Mommy Refuel is liveon the App Store

Where and when

Everything below happened on the morning of 2026-09-12, in this order:

• 09:17 — deployment target lowered to iOS 17.0 across the app, widget and watch targets (c99c195).
• 09:17 — App Store launch creative (4x5 marketing image) added to the repo (2cb19e3).
• 09:53 — the marketing site (mommyrefuel.com) relaunched: from "TestFlight beta / waitlist" framing to a live App Store product page, with a new App Store badge and a "live" pill (b34d1f4).
• 09:54 — a brand bug fixed: the in-app mark now renders the real app icon, not a hand-drawn heart shape (397181c).
• 09:56 — both changes merged to main (40a03b1).
• 10:12 — production deploy triggered for the website (d4f2e75).

Mommy Refuel is listed on the App Store at apps.apple.com/app/id6803006166, free to download.

What "free pilot" actually means

I want to be precise about what changed today, because I don't like marketing language that oversells. Until this week, the only way to try Mommy Refuel was TestFlight — an Apple beta-testing channel, capped in size, with builds that expire. From today, anyone can search the App Store, download Mommy Refuel, and use it. It costs nothing.

"Pilot" is the honest word for where the product is. The app works, the safety engine is live, the core loop (check in, see your Refuel Score, get one gentle suggestion) is real and tested. But it is still early, still small, and I am still the one reading every piece of feedback that comes in through the app's built-in "Help us improve" flow. A free pilot means: come use it, and please tell me what's wrong.

Why the deployment target dropped to iOS 17.0

Right before launch I found the app's minimum iOS version was set higher than it needed to be. The one modern framework the app actually depends on — Observation, for how the interface reacts to state changes — has been available since iOS 17.0. Everything above that was an artificial ceiling that would have kept the app off a meaningful number of phones for no real benefit.

So on launch morning I lowered the deployment target to iOS 17.0 and updated the internal release notes to match, across the main app, the Home Screen widget, and the Apple Watch companion target. More people with slightly older phones can now install Mommy Refuel on day one.

Launch creative

Alongside the code change, I added the App Store launch creative — a 4x5 marketing image used for the store listing and early promotion. It's a small thing to mention in a changelog, but it's part of "what actually shipped today," and this changelog is meant to be complete, not just the interesting parts.

The website stopped pretending to be a waitlist

Until this morning, mommyrefuel.com still read like a pre-launch page: "join the waitlist," "TestFlight beta," "early access." That copy was true a month ago and stale today. So the whole site got repositioned around one fact — the app is live — across English and Ukrainian:

• New AppStoreBadge and LivePill components — an official-style App Store badge and a small "live" indicator used across the header, mobile menu, footer and page calls-to-action.
• A new hero line: "The operating system for modern motherhood," with a direct App Store call-to-action and the live pill.
• A subtle App Store proof band, and a closing section on the home page that now says "Mommy Refuel is already here" instead of "coming soon."
• Status labels across the site changed from a vague "coming soon" scale to three honest tiers: LIVE, BUILDING, FUTURE — in both English and Ukrainian.
• Two new pages: /updates (this changelog) and /feedback. The old /early-access page was repurposed into a plain "get the app" page.
• The lead-capture form on the site is no longer a waitlist signup — it's now an optional "get updates" opt-in, because there's nothing left to wait for.
• Every remaining "TestFlight beta" mention across English, Ukrainian, and the legal Terms page was rewritten to match the live-pilot reality.

The site was built and QA'd at 67 static pages, checked in both languages, at desktop width and at 375px (a small-phone width), before going out.

Fixing a brand bug: the heart that shouldn't have existed

Our brand rule is simple and written down: the Mommy Refuel mark is the app icon image, never a drawn or emoji heart. While preparing the launch, I found the in-app version of the mark (used on Welcome, sign-in and the beta feedback "thank you" screen) was a hand-rebuilt heart shape drawn in code — not the real icon. The website header, meanwhile, correctly showed the official rounded-tile icon. Same brand, two different marks. That's a bug.

Fixed it the same morning: added the real 1024px master icon as an in-app image asset, pointed the shared brand-mark component at it (with the proper iOS rounded-corner mask), and removed the old hand-drawn heart path entirely, including the leftover heart icon on the feedback "thank you" screen. Verified in the simulator on Welcome, sign-in and the wordmark — all three now show the same icon as the App Store and the website.

Production deploy

At 10:12 I triggered the production deploy for the rebuilt site so mommyrefuel.com reflected all of the above live, not just in a preview branch. That's the last step in today's launch sequence — code, brand asset, and site, all pointing at the same live product at the same time.

What this is not (yet)

To keep this honest: this is a pilot release, not a finished, feature-complete product. It is not a medical or diagnostic tool — Mommy Refuel is a wellbeing companion, and it says so inside the app. I'm not claiming user numbers, testimonials, or outcomes I haven't measured, because I haven't measured any of that yet — it's day one. What I can tell you is what shipped, and I will keep this changelog running that way, post by post, as the product grows.