Three Years on iLiv, and Handing It Over

TL;DR

• End of three years on iLiv, which grew out of Digital Introspection Incorporated into its own company.
• I built the front end, back end and administration app.
• Final tasks: an Android microphone bug after upgrade, and a font swap over licensing costs.
• Repackaged and deployed backend and admin updates to AWS for staging.
• Staying available informally rather than cutting off cleanly.

Today ends three years on the iLiv project. It started under Digital Introspection Incorporated and became its own company built around the application — front end, back end, and the administration app, all of which I developed.

I’m moving to a new role at GitLab, and the thing I care about is leaving the team able to carry on without me.

Wrapping up

The microphone bug. A persistent issue on Android where the microphone doesn’t engage after an app upgrade. Fixing it now rather than leaving it, because it’s exactly the kind of bug that’s miserable to inherit — platform-specific, upgrade-triggered, and hard to reproduce unless you know the history.

The font change. Licensing costs became prohibitive, so the font had to be swapped and everything repackaged. Unglamorous and non-negotiable.

Documentation. I wrote up processes like AWS log access for the product owner and set up follow-up meetings. This is the part that actually determines whether a handover works. Code can be read; knowing which dashboard shows the logs cannot.

Deployment. Backend and administration application updates are repackaged and deployed on AWS, ready for staging. The team tests rigorously this coming week, aiming for a clean final release.

Not a clean break

I’m committing to informal advisory support rather than severing abruptly. Three years builds a relationship worth more than the tidiness of a clear end date, and there will be things only I know for a while yet.

Now, onto the microphone library. Here we go.