Phase 13 — Capstone Projects
Six end-to-end projects you ship, talk about in interviews, and put on your portfolio. Each is sized for 1–3 weeks of focused work and is designed to make a specific kind of conversation possible: “Here’s a thing I built. Here are the tradeoffs. Here’s what I’d do differently.”
The capstones are deliberately diverse — Apple frameworks, third-party SDKs, multiplatform UI, real-money StoreKit, machine learning, AR. Pick the ones whose conversations you want to be having in interviews.
The Projects
| # | Name | Primary tech | What it proves |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SkyWatch | WeatherKit, MapKit, CloudKit, WidgetKit | You can integrate first-party Apple SDKs end-to-end and ship widgets people use every day |
| 2 | FitTrack | HealthKit, SwiftData+CloudKit, watchOS, Swift Charts | You understand health data, sync, watch complications, and Charts |
| 3 | ShopKit | StoreKit 2, networking layer, Keychain, GitHub Actions | You can ship a real-money product with a production CI/CD pipeline |
| 4 | NoteSync | Sign in with Apple, CloudKit shared DB, AppIntents, iOS+macOS | You can build a multi-user, multi-device sync product |
| 5 | DevPortfolio | CoreML, ARKit, TCA, App Store submission walkthrough | You can use ML + AR and submit through Review without flinching |
| 6 | PlanBoard | SwiftUI multiplatform, SwiftData+CloudKit, macOS toolbar/CommandMenu, WidgetKit, AppIntents | You can ship a true universal binary with platform-respectful UX on both iOS and macOS |
How to use this phase
You don’t need to build all six. Pick two or three that map to the jobs you want.
- Targeting consumer apps with widgets, location, or maps? → SkyWatch
- Targeting health/fitness? → FitTrack
- Targeting commerce, subscriptions, paid apps? → ShopKit
- Targeting collaboration, productivity, communication? → NoteSync
- Targeting ML/AR or “innovation engineer” roles? → DevPortfolio
- Targeting senior cross-platform roles or Mac-first companies? → PlanBoard (and one other)
PlanBoard is the universal-binary capstone — if you’re a senior candidate and only have time for one, make it this one. It’s the project that lets you say “I shipped a single codebase to iOS and macOS, here’s the architectural decision record for every #if os(...) branch.”
File structure (each project)
README.md— overview, tech stack, the 30-second elevator pitchrequirements.md— full user stories, acceptance criteria, platform-specific UX requirementsarchitecture.md— diagrams, module layout, ADRs (architecture decision records)implementation-guide.md— step-by-step build walkthroughhardening-checklist.md— production-ready + security review checklistinterview-talking-points.md— the 30-second pitch, 3-minute deep dive, and 10–15 questions the project prepares you to answerplatform-decision-record.md— PlanBoard only; every#if os(...)decision documented with rationale
The interview test for every capstone
Before you call a capstone “done,” you must be able to:
- Pitch it in 30 seconds so the listener knows what it does and why it’s interesting
- Deep-dive any subsystem for 3 minutes without referring to the code — data model, sync strategy, error handling, the gnarly bug you fixed
- Answer 10+ interview questions the project gave you the right to be asked
Each project’s interview-talking-points.md gives you all three.
What “shipped” means
- App Store submission is not required for capstones to count. TestFlight + a public GitHub repo is the minimum bar.
- The exception is ShopKit and DevPortfolio — those have an App Store submission walkthrough as part of the lab because dealing with Review is itself the skill being practiced.
Start with Capstone 1 — SkyWatch, or jump to whichever project matches the job you’re targeting.