# About HeDian > A long letter about why this app exists. > > Written after launch, for anyone who's willing to read a little further. ## I. Why HeDian exists Mixology has been in an odd place in China: either packaged as a craft so professional only working bartenders dare touch it, or flattened into the photogenic-but-vague "internet famous specials" of short-video apps. Right in the middle — a regular enthusiast wanting to put together something decent at home with the few bottles already on the shelf — has been strangely under-served by everyday tools. My own first frustration: I came home with a bottle of gin, a bottle of vermouth, and some lemons. A web search for "what can I make with gin" produced ad-stuffed list pages and long, dramatic videos. Nothing simply told me: "Given what you own right now, here are five drinks you can make tonight, ordered by how good they'll be." HeDian started from that very specific, personal inconvenience. It's not a community, not a content platform, not a course. It's a tool: you tell it what you have, it tells you what you can make; you save the recipes you like, and it surfaces them again when your bar changes. ## II. Design philosophy: small and local-first The whole app is built around two principles. **Small.** This is an independent-developer project. One person can only maintain so much code, ship so much content, and keep so many things online. So from day one, HeDian explicitly avoids being a "full-featured cocktail platform": - No user community — no comments, likes, or follower feeds - No content marketing — no ads, no embedded affiliate links - No courses — no paid lessons, no events - No grab-bag scope creep — wine, sake, coffee, and tea don't belong here What's left, after all those *don'ts*, is one job: **make the path from "I want a drink" to "I'm holding one" a little shorter.** That's the ruler against which every feature is measured. Anything that doesn't serve it doesn't make the cut. **Local-first.** All user data lives on your device, encrypted and synced through your own iCloud account. **HeDian's servers don't store a single byte of user data.** This isn't marketing — it's a technical architecture commitment: - Favourites, bar inventory, personal recipes, notes — none of it ever leaves your iCloud - You don't need an account to use every core feature - You don't need to "clear cloud data" when you delete the app, because there's no cloud data - As the developer, I cannot see what you use, what you make, or what you like The price of this design is that cross-platform sync depends on iCloud (so iOS only, for now). I'm fine paying that price, because privacy isn't a feature — once data sits on someone else's server, no promise can buy back the trust. ## III. What it does ### Bar management Open the app and tell it what you have. Each ingredient can record brand ("Gordon's" vs "Beefeater" — they taste different), capacity, and how much is left. None of these are required, but filling them in lets the app give you smarter suggestions. After you've entered your shelf, the **Discover** screen splits in two: **Can make tonight** and **One or two ingredients short**. The "short" section groups by what's missing — so all drinks missing bitters cluster together, helping you decide what to buy next. ### Classic recipes A curated set of IBA classics (the International Bartenders Association has maintained the standard list since 1961), covering classics, contemporary picks, and a few representative drinks not yet on the official list. Each recipe includes: - A detailed ingredient list (with brand suggestions) - Steps (stir, shake, layer, etc., explained) - Flavour tags (sweetness, acidity, bitterness, ABV) - Origin notes (brief — a paragraph or two) Recipe data keeps growing. This is a tool that thickens with time, not a one-and-done release. ### Personal collection and your own recipes Swipe to save anything you like. In the **You** tab, build your own recipes: photo, steps, ingredients, flavour tags. Your recipes appear in search and suggestions alongside the classics — not buried under "official content". ### Cross-device sync iPhone and iPad share one download — a Universal App. Bar ingredients entered on iPhone show up on iPad instantly. iCloud handles the sync through your own account, never through HeDian's servers. ## IV. Where the recipes come from This comes up a lot. HeDian's recipes have two sources: 1. **IBA standards** — from the IBA's publicly maintained official list. This is industry consensus; any serious cocktail book will reference them. 2. **Editor's picks** — extended recipes I've curated from respected cocktail books (*The Joy of Mixology*, *Death & Co*, *Liquid Intelligence*, and others), with attribution. No AI-generated recipes. Getting a cocktail right is highly empirical — five millilitres of syrup or one extra dash of bitters changes everything. Asking an AI to invent an "approximately correct" recipe wastes the time of anyone seriously trying to mix a drink. ## V. Tech and privacy **Frontend**: Swift 6 + SwiftUI, native. Not React Native, not Flutter — because the experience here is tactile (swipe-to-save, card transitions, haptics) and cross-platform frameworks always feel "almost there". **Data layer**: iCloud Key-Value Storage (`NSUbiquitousKeyValueStore`) as the sync channel. Reads and writes are local-first; the app works fully offline and only pushes deltas when online. **Backend**: a lightweight Go service (GoFrame v2) handles static asset CDN and admin, but **it stores no end-user data**. Recipe data is read-only, curated by me and pushed down. **On "zero cloud user data"**: HeDian's servers don't store your favourites, your bar, your personal recipes, or when you open the app. The only telemetry is anonymous version distribution — so we know how many people still need the old version to keep working. ## VI. How it compares Cocktail apps in this space tend to fall into two camps: - **Recipe library** — "hundreds of recipes" but slow updates, no concept of a personal bar, search is just keyword matching - **Community** — user-submitted recipes, but quality varies, and they push hard on follows, likes, friend adds HeDian doesn't fit either. Its core is **"given what you have, what can you make"** — an experience I haven't seen done well elsewhere. Quality comes from curation, not volume. "Community" feels like *not interrupting you*, not *immersive*. This doesn't mean those other apps are bad — different tools serve different people. If you want a vast recipe count plus a social feed, HeDian isn't the answer. If you want a quiet, unhurried tool that revolves around your own bar, HeDian might be it. ## VII. Common questions For detailed usage, privacy, and data-export questions, see the [FAQ](/en/faq). For feature suggestions or anything else you'd like to say, email is the most direct path: <1021106420@qq.com> — usually answered within 48 hours. --- This ran a bit longer than an "About" page should. But since you've read this far, we've already met. Next time you open HeDian, I hope it earns that.