Uses
The hardware, languages, and infrastructure behind every NorseHorse app. One person, full stack, from a single laptop to a self-hosted backend.
Everything is built on an Apple-refurbished MacBook Pro (M5, 24 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) — the whole studio runs on one machine, from Xcode builds to server deploys.
iOS apps are written in Swift and SwiftUI. Android apps are written in Kotlin with Jetpack Compose. The NorseHorse social app runs on React Native and Expo. Apps that ship on both platforms are built natively on each, then verified to behave identically across implementations.
The web and API layer is PHP 8 and MySQL on Apache. Authentication is JWT-based, email always goes through PHPMailer, and a small shared bootstrap pattern is reused across every app so the backends stay consistent and predictable.
The privacy tools go deep on real interoperability: PGPony implements OpenPGP with full GnuPG interop, and AgePony implements the age encryption format in Kotlin on top of Bouncy Castle, cross-checked against the reference implementations.
Backends run on a self-managed Ubuntu home server alongside a Linode VPS, with self-hosted mail and automated backups. DNS and hosting are direct — no third-party CDN sits in front of the stack.
Solo and full-stack, end to end. Privacy-respecting by default — no tracking. And every app launches free.