For Mac
Test drive.
The app is live at thecontractorswife.app. Built it for you. Now I need you to break it.
This guide walks you through everything that's currently working. Each section is a real moment from your day — driving between sites, standing in Home Depot, losing service in a basement. Try the scenarios in order. They build on each other.
If something doesn't work the way you'd expect, screenshot it and text me. There's no wrong feedback. “This feels stupid” is useful. “This crashed” is useful. “I'd never use this” is the most useful.
Plan on 30 minutes total. You can stop and start anywhere.
— Paul
Setup · 5 minutes
Get in. Install it. Connect calendar.
1. Open the app
On your Samsung, in Chrome: go to thecontractorswife.app.
You'll land on a sign-in screen. Hit Sign up.
- Full name: your name
- Email: your normal email
- Password: anything 6+ characters
You're in. You should see “Good morning/afternoon, Mac” at the top.
2. Install it on your home screen
After 2–3 seconds in the app, a banner should slide up from the bottom that says “Install on your phone”. Tap Install.
The app should now have its own icon (orange square, white microphone) on your home screen, separate from Chrome. Open it from there from now on — it'll launch full-screen with no Chrome bar.
3. Connect your Google Calendar
Tap the small gear icon at the top right of the dashboard. That's Settings.
Under Integrations, tap Connect Google Calendar. Sign in with whatever Gmail you actually use for work. Grant the calendar permission.
You'll land back on Settings with a green check next to your email. That means events you say into the app will land on your real Google Calendar.
Test 1 · Real jobs
Add your three real jobs.
This one's easy. Just enter three jobs the way they actually are.
- 01Tap Jobs at the bottom.
- 02Tap + New at the top right.
- 03Enter the client name (whatever you call them — “Kellogg”, “Johnson”, “that house on Fifth”), an address if you remember it, and pick a color or take the one it suggests.
- 04Hit Create job.
- 05Repeat for two more.
What to flag
- If the color picker is confusing.
- If two jobs end up with the same color even though you tried to pick different ones.
- If the form feels slow.
Test 2 · The voice dump
Driving between sites.
This is the main one. The whole app exists for this moment.
- 01Go back to the dashboard (tap the house icon, bottom left).
- 02Tap the big orange microphone.
- 03When the mic starts pulsing, talk to it like you'd talk to me at the end of the day.
Say this (or something like it using your real job names):
For the [first job], I need three sheets of three-quarter inch plywood and a box of deck screws from Home Depot. Also remind me Friday morning to call the inspector. The plumber's coming to the [second job] Wednesday at two-thirty.
When you're done, tap the orange button again to stop.
What should happen
- The app shows you everything it heard, sorted into:
- — 2 shopping items (plywood + screws → Home Depot → first job)
- — 1 task (call the inspector, Friday)
- — 1 calendar event (plumber, Wednesday 14:30, second job)
- Each card shows which job it's going to.
- You can tap any field to edit it.
- A big orange Confirm all button at the bottom.
Hit Confirm all. You should bounce back to the dashboard. Now:
- — Tap Shoppingat the bottom — your plywood and screws should be there, grouped under “Home Depot”.
- — Tap Calendar — the plumber event should be on Wednesday.
- — Open your Google Calendar app on your phone (the real one). The plumber event should be there too, color-coded to the second job.
What to flag
- If it got any item assigned to the wrong job.
- If the dates or times are wrong (especially "Friday" or "two-thirty" — those are tricky).
- If "deck screws" got auto-corrected to something weird.
- If the calendar event doesn't show up in your real Google Calendar within a minute.
Test 3 · New job mid-sentence
Start a brand new project mid-sentence.
This is the move that should feel like magic if it works.
- 01Tap the mic again.
- 02Say this:
Start a new project for the Henderson house at 1247 Maple. I need to call them tomorrow at ten and confirm scope. And I need a level and a chalk line from Lowe's.
- 03Tap stop.
What should happen
- At the top of the confirmation screen, you see a “New job detected” card for Henderson, with a Create job button.
- Below it, the call task and the shopping items show up dimmed/grayed out, with a small note like “→ Henderson (pending creation)”.
- Tap Create job on the Henderson card.
- The card flips to a green check (“Henderson created”). The dimmed items un-dim and now show the Henderson color.
- Tap Confirm all.
Now:
- — Tap Jobs at the bottom — Henderson should be in the list with its own color.
- — Tap into Henderson — there's a tab bar at the top: Overview, Shopping, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, etc. Each one should show what you just added.
What to flag
- If the new job's address didn't get saved.
- If the dependent items didn't auto-link after you created the job.
- If you had to leave the screen at any point.
- If "Lowe's" got the apostrophe wrong.
Test 4 · At the store
The “I'm at Home Depot” run.
This is the one where the app earns its keep or doesn't.
- 01Tap Shopping at the bottom.
- 02You should see everything you've added so far, grouped by store, with each item color-coded to its job.
- 03Hand the phone to your other hand. Try to check items off using only your thumb.
- 04Each item should strike through and gray out as you tap.
- 05If you tap by accident, tap again to undo.
- 06At the top, you can filter to just one store (tap “Home Depot” or “Lowe's”).
What to flag
- If the checkboxes are too small to hit cleanly with one hand.
- If the text is too small to read at arm's length.
- If items don't strike through when you check them.
- If two items got grouped under the wrong store.
- If your gloves can't trigger taps (test with actual work gloves if you can).
Test 5 · Dead zone
Lose service on purpose.
You know how service dies the second you walk into a basement? This handles that.
- 01Open the app (from your home screen icon, full-screen).
- 02Turn on airplane mode. Phone has no service now.
- 03Tap the mic. Say something:
For the [any job] I need another sheet of plywood and a tube of construction adhesive.
- 04Tap stop.
What should happen
- Instead of the normal confirmation screen, you see a card saying “No service — queued” with a cloud-off icon.
- Tap Done to go back.
- At the top of the dashboard, you should see an orange banner: “1 voice note queued”.
- 05Turn airplane mode back off. Wait 10–15 seconds.
What should happen
- The banner updates or disappears on its own.
- The note you queued gets processed in the background.
What to flag
- If the queued banner never showed up.
- If the banner never cleared after you got service back.
- If the app crashed at any point during airplane-mode use.
Test 6 · Make it fail
Stress-test the speech recognition.
The AI is good at clean speech. Test where it falls down. Try the mic with:
- Background noise: do a voice dump with the truck running, AC on, radio on low.
- Trade jargon: “Need a stick of half-inch PEX, a coupling, and four-by-four pressure-treated for the deck posts at the Johnson job.”
- Numbers and fractions: “Sixteen two-by-fours, eight feet long. Three sheets of seven-sixteenths OSB. A pound of sixteen-penny nails.”
- Relative dates: “Two weeks from Tuesday I need to be at the Benson job to meet the framer.”
- Run-on: rattle off six different things across three jobs in one breath without pausing.
What to flag (these are the failure modes I most want to know about):
What to flag
- Any time it heard a number wrong (especially fractions like "three-quarter" or "seven-sixteenths").
- Any time it sorted something into the wrong category (e.g. a date became a task instead of a calendar event).
- Any time the dropdown said "pick a job" when you definitely said a job name.
- Any time it got "today" or "tomorrow" wrong relative to the actual current day.
Test 7 · Real workday
Use it like a real day.
The last test. Don't try to break it — just use it for one real workday if you can.
When you get in the truck in the morning, dump your day into it. When you check off a shopping item in the store, do it in the app instead of in your head. When the client calls and changes something, tap the mic and say what changed.
At the end of the day, text me three things:
- What I used it for (be honest — even if it was just two things)
- What I wanted to do but couldn't (the gap)
- What I'm not coming back to it for (the thing that broke trust)
That last one is the most important. If something feels wrong enough that you wouldn't open the app tomorrow morning, I need to know exactly what it was.
How to flag a bug
Screenshot. One line. Done.
Don't worry about being technical. Just:
- Screenshot the screen where the problem is. (On Samsung: Power + Volume Down at the same time.)
- Text the screenshot to me with one line: what you were trying to do.
That's it. Don't try to describe the bug in detail — the screenshot tells me 90% of it. I'll ask follow-up questions if I need them.
What's not in the app yet
So you don't waste time looking.
- Adding your crew.Right now it's just you. Inviting your guys to specific jobs is the next thing being built.
- Asking the app questions.Like “What's left on the Kellogg job?” and getting a spoken answer. That's after the crew feature.
- Taking a photo of a room and getting a scope back.That's later.
- Recording a full client meeting and getting a recap to send them. Also later.
If you find yourself reaching for one of those, that's good signal — tell me. It tells me what to prioritize.
Thanks for testing this. The whole reason it's worth building is that you're going to use it.
— Paul
paul@fullrefit.com