuration, let us build our core database schema quickly, and gave us full control over user credentials.
The drawback: Users hate remembering new passwords. Conversion rates suffer when people have to type in a long password and verify their email just to test a new tool.

Phase 2: Expanding for Convenience (Google and Calendar)

As our product matured, we wanted to reduce friction and tap into daily workflows. We added Google signup and Google Calendar integration.

The impact: Conversion rates jumped immediately. Allowing users to log in with a single click removed a major barrier to entry.
The workflow benefit: Because our product relies heavily on scheduling, connecting Google Calendar let users see their events and data inside the app instantly without manual data entry.

Phase 3: Embracing the Apple Ecosystem

As we developed our mobile and desktop apps, user demographics shifted. A large portion of our user base lives inside the Apple ecosystem and prefers to keep their workflows tied to their Apple ID.

The fix: We implemented Sign in with Apple.
Why it mattered: Apple users expect native, privacy-focused login options. Adding this significantly improved our mobile onboarding experience and aligned our apps with platform expectations.

Phase 4: Going Enterprise (Microsoft and Outlook)

Lately, we have been moving into corporate support. When selling to businesses, we quickly noticed that a massive percentage of companies use Microsoft accounts for work.

To break into this market, we needed Microsoft login and Outlook calendar support. However, integrating enterprise authentication is rarely plug and play.

The verification hurdle: Getting verified through the Microsoft Partner Program was a real struggle. It involved navigating complex compliance requirements, submitting documentation, and waiting for manual reviews.
The payoff: After a week of hard work and patient waiting, our verification finally succeeded. Now, corporate users can log in seamlessly using their work credentials and sync their Outlook calendars without a hitch.

What We Learned

Building flexible app connectivity is a journey that scales alongside your product.

Start simple: Email and password are fine for day one when you are validating an idea.
Follow your users: Add social logins (Google and Apple) once you need to lower friction and improve consumer conversion.
Invest in enterprise readiness: If you want to move upmarket, tackling complex compliance and integrations like Microsoft is worth the administrative headache.

Today, our app can successfully serve individuals and teams across multiple platforms and ecosystems. What authentication providers do you prioritize when building a new product? Let me know in the comments below!

This week at Romi #2 - Latency and Voice AI

Vlad B. — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 04:23:59 +0000

Welcome back to ~~This~~ Last week at Romi. We've been really busy so this post hits a bit late than our scheduled Friday one!

In Voice AI, saving 200–300 milliseconds sounds tiny on paper. In practice, it’s the difference between an awkward robotic delay and a natural conversation.
This week, we took a hard look at our pipeline to eliminate latency and clean out old code that was getting in the way. Here is what we changed:

Sync to Async Tools: Originally, tool execution was synchronous. When a user created a task, the pipeline froze waiting for database writes. Making our tools asynchronous means the voice keeps flowing naturally while items are saved in the background.
7 Dedup Layers Down to 2: To stop duplicate tasks from hitting the database, we kept piling on safeguards over time until we had 7 layers of deduplication. They slowed down the pipeline and began contradicting each other. With stronger prompt reinforcement and a quick backend cleanup, we cut that down to just 2 layers.
Ditching "Thinking" Models: Since our agent relies heavily on fast tool calls, thinking models added unnecessary reasoning delay before speaking. We swapped to a model optimized strictly for speed and accurate tool invocation.
Push-to-Talk Toggle: To complement these backend speedups, we added a toggle between Natural Flow and Push-to-Talk. Now users can think out loud or speak in noisy rooms without the model prematurely triggering unwanted tasks.

Sometimes performance wins aren't about writing complex new code—they're about deleting redundant safeguards, running tasks in the background, and picking the right model for the job.

What's the worst bit of legacy "safety code" you've had to clean out of your stack?

By Vlad - CTO@RomiADHD

This week at Romi #1 - OTA updates

Vlad B. — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 06:21:04 +0000

We finally added OTA updates to Romi.

This is something apps have been doing for years, but it’s new territory for us.

Instead of waiting for Apple’s review every time we need to push a small fix, we can now ship certain updates directly to users.

And because apparently paying for another service wasn’t exciting enough, we built our own setup using Capgo + CDN.

It’s one of those things that feels obvious once it works. Getting there was slightly less obvious. 😅

What’s something your team implemented way later than everyone else?

By Vlad - CTO@RomiADHD

Hello from Romi!

Vlad B. — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:51:57 +0000

Hey this is Vlad, the CTO. We’ve been quietly building Romi for a while, so we figured it was probably time to stop hiding in the codebase.

Romi thinks like you do. Voice-first, ADHD-first. Capture thoughts, build routines, and actually stick to them. Your brain deserves a companion that keeps up.

I'm not trying to promote anything but to share what we’re building, the things we learn along the way, technical decisions, experiments, and probably a healthy amount of “well, that broke.”

We’re especially interested in exploring what happens when AI becomes something you actually work with every day, rather than just another chatbot in a browser tab.

If you’re building with AI, working on developer tools, or just enjoy watching other developers make questionable architectural decisions, welcome.

Ask me anything in the comments.