Development Log

A valid rabies vaccination is now required at the very moment a license is issued, so every active license starts out backed by a current shot. A license's expiry now follows the length the owner selected, rather than a one-size-fits-all default.

When an officer confirms a possible match on a pet that is already secured to an owner, the owner is now notified and asked to confirm, instead of the pet being automatically marked as found. This keeps owners in the loop about their own pet and avoids premature status changes.

The homepage no longer relies on placeholder graphics. It now shows genuine previews of the app's screens and links visitors straight to the live App Store listing, so people can see exactly what they are getting before they download it.

The app's home screen now shows clear loading indicators while it fetches your pets, updates instantly when a pet's photo or rabies status changes, and shows upload progress while a vaccination or licensing record is being scanned, so the screen always reflects the latest information without needing a manual refresh.

Push notifications are now switched on for iPhone owners, so timely alerts, such as a possible match for a lost pet, can reach them directly on their device.

Marking a pet as not spayed or neutered from the edit screen is now saved reliably, so the pet's record reflects exactly what the owner entered.

Found-pet reports now always display where the animal was found, showing a readable place name when one is available and map coordinates otherwise, so officers are never left without a location.

Our live service now keeps a server ready at all times, removing the occasional wait while the system woke up, so owners and officers get a quick response no matter when they open the app.

On the screen for updating a pet's photos, the information button moved up to the top bar, making the controls easier to find and reach.

Several new versions of the app were prepared for testing across iPhone and Android, and development and staging builds now carry their own app icons and "DEV" or "STG" badges so testers can tell at a glance which version they are running.

A more powerful two-model image-recognition approach is being trialed in our development environment to push matching accuracy even higher before it reaches the live app.

Found-pet reports are now compared against lost pets every few minutes across all environments, so potential matches surface much sooner.

The in-app camera now locks focus on the capture frame, supports tap-to-focus, and shoots at higher resolution, and document scans are trimmed to the frame — so photos of pets and records come out clearer.

Applying for a pet license is smoother: an existing spay/neuter certificate is automatically attached as proof, a vaccination record added during sign-up now counts toward the requirement, and owners can capture or pick a proof photo that uploads reliably. A pet's spay/neuter status is recorded exactly as entered, and the home screen flags when an owner lives in an area that requires a license.

The home screen's rabies tile now reflects each individual pet's rabies status instead of a single shared value.

When the service is briefly down for maintenance, the app now shows a clear full-screen notice with a single "Try Again" action from anywhere in the app, and takes owners straight back in once service is restored.

Pet owners and partner organizations now have a dedicated support page with contact details, audience-specific help sections, and a frequently-asked-questions list, reachable from the site footer and surfaced to search engines.

The possible-match banner now shows the actual photo of the found pet, confirming a match uses a clean native dialog, and owners of an already-secured pet are prompted to verify a new potential match.

Owners can now edit a pet's name after creating it, a pet's birthday no longer shifts a day depending on time zone, starting a new registration begins with a clean set of photos, and the app now confirms with our service whether to show the welcome setup so returning owners don't see it again.

iOS owners prompted to update are now sent to the correct live App Store listing, with a single clear "Update Now" action.

Fixed an issue that could stop pet lists from loading, made document reading tolerant of slightly irregular AI output, and uploaded photos are now straightened automatically before their text is read, so records are captured more accurately. Maintenance notices are also sent in the format the apps expect, so they recognize maintenance mode correctly.

Switching the active organization now fully refreshes the portal, so admins always see the right data for the organization they selected.

Several new mobile app versions were prepared for testing, dependency and build-tool updates were rolled in, and review feedback from recent changes was addressed. An experimental match-strength badge was trialed and then removed after review.

The app's Settings now include a Support option with tap-to-call and tap-to-email shortcuts, plus direct links to the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and End User License Agreement, each opening in an in-app browser.

When someone reports a found pet as a guest, the contact step now shows a short hint listing any still-missing details — full name, a valid email, or phone number — above the Continue button, so it is obvious what is needed before moving on.

After confirming a match, owners are taken back to Home, which avoids an accidental double-tap on the next action. The Home tiles are now clearly labeled "Mark as secure" for a lost pet and "Retrieval details" for a found one.

The page dots under "Photos from sighting" now follow along as owners swipe through the images and animate smoothly, instead of always pointing at the first photo.

The scroll-to-bottom button in chat no longer leaves an oversized gap above it when the keyboard is open; the spacing now adapts to the screen and keyboard automatically.

Behind the scenes, the iOS and Android build pipelines were hardened so signing certificates no longer collide between parallel builds and Android builds have enough disk space, and a batch of dependency updates was rolled in, so new app versions ship more dependably.

Accounts now support belonging to several organizations and switching the active one. Organization membership is saved the moment an account is created, so people land in the right place from their very first sign-in, and existing accounts were carefully moved onto this new shared-membership model with no action needed on their part.

Superadmins can now add and remove an organization's admins directly from that organization's detail view, making it much faster to keep each team's access correct without hopping between screens.

Anyone can now create a clean, printable lost-pet poster in several languages, completely free and right in their web browser. It is a fast way for owners to spread the word when a pet goes missing.

After making a lost-pet poster, people can optionally have the finished version sent to their email, so it is easy to save, reprint, and share later.

The lost-pet poster maker and the public pet-services directories were restyled to match the look and feel of the homepage, giving the whole site a more consistent and trustworthy feel.

The app no longer signs people out when the connection briefly drops during a routine background security check, so a shaky network won't interrupt your work on the go.

Public pages now use one consistent web address, and corrections were made to titles, structured listing details, and references following a thorough site audit, so the site shows up accurately in search results. The privacy policy was also updated to clearly explain the optional choice to have a finished poster emailed to you.

New internal checks were added to keep the public site's web addresses and search-listing details valid going forward, preventing the kinds of issues a recent site audit turned up from coming back. The poster maker was also streamlined so it now runs entirely in the browser.

The public directories of local pet services received their routine automated refresh so the places people find stay current and reliable.

Sign-in timing was tuned in our development-only testing environment with no effect on people using the live app, the mobile app's handling of account information was tidied up, and unused account and key fields were removed to keep things simple.

A new version of the mobile app was prepared and made available for testing.

People can now pay for licenses with Apple Pay right inside the app, making checkout faster and smoother on iPhone with no card details to type in.

The app now checks whether it is up to date and gently prompts people to update when a newer version is available, with a quiet background security check that keeps them signed in, so everyone stays on the most reliable experience.

Licenses and pet records now open in a built-in viewer, so pet owners can read their documents directly in the app instead of jumping out to another app.

Phone numbers, email addresses, and locations are now tappable throughout the app, so a single tap starts a call, opens an email, or brings up directions in maps. Pet location details now also include the full street address.

Phone numbers, email addresses, and street addresses are now tappable in the ACO and organization portal too, so teams can reach an owner or pull up a location in a single click instead of copying details by hand.

A pet's physical tag ID now appears on the license card in the app and on the printed license certificate, and it is read automatically from uploaded pet documents so it never has to be typed in by hand.

Matching settings were rewritten in plain, everyday language with a simple toggle that lets an organization require a person to review each suggested match before it is confirmed. Field teams can also apply an optional male or female filter to narrow down lost-and-found match results.

Talking to Ask Avva by voice is now noticeably more dependable, and the recording no longer cuts off on its own during a short pause, so people can speak at their own pace and have their words come through cleanly.

Fixed a hang where the app could get stuck loading a profile, and corrected a case where an old name could linger after signing in or out, so the correct name always shows.

Forms now keep the Continue button disabled until a step is complete and clearly mark which fields are optional, the physical tag shows correctly on the license card without overflowing its badge, very long tag IDs are kept tidy, and tappable contact rows no longer appear in a distracting blue.

The Review screen header now lines up with the Pet Info header for a more consistent look as people move through the app.

The dog parks pages now fill in their quick key-facts strip and show a compact map view when a full map is not available, so each park page reads cleanly and feels complete.

Several fresh app builds were prepared for testing, colors across the app were unified into a single shared system for a more consistent look, and internal engineering guidelines were modernized and aligned across our tools.

Pet matching moved to a single Gemini embedding per pet without GPU, now runs on a schedule, routes uncertain matches into a superadmin review queue, and adds a graduated auto-approve threshold that superadmins can tune at runtime.

New users without an organization get a dedicated onboarding page with self-serve signup, organization access requests, and a decline flow.

Organizations can now set their own license validity duration instead of a fixed period.

The Pet Database gained search-as-you-type, a Licenses and Tags page added inline per-pet tag assignment, and Mapbox address autocomplete was added to organization address inputs.

The home screen added a pending state and "Valid until" labels with responsive text scaling, alongside a pet photo carousel and improved document upload UX.

The marketing homepage was rewritten again as v3.1 with a no-permanent-claim content audit and cuter hero and finder-flow imagery.

Recent lost-pet rows open the specific report, deep-linked reports open even outside the list, the sidebar logo returns to the role dashboard, and org pet lists no longer cap at 50.

Voice dictation got a longer startup grace period and a more forgiving silence auto-stop so Avva no longer cuts off early.

Authorities can confirm or reject found-pet matches, and a match decision keeps the other candidates' pet data intact.

A verify-email flow was added for organization access requests, Google SSO no longer leaves members stuck on Pending, and self-deletion was separated from admin deactivation.

Status tiles show the year, images restore on back-navigation instead of clearing, keyboard and bottom-nav layout artifacts were fixed, and iOS speech permission was added.

Backend auto-deploy to Modal was added, the Android build pipeline was worked on (its deploys still failed this week), mobile and CI dependencies were updated in batches, and backend startup now tolerates a temporarily unreachable database.

The marketing homepage was rewritten end-to-end around the current landing content brief so clients can understand the product value faster.

Avva can now accept spoken input through voice dictation, with automatic stop after a short silence window.

The image understanding path moved to direct Claude vision, with durable S3-backed attachment history for richer context.

The web dashboard gained a Licenses and Tags page with inline per-pet tag assignment and clearer pet detail presentation.

The webapp and website logos, colors, favicons, gradient token, and generated social preview image were aligned with the mobile app and design system.

The pet selector now uses an anchored dropdown, keyboard behavior was corrected, image aspect ratios were preserved, and the selected pet is respected from the nav bar action.

Superadmin organization approval now uses the backend approval endpoint so the expected email flow is triggered.

The found-report verification page now guards against React Strict Mode double submission during verification.

Mobile dependencies were updated in batches, Kotlin compatibility was corrected, and automated tests were adjusted around the newer chat and pet security behavior.

Uploaded records can receive clearer generated titles using extracted document details such as clinic names and structured fields.

The chat experience gained multiple file attachments, image previews, carousel viewing, durable attachment history, and an in-app PDF viewer.

Avva sessions now last longer and resume with a greeting, which reduces friction for owners returning to a conversation.

Pet photos were moved toward a cleaner public storage prefix so images can load more consistently across the app.

Webhook handling and pending-license reconciliation were strengthened to reduce the chance of a paid license staying stuck.

Lost-pet views now respect pet jurisdiction, owner contact information shows in match and lookup contexts, and reporter details are filled in more reliably.

Many high-friction form moments were cleaned up, including numeric keyboards, tap-outside behavior, picker dismissal, and modal focus snap-back.

Dashboard sidebar clipping, collapsed logo alignment, long organization details, ZIP code paste, and revenue split validation were fixed.

The backend and mobile app were prepared for the Anthropic-powered Avva chat engine so the team could validate it safely in development builds.

Pet images, profile names, existing photos, and empty microchip fields were cleaned up to reduce confusing or broken profile states.

License validation dialogs, upload buttons, confirmation dialogs, and permission messages were made clearer for pet owners.

Existing photos now show correctly when editing, keyboards dismiss more predictably, and empty microchip values are no longer sent as real IDs.

The iOS release pipeline was adjusted to reuse the expected signing setup and the correct Xcode runner path.