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Execution Plan — August 2026 to January 2027

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The three dates

Everything below serves those three dates. If a task does not move one of them, it is not in this plan.

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Standing decisions this plan assumes

Decided August 3, 2026. See Pricing Strategy for the full model of record.

• Hard paywall, full price, no trial and no intro offer. Pro is $12.99/mo or$99.99/yr. The point is to learn whether the product is worth full price, not to buy conversions with a discount.
• The website is the free tier. thisiswhyimhigh.com serves 2,525 strains publicly. The app does not duplicate a free experience.
• Guest access in the app is browse-only. Strain browse, search, detail, High Families, music, capped label scanner. Nothing is saved. No AI.
• Everything personal or AI-powered is Pro. Stash, orders, collection, notebooks, stats, Gmail, imports, dispensaries, rankings, badges.
• Unsubscribed accounts have 30-day data retention. Lapsed subscribers have 12 months, read-only.
• iOS only. No Android, no web app, no Safari extension in this window.

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Weekly operating rhythm

One shipping lane per week. The plan collapses if this is not respected.

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Phase 1 — Production Ready (August, W1–W4)

Goal: a production build that takes real money and delivers real value. Exit gate: a sandbox purchase completes, a notebook generates in a production-profile build, and the paywall is legally compliant.

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W1 — Aug 3: Money plumbing

The longest external lead times start this week. Nothing else matters if these are not moving.

• Enroll in the App Store Small Business Program (15% vs 30% commission)
• Complete App Store Connect: Paid Apps agreement, banking, tax forms
• Create the App Store Connect app record (bundle com.highiq.app)
• Create subscription products in one subscription group so users can switch monthly ↔ annual without double-paying: highiq_pro_monthly ($12.99), `highiq_pro_yearly` ($99.99)
• Link App Store Connect ↔ RevenueCat; configure the pro entitlement and the default offering
• Google OAuth: open the Cloud Console, confirm which project owns the client behind Clerk’s Google connection, and determine exactly what the gmail.readonly restricted-scope verification requires and whether the security assessment can start before App Store listing
• Retire the highiq_historical_import SKU — Historical Import is Pro-included, not a separate purchase

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W2 — Aug 10: Re-tier to the hard paywall

• apps/mobile/src/_config/featureFlags.ts — move to requiredTier: 'pro': stash, favorites, addStrain, collection, profile, preferences, rankings, badges, historicalImport
• Confirm guest-only (requiredAuth: false): strainBrowsing, strainSearch, strainDetail, highFamily, music, labelScanner
• Update useAccessPolicy tests for the new tier map
• Update docs/testing/feature-flag-qa-matrix.md
• Implement 30-day retention for never-subscribed accounts (warn at day 23, export offered) and 12-month read-only retention for lapsed subscribers
• Verify a guest cannot reach any Pro route by direct deep link

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W3 — Aug 17: The paywall

The highest-stakes screen in the app. SubscriptionBillingScreen is a billing screen; this is a sales screen. Different job, different surface.

• Build the post-onboarding paywall: value framing, annual pre-selected and shown as “$8.33/month, billed annually”, monthly secondary
• Apple-required disclosures on the paywall itself — subscription length, price per period, auto-renewal terms, and functional links to Terms of Use (EULA) and Privacy Policy
• Restore Purchases control on the paywall, not only in settings
• Route every Pro-gated surface to this paywall instead of a generic lock
• Onboarding delivers one real personal moment before the ask — a High Family result or a label scan, something about them
• Lapsed-subscriber recovery state (data visible, read-only, resubscribe CTA)

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W4 — Aug 24: Turn on notebooks and prove the money

• Set EXPO_PUBLIC_NOTEBOOK_GENERATION_ACTIONS_ENABLED=true for the production profile; keep notebookOrderGeneration and notebookStashGeneration on, every companion executor off
• Certify order → notebook → readable result on a real device, including the failure states: unknown strains, partial orders, failed research, cancel mid-generation, background/foreground, cold reopen (see Notebook Launch Runbook Phase 7)
• Sandbox purchase → restore → RevenueCat webhook → Convex entitlement sync, recorded as evidence
• Verify the remote feature-flag kill switch works on a production bundle (Convex featureFlagOverrides → live within seconds)
• Revyl smoke to green (last recorded run: 7/8)
• Sentry alerting configured for production crashes
• Build the invite-gate mechanism (see below)

Also this month, in the Friday blocks: TikTok account live, first video batches shipping, target 20–25 videos by Aug 31. Reddit accounts warming with comment-only value, zero links.

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Phase 2 — Friends & Family (September, W5–W9)

Goal: 15–30 real humans use the app; you fix what embarrasses you. Exit gate: no embarrassing gaps remain, and at least one person who is not obligated to be nice says the notebook was worth money.

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The invite-gate approach

You are releasing to the App Store in September rather than using TestFlight, because non-technical friends bounce off TestFlight. That works, with rules:

• The app ships live but gated: a valid invite code is required to create an account. Guest browse stays open so the app is never a blank wall.
• App Review notes must contain a working invite code and a seeded production reviewer account with Pro granted via a RevenueCat promotional entitlement. Do not use +clerk_test credentials — production ships pk_live_... keys and reviewers would be unable to sign in.
• Friends & family get Pro via promotional entitlements, not a free tier. There is no free tier to give them.
• This is not launch day. No marketing, no announcement, no press. The app being purchasable in September is a distribution mechanism, not a launch.

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W5 — Aug 31: Submit

• Screenshots (5–6 frames: track → insights → notebook → database → Professor High) and a 15–30s app preview video from the video pipeline
• App Store metadata: title, subtitle, keyword field (keyword research process: docs/planning/growth/[plan]-growth-marketing-playbook-jul03.md §6.1)
• Age rating 17+, category Lifestyle
• App Store privacy labels — must match the actual retention policy
• Review notes: education/journaling/tracking only, no commerce, no dispensary ordering; invite code; reviewer account credentials
• Support email live and monitored
• Submit

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W6 — Sep 7: Review loop + first invites

• Respond to any App Review rejection within 24 hours
• Once approved: invite the first 5 people. Watch them use it in person or on a call. Do not coach them. Write down every hesitation.
• Fix whatever the first 5 stumble on, same week

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W7 — Sep 14: Widen to 15–30

• Second invite wave
• Set up the feedback channel (a form, a group chat — anything with a persistent record)
• Daily triage of feedback into: ship now / v1.1 / never

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W8 — Sep 21: Fix and polish

• Work the feedback list in order of how many people hit it
• Ship via EAS Update (OTA) where possible to avoid review round-trips
• Confirm at least one full paid journey by someone who is not you: purchase → notebook → second session

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W9 — Sep 28: Launch prep

• GA4 funnel events, UTM convention, App Store campaign links, RevenueCat attribution — all live and verified before traffic arrives
• Email provider live with a 5-email welcome sequence (you already have addresses from Apple/Google sign-in)
• Launch content batch: 15–20 TikTok videos queued
• Reddit accounts have karma and comment history in 2–3 subs
• Decide the invite-gate removal date

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Phase 3 — Public Launch (October, W10–W13)

Goal: the invite gate comes off and strangers start paying. Exit gate: 10+ paying subscribers who have never met you.

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W10 — Oct 5: Remove the gate

• Flip the invite requirement off (remote feature flag, not an app release)
• Verify the full cold-start path: install → guest browse → onboarding → paywall → purchase → notebook
• Launch email to the list
• Launch video series across TikTok / Reels / Shorts
• Respond to every App Store review in week one

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W11 — Oct 12: Read the funnel

• First honest read on install → account → paywall view → purchase
• First Reddit data drop (earned by six weeks of warming)
• Triage refund requests and 1-star reviews as product signal

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W12 — Oct 19: First creator collabs

• 2–3 micro-creator collabs (gifted Pro, stitch/duet — no payments)
• Double down on whichever TikTok hook format is winning

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W13 — Oct 26: First monthly review

• Kill-or-double-down call per channel by time-CAC
• Do not touch pricing yet — see the decision rule below

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Phase 4 — Learn and Retain (November, W14–W18)

Goal: stop the leak before pouring in more traffic.

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W14–W15 — Nov 2 / Nov 9: v1.1 — Push notifications

Push moves here rather than v1.0 deliberately: a permission prompt fired at the wrong moment permanently caps your opt-in rate, and there is no content strategy behind it yet. The weekly email digest covers the retention job in the meantime.

• APNs key in App Store Connect; expo-notifications wired
• Permission ask after a value moment, never on first open
• Three notification types only: notebook ready, weekly stash digest, restock prediction
• Target ≥50% opt-in

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W16 — Nov 16: v1.1 — Share cards

• Ship the deterministic share card — your only built-in viral mechanism
• Target shares/WAU ≥5%

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W17–W18 — Nov 23 / Nov 30: The first pricing decision

Four to six weeks of real purchase data now exist. Read them in this order: Only the last row is a pricing problem. The first three look like pricing problems and are not.

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Phase 5 — Compound (December–January, W19–W26)

Goal: 100 paying subscribers and a repeatable acquisition loop.

• W19–W20 (Dec 7 / Dec 14): Gmail sync + Historical Import go live the day Google verification clears — remote flag flip, no App Store release. If verification has not cleared, escalate rather than wait.
• W21–W22 (Dec 21 / Dec 28): Holiday content batch; light build weeks. Rest is a scheduled item, not a failure.
• W23–W24 (Jan 4 / Jan 11): v1.2 — the highest-signal feature request from 90 days of real users. Do not decide this now.
• W25–W26 (Jan 18 / Jan 25): Six-month review. Re-plan the next horizon against actual numbers.

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Milestone targets

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What is deliberately not in this plan

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Pre-charge checklist

Do not accept a real dollar until every line is true:

• Sandbox purchase, restore, and webhook→entitlement sync all proven
• Monthly and annual live in the same subscription group
• Paywall shows price, period, auto-renewal terms, EULA and Privacy links
• Restore Purchases reachable from the paywall
• Account deletion reachable in-app
• Data export works and includes notebook records
• Retention policy disclosed in privacy policy and App Store privacy labels
• Support email live and monitored
• Sentry alerting on production crashes
• A notebook generates end-to-end in a production-profile build
• At least one person who is not you has completed the full paid journey

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Related

• Pricing Strategy — the model of record
• Launch Readiness Overview
• Feature Readiness Matrix
• Certification Gates
• Notebook Launch Runbook