The app is submitted, the landing pages are live, the privacy policy has its canonical home. The remaining gate before production release is Google’s closed-testing requirement: 12 testers, 14 consecutive days of opt-in, before I can promote the build. None of the previous milestones matter until that counter ticks over.

This is harder than I expected. Most working musicians I know are on iOS. Even within my own family, Android is a minority. So today wasn’t about code — it was about removing every excuse not to join.

What was in the way

A would-be tester used to have to:

  1. Send me their Google account email
  2. Wait for me to add it to the testers list in Play Console
  3. Receive a separate opt-in link
  4. Realise the in-app purchase costs real money even in beta

Four steps, one of them gated by me being awake, and a payment surprise at the end. That’s a funnel built to leak.

The Google Group switch

Play Console lets you point closed testing at a Google Group instead of a hand-curated email list. Anyone who joins the group is automatically whitelisted. I created groups.google.com/g/sessionclick-testing, opened it for public join, and pointed the closed test at it. That collapses steps 1 and 2 into one self-service action.

I also enabled license testing on the same group, so testers don’t pay anything when they exercise the €2 unlock. Without that, asking someone to spend two euros to test my app would be a real ask — small money, big friction.

The landing page beta block

The hero on sessionclick.com had a generic “App is in testing — email me” notice. That email-me path is exactly the friction the Google Group removes, so the page needed to change.

Gemini drafted the copy for a two-step instructional block: join the group, then opt in via the Play Store testing link, with a heads-up about the same-Google-account gotcha that causes the “App not available” error. The copy was good — direct, no marketing voice, the warning right where it belongs.

Claude built it into the Hugo template. Specifically: a new #beta section between hero and features, two numbered step cards styled to match the existing dark/green theme, and an updated hero notice that anchor-links into the new section instead of opening a mail client. New CSS only for the step-number circles, the card grid, and the heads-up note — everything else reused existing variables (--green, --surface, --radius).

What I did: approved Gemini’s copy, asked Claude to integrate it, will push the Hugo build once I’ve reviewed it in the preview.

Posting in Musora forums

I’m a member of musora.com — Pianote on the keys side, Drumeo on the drums side. Both have “Gear Zone” sub-forums where members talk about hardware and apps. I posted a short note in Drum Gear Zone and Piano Gear Zone, each linking to sessionclick.com.

This was a deliberate human-in-the-loop step. I am not going to spam-post the link across every music forum on the internet — both because I’d rather not, and because forum cultures vary and a tone-deaf post does more harm than silence. Musora’s forums are places I actually read, with people who actually play live, which is the audience the app is for. If those two posts produce two testers, that’s a sixth of the way to the gate.

What only I could do

  • Create the Google Group and configure its join policy
  • Switch closed testing to the group and enable license testing in Play Console
  • Write and submit the Musora forum posts in my own voice on accounts that are mine
  • Decide which forums are appropriate to post in and which aren’t

What the AI did

  • Gemini wrote the beta-block copy from my brief
  • Claude integrated the copy into the Hugo layout, wrote matching CSS, and updated the hero notice to anchor-link to the new section

What’s next

Watch the tester count. If the Google Group + landing page + two forum posts don’t get me to 12 within the coming days, the next lever is reaching out individually to persons outside my family and my band — not mass posting. The 14-day clock only starts once 12 are actually opted in, so every day a slot stays empty is a day production release moves further out.

Time spent today: ~2h, almost all of it in Play Console, the Google Group admin UI, and writing the forum posts.

This blog documents my attempt to build and ship a music app as a solo developer, with AI assistance. The AI does a lot of the work. I try to be specific about what.