ChapApp: rebuilding a chaplain-connection app for iOS, Android and web

The problem

ChapApp helps Marines, Sailors and their families reach the chaplains who serve their district: contact details, resources, and notifications from their own chaplain. It had grown up on a no-code platform, which made it quick to start but hard to grow: notifications were limited, the store builds depended on the vendor’s signing keys, and adding districts and chaplains meant manual work.

What I built

A ground-up rebuild on a stack the client fully owns, designed around one rule: adding another district or chaplain should be an admin task, not a development task.

• One codebase, three targets. iOS, Android and a web app from a single Expo project, published as an update to the existing store listings.
• Native push per district. Each district chaplain can notify their own community, with delivery to iOS, Android and web-push subscribers.
• Role-based admin. Global admins manage districts; district chaplains manage their own resources and messages.
• Data migration. Districts, resources and images carried over from the previous platform, with personal data kept out of source control.

Under the hood

Supabase provides Postgres, authentication with email sign-in codes, file storage and Edge Functions. Row-level security policies enforce who can see and change what, and Edge Functions handle notification delivery. Database migrations, seed data and CI checks live in the repository, so a fresh environment can be rebuilt from scratch and every change is reviewed against a passing test run before it ships.

Screens

Status

The rebuild is submitted for release: the iOS build is in TestFlight and the Android build is in Google Play’s internal testing track, ahead of public store availability.