Gamified Islamic Prayer App
Overview
HalalYouNeed is a gamified Islamic prayer and habits app for Muslim families. Built solo, zero to App Store in under 90 days, it hit 60% free-to-paid conversion on launch day.
Most prayer apps are digital paper trackers that run on willpower alone. HalalYouNeed applies the same behavioural psychology behind games and social apps to make prayer automatic and engaging for whole families, adults and kids together.
Process
Design Thinking
The Fajr Problem
I spent 12 years setting alarms for Fajr and snoozing every one of them. When I started talking to other Muslims, parents and young adults and families across North America, I kept hearing the same story back. 76% of Western Muslims skip Fajr regularly. 58% don't complete all five daily prayers. The average Muslim has been wrestling with this for over a decade. What hit hardest wasn't the personal guilt. It was the family piece. Parents watching their kids normalise missing prayers. Kids with Islamic apps sitting untouched on their devices. This wasn't an individual problem. It was a generational one.
Habit Design, Not Willpower
The first assumption on the table was that people need better reminders. It fell apart fast. Everyone I talked to already had five alarms set. They all got snoozed. The real insight was simpler and harder: existing Islamic apps were digital paper trackers running entirely on willpower, and willpower isn't a system. This isn't a discipline problem. It's a habit design problem. The brief became clear: build something that makes prayer engaging and automatic for whole families, using the same behavioural psychology that makes games impossible to put down.
Game Psychology Meets Prayer
The starting hypothesis: take the techniques that make people check Instagram 50 times a day and apply them to prayer. I worked through streaks, 35+ achievement tiers, family leaderboards, and positive reinforcement loops. Smart Fajr Rising took shape as a concept here. Rather than a passive alarm that invites snoozing, it's a wake-up with physical activation, shake to dismiss, designed to break the snooze habit at the exact moment it actually happens. The family leaderboard changed the project's direction. Early testing pointed to something counterintuitive: kids would compete hard enough that they'd end up pushing their parents to pray, not the other way around.
From Figma to Native
Built the design system in Figma first, component library, colour tokens, type scale, then moved straight to functional React Native prototypes using an AI-native workflow with Claude Code. This cut the design-to-dev handoff down to almost nothing. Within two weeks there was a working prototype on device running the full core loop: Smart Fajr Rising alarm, prayer logging, streak tracking, family setup, and the achievements layer, ready for real morning testing.
What Beta Testing Showed
The clearest finding from beta was around the family feature. One tester's 8-year-old started asking to pray together to keep their family streak alive. The kid was motivating the parent. That confirmed the core bet. The Smart Fajr alarm consistently outperformed passive alarms in real wake-up tests. A few things needed fixing across iterations: family onboarding had to feel like a celebration, not a setup process. Achievement notifications needed to fire right after prayer, not hours later. And the analytics screen needed to read like a highlight, not a report card.
Solo-Shipped in 90 Days
Claude Code for React Native, Figma for the design system. Zero to App Store in under 90 days, solo. Working AI-native meant design intent and implementation lived in the same place, so nothing got lost moving between the two. App Store submission, TestFlight beta, analytics integration, RevenueCat paywall. Launch day conversion: 60% free-to-paid.
Results
60% free-to-paid on launch day. That number came from one thing: the app actually works. When people wake up for Fajr more consistently in the first week, paying for it is an easy call. Building it solo with an AI-native workflow also showed that one person can ship production-quality consumer software without a team or a long runway.