All Articles
The Three-Minute Video That Kept Failing — Moving Rork's Gemini Uploads Off the Worker
How I rerouted video uploads to the Gemini Files API from a Cloudflare Workers relay to a direct device-to-Google path — why the 128MB isolate limit breaks the relay, how to hand out a resumable upload URL without leaking your API key, and how resolution and frame rate actually decide the bill.
On-Device Image Classification: TFLite on React Native or Core ML on Rork Max — How I Chose After Building Both
Adding on-device image classification means choosing between TFLite on React Native and Core ML on Rork Max. I built the same feature both ways, measured the end-to-end breakdown, and worked out what the decision actually hinges on.
When Your Finance App's AI Keeps Dumping Everything Into 'Other' — Field Notes on Catching Silent Classification Drift
An AI expense classifier in a Rork finance app can be accurate at launch and quietly decay over months until the monthly advice goes wrong. Here is how I instrumented confidence and category distribution to get ahead of the drift, with working code.
Integrating Image Playground in Rork Max Native Swift — Availability Design and Fallbacks for In-App Image Generation
How to build Image Playground into a Rork Max Swift app: availability checks with supportsImagePlayground, the imagePlaygroundSheet modifier, programmatic generation with ImageCreator, and fallback design for unsupported devices.
Long-Form On-Device Transcription with SpeechAnalyzer in Rork Max's Native Swift
Implementation notes on rebuilding long-form, offline transcription with iOS 26's SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber after hitting the walls of SFSpeechRecognizer. Covers model asset downloads, feeding audio through an AsyncStream, drawing volatile vs. final results, and the boundary design for Rork Max native code and bridging from Expo — with the pitfalls I actually hit.
When Your Rork Hybrid AI Quietly Drifts to the Cloud and the Bill Creeps Up — Field Notes on Instrumenting Routing Decisions
A router that splits work across on-device, edge, and cloud layers will quietly drift toward the cloud when no one logs its decisions — flat traffic, rising bill. These are field notes on instrumenting routing to isolate the cause.
Monetizing a Rork-Built App — Choosing Between Ads, Subscriptions, and Freemium
How to monetize an app built with Rork — from choosing between ads, subscriptions, freemium, and one-time purchase to the implementation details. Phased AdMob formats, treating ad-free as a single source of truth, and price anchoring, written from the indie-developer trenches.
Pushing Rork Max's AI Beyond Vibe Coding — Patterns That Actually Improve Implementation Quality
A deep-dive on using Rork Max as an implementation partner: prompt patterns, context management, choosing between plain Rork and Rork Max, building without burning credits, and verifying AI-written native code before App Store submission — drawn from solo indie experience.
Receiving On-Device AI Output as Typed Data with Foundation Models Guided Generation
How to receive Foundation Models output as typed Swift structs instead of free text, with working code for Guided Generation and Tool Calling on-device.
On-Device Translation in a Rork Max App with iOS 18 — Free, Offline, Multilingual
Add free, offline, real-time translation to a Rork Max Swift app using the iOS 18 Translation framework. Covers checking language availability, batch translation, and avoiding empty results — all with working Swift code.
Rork Max Credits Drain on Rework, Not Features — Where to Let AI Run and Where to Finish by Hand
Rork Max credit usage is driven less by how complex your app is and more by how many times you regenerate a screen. Here is a practical way to decide what to hand to AI and what to finish by hand, from an indie developer who ships to the stores solo.
Before You Pay $200/mo for Rork Max, Map How Far Expo Reaches in Three Tiers
Wanting widgets or Live Activities makes Rork Max tempting, but most of those features are reachable from the Expo setup that standard Rork generates. Here is how I sort each Apple-native feature into three tiers—reachable in Expo, reachable with a custom module, or where Max is the pragmatic answer—and verify which tier my app is in before paying.