Chalky Darts
SCORE FIRST.
GLOAT LATER.
Darts in a crowded pub is all about rhythm. Throw three darts, tap the screen, and hand the phone to your friend. Chalky runs Cricket, 301, and 501 directly on your device first, maps nearly 1,000 dart bars, and adapts automatically to iPhone, iPad, and every fold posture on iPhone Duo.
Inspect the app (1/6):
0ms Offline Scoring: Clean slash, cross, and closed marks you can read across a dark bar. Runs on local SQLite first.
Throw three darts on the live board.
This is Chalky's actual Cricket layout. Tap a number for a single, the two dots (:) for a double, or the three dots (⋮) for a triple.
The Coaster Constraint
Most scorekeeper apps try to talk to a cloud server every time you tap a button. In a basement pub with brick walls, that means spinning wheels and lost turns.
In Chalky, every tap writes to local SQLite memory first and redraws the screen in under a millisecond. Cloud sync happens quietly after the match only if you choose to sign in.
Test a Big-Moment Sticker:
On a normal scoreboard, hitting Triple 19 takes a long-press or a popup drawer. In Chalky, the two dots (:) and three dots (⋮) sit right on the row. One thumb tap, zero drawers.
Built for the bar, not the conference room.
Every layout and feature in Chalky came from running into something annoying on a Tuesday night out.
Open Sideways (Book Split)
Held like an open book, Chalky splits cleanly across the 26pt vertical hinge. Scoreboard columns or 2x2 501 cubes live on one page, the oversized keypad or live animation studio lives on the other, and a 60pt strip on the right clears the iOS side status bar.
26pt vertical hinge · 1-tap Left/Right hand swap
Every button touching an outer screen corner adopts the Duo's 34pt bezel radius, while the 26pt hinge band and 60pt iOS side status rail stay completely clear of tap targets and confetti.
Prop an iPad on the pub table for 3- and 4-player games.
Turn, Undo, and End Turn move into the top header so rows grow 28% taller.
Removing the bottom action bar frees 98pt of vertical height. Every scoring row from 20 down to Bull gets taller tap targets for 3 and 4 players.
Nearly 1,000 bars mapped, with a verified-only filter.
Stop calling around to see who still has a dartboard. Chalky tracks close to 1,000 bars in its database and lets you filter down to verified boards only. When you are at a bar, one tap confirms whether the board is still hanging and good to play.
Here now? Is the board still good to play?
Custom celebrations for bullseyes, hat tricks, and 180s.
Floating Chalky dartboard emoji sticker pops over the live board for 2.2 seconds without blocking your next dart.
[ Tap Score ] ---> [ Local SQLite ]
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Screen redraws (<1ms)
(Wi-Fi is optional)Click to flip back
The Cellar Bar Rule
If a darts app waits for a server before drawing a slash mark, it fails the first time you walk downstairs.
Run a bar tournament without paper brackets.
Players claim a seat by scanning a QR code or opening a link at coasterlogic.com/chalky. The host gets an alert as each match finishes.
One studio. Real software. Built by asking how it works until it fits on a coaster.
My route into tech started in middle school, selling Beanie Babies to fund my first PC build. I have spent a lot of time around technology since then, but I have never been a programmer in any traditional sense.
Coaster Logic is my studio for building products in public and writing down what broke on the way. If I cannot sketch how a system works on the back of a 4x4 bar coaster, it has too much noise in it.
Project Ginger
Unity 6 · Top-Down Action Sandbox
While Chalky is live in bars, Project Ginger is my long-running game engine sandbox. I use it to learn how 3D character rigs, animation state machines, and combat timing actually behave under the hood.
- • A wind-up is a pose, not a timer delay
- • Five plush enemies sharing one 6-bone skeleton
- • Measuring live state beats guessing from config files
Back-of-the-coaster notes
Vibe Coding Is Just Managing an Intern
I thought building a game would mostly be ideas. The ideas turned out to be the easy part, and the expensive mistakes are the ones nobody argues with.
Unwinding the Complexity: How I Fit Big Tech Ideas on a Cardboard Coaster
AI tools are coming out super fast. Everyone shows off what they can do, but almost nobody explains how it actually works. Here is how I break it down.
Building Chalky: Making a Darts App That Works Without Bar Wi-Fi
How I built an offline darts scoring tool for noisy pubs, so your score never gets lost when cellular signal drops out.