QuestIL — Find a hand. Build trust.
An independent product in development: an app for small local jobs, designed around verified identity and a defined payment flow.
Illustration: a small job is posted, a verified helper takes it, payment is secured before work starts and released on completion, an attempt to share a phone number outside the app is hidden, and the job owner leaves a fair review.
The product
QuestIL is an iOS and Android app I’m designing and building independently. It connects people who need help with moving, assembly, cleaning, small repairs or errands with people who can do the work. The product is still in development, with a focus on identity, payment and coordination between strangers.
The design question
Between strangers, a small job is mostly a trust problem: will the person show up, will the work get paid, and what happens if it goes wrong. A classifieds board leaves all of that to the two people. QuestIL exists so the job gets done and the money ends up where it should, even between people who have never met.
What was built
- Four principles shaping the product
- Verified identity, payment arranged before work starts, conversations and payments inside the app, and reputation that records behaviour fairly.
- Payments without holding the money
- A regulated marketplace payment provider holds the funds; QuestIL never takes custody. Holds with manual capture, separate checks for identity and payout.
- Event-driven backend and ops dashboard
- A NestJS API and a queue-driven worker on Postgres and Redis, with a Next.js admin dashboard for day-to-day operations.
- The app
- Expo React Native app for iOS and Android: post a job, pick a verified helper, chat, pay and review, without leaving it.
- Docs, CI/CD, four environments
- Documentation in English and Hebrew, GitHub Actions and EAS pipelines, and four environments, so changes ship in small, verified steps.
My part
I’m designing and building QuestIL end to end: product rules, the payment flow, backend, background jobs, operations dashboard, app and documentation. The design includes detecting and redacting attempts to move contact details or payments outside the app, including in Hebrew. The product is unreleased; the capabilities and goals here describe its design.
Supported outcomes
- Design goal: money is secured before any work starts
- Design goal: conversations and payments stay inside the app
- Design goal: one unfair review cannot destroy a livelihood
- Design goal: the platform never holds the money itself
Tools
NestJS, Prisma, PostgreSQL, Redis / BullMQ, Next.js, Expo / React Native, GitHub Actions, Render