# Project Retrospective

*A living document updated after each milestone. Lessons feed forward into future planning.*

## Milestone: v1.0 — MVP

**Shipped:** 2026-03-16
**Phases:** 4 | **Plans:** 13

### What Was Built
- Complete room-based household chore app with auto-scheduling task management
- Daily plan home screen with overdue/today/tomorrow sections and progress tracking
- Bundled German task templates for 14 room types
- Daily summary notifications with configurable time and Android permission handling
- 89 tests covering DAOs, scheduling logic, providers, and widget behavior

### What Worked
- Bottom-up phase structure (foundation -> data -> UI -> polish) kept each phase clean with minimal rework
- TDD approach for providers and services caught several issues early (async race conditions, API mismatches)
- Verification gates at the end of Phase 2, 3, and 4 confirmed all requirements before moving on
- Calendar-anchored scheduling with anchor memory was designed right the first time — no rework needed
- ARB localization from Phase 1 meant adding German strings was frictionless throughout

### What Was Inefficient
- riverpod_generator InvalidTypeException with drift Task type required workaround (manual StreamProvider) in 3 separate plans — should have been caught in Phase 1 research
- Some plan specifications referenced outdated API patterns (flutter_local_notifications positional parameters removed in v20+) — research needs to verify exact current API signatures
- Phase 4 plan checkboxes in ROADMAP.md weren't updated to [x] by executor — minor bookkeeping gap

### Patterns Established
- `@Riverpod(keepAlive: true)` AsyncNotifier with SharedPreferences for persistent settings (ThemeNotifier, NotificationSettingsNotifier)
- Manual StreamProvider.family/autoDispose for drift type compatibility
- DailyPlanDao innerJoin pattern for cross-table queries
- ConsumerStatefulWidget for screens with async callbacks requiring `mounted` guards
- Provider override pattern in widget tests for database isolation

### Key Lessons
1. Research phase should verify exact current package API signatures — breaking changes between major versions cause plan deviations
2. Drift + riverpod_generator type incompatibility is a known issue — plan for manual providers from the start when using drift
3. Verification gates add minimal time (~2 min) but catch integration issues — keep them for all phases
4. Progressive disclosure (AnimatedSize) is a clean pattern for conditional settings UI

### Cost Observations
- Model mix: orchestrator on opus, researchers/planners/executors/checkers on sonnet
- Total execution: ~1.3 hours for 13 plans across 4 phases
- Notable: Verification gates averaged 2 min — very efficient for the confidence they provide

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## Milestone: v1.1 — Calendar & Polish

**Shipped:** 2026-03-16
**Phases:** 3 | **Plans:** 5

### What Was Built
- Horizontal 181-day calendar strip replacing the stacked daily plan HomeScreen
- CalendarDao with date-parameterized reactive Drift streams for day tasks and overdue tasks
- Task completion history bottom sheet with per-task reverse-chronological log
- Alphabetical, interval, and effort sort options with SharedPreferences persistence
- SortDropdown widget in both HomeScreen and TaskListScreen AppBars

### What Worked
- Phase dependency ordering (5 → 6+7 parallel-capable) meant calendar strip was stable before building features on top
- TDD red-green cycle continued smoothly — every plan had failing tests before implementation
- Auto-advance mode enabled rapid phase chaining with minimal manual intervention
- Existing patterns from v1.0 (DAO, provider, widget test) were reused directly — no new patterns invented unnecessarily
- CalendarStripController (VoidCallback holder) was simpler than GlobalKey approach — good architecture call

### What Was Inefficient
- StateProvider removal in Riverpod 3.x was discovered during execution rather than research — same category of issue as v1.0's riverpod_generator problem
- ROADMAP.md plan checkboxes still not auto-checked by executor (same bookkeeping gap as v1.0)
- Phase 5 plan split (data layer + UI) could have been a single plan given the small scope — overhead of 2 separate plans wasn't justified for ~13 min total

### Patterns Established
- CalendarStripController: VoidCallback holder for parent-to-child imperative scroll communication
- CalendarDayList state machine: first-run → celebration → emptyDay → hasTasks (5 states)
- In-memory sort via stream.map after DB stream emit — sort preference changes without re-querying
- SortPreferenceNotifier: sync default + async _loadPersisted() — matches ThemeNotifier pattern
- Nested Scaffold pattern for per-tab AppBars in StatefulShellRoute.indexedStack

### Key Lessons
1. Riverpod API surface changes (StateProvider removal) should be caught during phase research, not during execution — pattern repeats from v1.0
2. Plans under ~5 min execution can be merged into a single plan to reduce orchestration overhead
3. In-memory sort is the right approach when sort criteria don't affect DB queries — avoids re-streaming
4. Bottom sheets for one-shot modals (history) don't need dedicated Riverpod providers — ref.read() in ConsumerWidget is sufficient

### Cost Observations
- Model mix: orchestrator on opus, executors/checkers on sonnet
- Total execution: ~26 min for 5 plans across 3 phases
- Notable: Each plan averaged ~5 min — significantly faster than v1.0's ~6 min average due to established patterns

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## Cross-Milestone Trends

### Process Evolution

| Milestone | Phases | Plans | Key Change |
|-----------|--------|-------|------------|
| v1.0 | 4 | 13 | Initial project — established all patterns |
| v1.1 | 3 | 5 | Reused v1.0 patterns — faster execution, auto-advance mode |

### Cumulative Quality

| Milestone | Tests | LOC (lib) | Key Metric |
|-----------|-------|-----------|------------|
| v1.0 | 89 | 7,773 | dart analyze clean, 0 issues |
| v1.1 | 108 | 9,051 | dart analyze clean, 0 issues |

### Top Lessons (Verified Across Milestones)

1. **Research must verify current package API signatures** — v1.0 hit riverpod_generator type incompatibility, v1.1 hit StateProvider removal. Same root cause: outdated API assumptions in plans.
2. **Established patterns compound** — v1.1 plans averaged ~5 min vs v1.0's ~6 min. Reusing DAO, provider, and test patterns eliminated design decisions.
3. **Verification gates are cheap insurance** — Consistently ~2 min per phase, caught regressions in both milestones.