Another week without much bug bounty, but I kept building on other projects, each one more interesting than the last.
I came back to a concept I find fascinating, flow, and I dug deeper into the research on it.
In parallel, I needed a simple but very specific app that I couldn't find anywhere, so I had Claude build it for me, and the process was really interesting.
Flow
Flow is a modified state of consciousness you're in when you get fully absorbed in a task, where you don't notice time passing, or anything happening around you.
It feels so good in that state that it lets you be the best version of yourself, push past your limits, and be fully productive.
I already talked about it in a newsletter a few years ago, but the concept is so interesting that I figured it should appeal to you too.
For those who want to dig in, the book "Flow" covers it really well, even if it's not the easiest read.
When you're in flow, it's like you're in the zone, those are the moments where you find the most bugs, where you feel strong and nothing can stop you.
These moments are rare and not easy to reach, and you can't trigger them on command either.
The conditions (simplified) to reach that state are: doing a task that excites you and that you actually want to do, in a domain you care about, and where the task is slightly harder than what you're currently capable of.
A task that's too easy and you don't enter flow, a task that's too hard and you can't reach it either.
So you have to do something that challenges you. Domains like bug bounty are clearly in there, there's an exciting and interesting side to it, and you challenge yourself continuously.
That's why when you're on an interesting lead, you don't want to stop and you get carried away by the task.
With AI things shift a bit, because we delegate so much more to Claude, so we're thinking less, so we don't really enter that state anymore, and that's what I deeply miss.
And I think you have to keep understanding and stay in control of the operations to keep improving your expertise, not delegate everything, to get that exciting side back.
I find it hard to recover that excitement because you tell yourself: what's the point of trying to do it myself when everyone is running a /goal find me 10 crits on this program and Claude finds them?
I'm still thinking it through, and I'm going to try to go back to the old way and get my hands much more dirty.
24h app
In my quest for flow, meditation and self-hypnosis, I needed a simple app with a timer and background music to practice with.
Something simple, minimalist, with a streak system to do it every day and stay motivated.
Apps like that exist, but often paid, or not quite fit to what I wanted.
So in the morning around 7am, I fired up Claude Design, made a mockup feeding it my notes, and in less than an hour I had a design I liked.
I handed it to Claude Code, which built me a native iOS app pretty fast. I had never built a native app before, so it was interesting to test, run it on the emulator, all of that.
The first version was decent but had a few bugs.
Around noon, I had something nice, but the sound wasn't working, and the music loop wasn't either. Going out for lunch in town, I kept iterating remotely from my phone, feeding it precise instructions.
Coming back around 2pm, I found a few soft tracks I liked, gave it the mp3s, and it took care of putting them in the right format inside the app.
And at 4pm, the app was working, I could try it in real conditions, perfect.
I figured, might as well share it with others, so put it on the store. Claude made the screenshots, the description, and walked me through submitting it to the App Store.
I submitted it, and around 10pm, the app was officially downloadable by everyone, here's the link for those who are curious.
Cassim Khouani
I find it crazy that in less than 24 hours, you can go from an idea to a fully working app, live.
Of course it comes with its own set of issues, like security and so on, but for a fully offline app, no account, nothing at all, who cares.
I'm pretty happy with it, and I think we're entering an era where tech people will build their own apps much more easily, instead of paying for super expensive SaaS every month, and that's a bit of what I'm starting to do on my side.
Sport
I talk about it pretty often here, but sport completely changed my life. I was someone who didn't do any sport at all before, and getting into it changed me deeply, not just physically, but mostly mentally.
The discipline it brought me is crazy, and it lets me work much better and longer, manage my moods better, feel better in my own skin.
And you don't need to run 5 times a week, or run marathons and ultra-trails to feel good, just going out during the day, walking for an hour, can do you a huge amount of good.
I know in our field it's not super common, but everyone who tried it never went back, so I can only recommend trying it, even just walking is great, and more if you want.
I'm slowly getting more motivated to do bug bounty again, and I hope the momentum will come back on my side, in any case I'm doing everything for it.
Have a good end of the week and see you next time!
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