Plumb Daily - Progress Photo App and Website

About Plumb Daily

Plumb Daily is a progress-photo app for iPhone, with a native app for Mac, for any project that changes too slowly to notice day to day. You set a key photo, take a photo from the same spot each day and line each one up with the first using guides in the viewfinder. At the end, the app turns the whole run into one time-lapse or slideshow.

It began with Matthew Sweet’s own new house build. As he tells it on the Plumb Daily about page, his wife, Sarah, wanted a way to take photos of the build, lined up from the same spot, over the next year. Matthew offered to build her an app, and she started using his first draft straight away. The first iPhone beta went to TestFlight on 8 August 2026, the native Mac app followed on 23 September, and the website went live at plumbdaily.com on 28 September 2026.

The name comes from the plumb line, the builder’s tool for a true vertical. Plumb Daily is Matthew’s own product, built and published under Platform21.

Technology Stack

The apps

• Native apps: SwiftUI for iPhone (iOS 18 or later) and a native Mac app (macOS 15 or later)
• Shared engine: One Swift engine compiled into both apps, covering the data model, photo storage, import, the stencil and video rendering
• Data and sync: SwiftData, synced through Apple’s CloudKit private database in each person’s own iCloud, and off by default on iPhone
• Image processing: Core Image and AVFoundation, entirely on the device, with Apple’s Vision framework behind the Mac’s Align All
• Testing: Swift Testing, with one test suite run against both apps

The website

• Framework: Astro static site with MDX content and Tailwind CSS, deployed to Cloudflare Pages on every push to main
• Waitlist: A Cloudflare Pages Function writing to a D1 database, protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, that stores an email address and a timestamp and nothing else
• Scheduled publishing: A GitHub Actions workflow calls a Pages deploy hook each Sunday, then pings IndexNow and WebSub
• Feeds: Atom feeds for the guides and the release notes
• AI readability: An llms.txt file and a Markdown copy of every page

The Challenge

Building Plumb Daily meant solving problems on both sides of the launch:

• Phone photos drift: the framing shifts, the zoom changes and the horizon tilts, so a time-lapse made from them jumps about
• A build runs for months, so each day’s photo had to line up with a key photo taken long before, by hand and without a tripod
• Photos of someone’s home are private, so the app needed no account, no ads, no tracking and no servers of its own, while still syncing between iPhone and Mac
• iOS stops video rendering once an app leaves the screen, so long exports had to keep the phone awake and fail with a plain-English message rather than a cryptic error
• The website had to launch a product still in beta without stating or hinting at a price or a release date
• The privacy policy had to cover the apps as well as the website, from camera and Photos access to iCloud sync

Our Approach

1. Lock the framing first: Taking the key photo locks the camera’s lens, zoom and orientation for that scene. The app only uses a real physical lens, never one that switches automatically, so every later photo has the same field of view
2. Guides in the viewfinder: A see-through overlay of the key photo, a stencil outline drawn on the phone, a difference view, a grid and a spirit level help put the phone back where it was
3. Align what’s left on the Mac: Align All uses Apple’s Vision framework to correct small shifts, turns and changes in scale between handheld shots, and flags any photo it can’t match confidently for a hand check. The iPhone’s exports use the same alignment
4. Private by design: No account and no Plumb Daily servers. Sync runs through the CloudKit private database in each person’s own iCloud, and every stencil, alignment and video is made on the device
5. One engine for both apps: The iPhone and Mac apps compile the same Swift engine, and a single timeline definition drives the export, the phone’s preview and the Mac’s scrubber, so a video plays the same wherever it’s made
6. A website that can’t overstate the app: Site copy follows a product-facts file checked against the app’s code, and a post-build check fails if any structured data carries a price, an offer or a rating
7. Search-ready structure: Hub pages for the features, the Mac app and each kind of project, structured data for the app and the films, a sitemap, and an llms.txt file that points to a Markdown copy of every page
8. Publishing that runs itself: Guides and release notes carry future publish dates. A weekly GitHub Actions run rebuilds the site through a Pages deploy hook, then pings IndexNow and WebSub so search engines and feed readers hear about new pages

Key Features

The apps

• Key photo and capture lock: The first photo in a scene sets the reference, and the lens, zoom and orientation lock to match it
• Viewfinder guides: An overlay with adjustable opacity, a stencil with adjustable detail, a difference view, a grid and a spirit level (how each guide works)
• Moments: Short videos, such as a crane lowering a roof truss, that play at real speed between the photos around them
• 2 export styles: A time-lapse at 2 to 30 photos a second, or a slideshow that holds each photo for 1 to 5 seconds with 9 transitions, plus an optional slow push-in and a live preview before rendering
• Daily reminders: A reminder for each scene, at a time you choose
• The Mac app: Browse every scene, compare any 2 days (side by side, onion skin, wipe or difference), line everything up with Align All, import from Finder or a Photos album, and export in HD or 4K with date stamps and smoothed exposure (the Mac app)

The website

• Waitlist: One email when Plumb Daily is on the App Store, and nothing else. The form works without JavaScript
• Release notes: A note for every beta version, with its own feed. The home page’s structured data follows the newest version
• Guides: Plain guides to progress photos and time-lapses, published on a weekly schedule
• Capture planner: A calculator that turns a project’s length and photos a day into a photo count and a video length, and suggests a speed if the video would run under 30 seconds or over 90
• 2 short films: Paper-collage films on the home page and the about page, each with captions, landscape and portrait cuts, and a written description of every scene. Nothing downloads until play is pressed, and the site says plainly that the narration, music and artwork are AI-made while the build photos are real
• Who it’s for: Pages for home builders, renovators, gardeners and hobby projects
• Real screenshots: The app screenshots and build photos come from Matthew’s own build

Inside the Apps

These are real screens from the iPhone and Mac apps, showing photos of Matthew’s own build. They were captured in beta 0.5.0 and look the same in 0.5.1.

Support

The support page answers common questions in plain English, grouped by topic, and Matthew answers support email himself. Mail to the support address goes through Cloudflare Email Routing straight to his inbox.

• Testing the beta: How to install Plumb Daily from a TestFlight invitation, send feedback and crash reports, and what beta software means for testers. A line in this section names the newest version and updates itself when a new release note goes live
• Cost and launch: Pricing isn’t decided and there’s no launch date, so the page says exactly that and points to the waitlist rather than hinting
• Platforms, privacy and permissions: The iOS and macOS versions each app needs, where photos are kept, and every permission the app asks for, plus the 2 it never asks for: the microphone and location
• How the app works: Capture and alignment, moments, exporting and iCloud sync, with screenshots from Matthew’s own build
• Troubleshooting: Step-by-step fixes for camera access, saving to Photos, reminders, missing moment videos and scenes that won’t sync. The sync checks include turning off Low Power Mode, which can pause iCloud sync. A beta tester’s Mac didn’t finish connecting until it was off
• Easy to scan and search: An “On this page” list jumps to each of its 11 sections, and all 29 answers are marked up as FAQPage structured data

Guides

The guides are plain articles about taking progress photos that line up and turning them into a time-lapse, written in Matthew’s voice and drawing on his own build. There are 12 guides. The first 2 went live with the site on 28 September 2026, and the other 10 are scheduled one a week, each Sunday from 4 October to 6 December 2026.

• Publishing that runs itself: Each guide carries a publish date, and the site builds only the guides whose date has arrived. Just after midnight each Sunday, Brisbane time, a GitHub Actions schedule calls a Cloudflare Pages deploy hook to rebuild the site. Once the new sitemap is live, it pings IndexNow and a WebSub hub so search engines and feed readers hear about the new guide
• How-to guides: Aligning progress photos, keeping every photo at the same angle, choosing an app to document a home build, and keeping photos off company servers
• Who it’s for: Australian house builds, owner-builders, spring gardens, murals and summer renovations
• Comparisons: How Plumb Daily differs from CompanyCam, Buildertrend and 1 Second Everyday for someone recording their own build
• No broken links along the way: A guide links only to guides published before it, and other pages show a link to a guide only once it’s live
• A feed of their own: The guides have an Atom feed, listed in every page’s head for feed readers to find. Each guide’s cover is made from real screenshots and photos of Matthew’s build

Release Notes

The release notes have a post for every beta version, newest first, from 0.1.0, the first iPhone beta on 8 August 2026, to 0.5.1 on 29 September 2026. Matthew writes each one in the first person, saying what’s new, what works differently and what he fixed.

• Tagged by app: Each post is tagged iPhone, Mac or both. Versions 0.1.0 to 0.3.0 were iPhone only, 0.4.0, the first Mac version, was Mac only, and 0.5.0 and 0.5.1 cover both
• Every TestFlight build: Each post lists that version’s TestFlight builds for each app, with their dates. Version 0.5.0, for example, ran to 2 iPhone builds and 3 Mac builds
• History kept straight: When a later version renames a control or changes how something works, the older post adds a short note rather than rewriting what that version did. Screenshots taken in a later version say so in their captions
• Easy to follow: A release notes feed, a What’s new link in every page’s footer, and a line on the support page that names the newest version
• Structured data that keeps up: The home page’s app structured data takes its version number and release notes link from the newest post, so it moved to 0.5.1 when that post went live
• One changelog, 2 uses: The app’s changelog is the single record of what changed. Its tester-facing entries become the release post, and a script turns the same entries into the What to Test notes for each TestFlight build, ending with a link to that version’s post

Results

Plumb Daily is in TestFlight beta, and its website is live. Checked on 29 September 2026:

• Live at plumbdaily.com since 28 September 2026, with its www address and plumbdaily.app both redirecting to it
• Native iPhone and Mac apps in TestFlight beta, sharing one Swift engine and one test suite
• Release notes for 6 beta versions, from 0.1.0 to 0.5.1
• 0 accessibility violations found by axe-core across all 24 live pages, at phone and desktop widths
• Lighthouse scores of 100 for accessibility, best practices and SEO on the home page, with performance between 97 and 100 over repeated mobile runs and 100 on desktop

Plumb Daily shows Platform21’s App & API Development and Web Development services working as one project: native iPhone and Mac apps sharing one engine, and the website that launched them, built to say only what the apps can back up.