);
$$;
That entire cleanup system probably saved me weeks of future debugging.
WebRTC Was Both Fun and Painful
Push-to-talk voice communication was another huge challenge.
WebRTC gets complicated very fast:
- signaling
- peer connections
- reconnect handling
- audio state management
- browser inconsistencies
Initially I expected this part to completely break the project.
But surprisingly, MeDo helped generate large parts of the signaling flow and realtime communication logic.
Eventually I had working browser-based group voice chat running directly between riders.
That was probably the moment Ion started feeling like a real product instead of a hackathon experiment.
Security Became Important Very Quickly
Once live location sharing entered the picture, security became critical.
I used Supabase Row Level Security heavily throughout the project.
The challenge was making sure:
- riders only see their own ride data
- non-members cannot access live locations
- creators and members have different permissions
- realtime subscriptions stay secure
A lot of the backend work ended up revolving around secure access patterns and realtime-safe database logic.
This was also where MeDo genuinely helped a lot because debugging RLS issues manually can become painful very quickly.
The Biggest Difference While Building With MeDo
The biggest mindset shift was this:
I stopped describing implementations.
And started describing problems.
Instead of saying:
"Create a PostgreSQL trigger."
I would say:
"Rides should automatically end if everyone disconnects."
Instead of:
"Implement websocket subscriptions."
I would say:
"Everyone should see rider movement instantly."
That workflow changed how I approached development during the hackathon.
It felt less like prompting an AI for snippets and more like collaborating with an engineer during rapid prototyping.
The Project Grew Faster Than Expected
Ion was built in around a week.
The final project included:
- realtime GPS tracking
- push-to-talk voice communication
- SOS alerts
- shared ride coordination
- hazard markers
- ride timelines
- realtime presence tracking
- automatic ride cleanup
- responsive mobile UI
- browser-first architecture
Without AI-assisted development, this realistically would have taken me months longer.
Especially the realtime and WebRTC parts.
What I Learned
A few things surprised me during this project:
Realtime UX matters more than fancy UI
If updates lag even slightly, the whole experience feels broken.
Browser-based apps are much more capable now
A few years ago, I would never attempt something like this fully in-browser.
WebRTC is powerful but unforgiving
Once it works, it feels magical.
Until then, it feels cursed.
Describing problems works better than micromanaging implementations
This completely changed how I used AI tools during development.
Final Thoughts
Ion started as:
"What if motorcycle groups had a live coordination layer?"
But it ended up becoming one of the most technically interesting projects Iβve built.
The coolest part was not just shipping features quickly.
It was being able to experiment with ambitious realtime ideas without getting stuck for weeks on infrastructure and implementation details.
That changed the pace of development completely.
And honestly, building this was just fun.
Links