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joshuakcockrell

325 karma · joined December 27, 2015

Cofounder @ Envelope

https://envelopebudgeting.com

Former iOS Engineer @ Robinhood, Twitter, Tesla

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joshuakcockrell··on Mike Tomlin spent 12 years building a Minecraft city
Umm, yes. How’s that relevant?
joshuakcockrell··on The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
I agree with this. I had a production Play Store submission approved within 4 hours last week. It feels so random.
joshuakcockrell··on “It works better in the app”
It’s also about friction.

No one wants to troubleshoot a card decline by logging into their mobile browser bank account in checkout at the grocery store.

joshuakcockrell··on I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
This is like saying, “teens shouldn’t learn how to make their own game engine because no one is hiring for that.”

You’re missing the point. Understanding how Unity works fundamentally makes you a better Unity dev.

joshuakcockrell··on SwiftUI After 7 Years
Ah yes, the glory days when you had to sift through 200+ lines of NSLayoutConstraint just to fix a simple layout bug.
joshuakcockrell··on SwiftUI After 7 Years
Complaining about needing special code to support iOS 15 definitely weakened the argument.
joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
I’m working on Envelope. https://envelopebudgeting.com It’s a budgeting app that comes with a built in checking account and debit cards. Because your budget can actually decline card transactions it’s a very effective system for stopping overspending.

I’m currently migrating the codebase to Swift 6 and dealing with the new concurrency system.

joshuakcockrell··on Show HN: Chess-Inspired Roguelike
They have the same movement as their equivalent chess pieces.
joshuakcockrell··on Thoughts on the Commodore 8020 smart flip phone?
Why not? Just because the screen is so small? I’m sure the right mount could hold this on your dashboard without issue.
joshuakcockrell··on What Is Minimalism Worth?
To save others the click: the article is just saying minimalism.com is for sale.
joshuakcockrell··on SpaceX has acquired Cursor
Existing discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48554215
joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)
I'm working on Envelope. It's a budgeting app that comes with a checking account built in. https://envelopebudgeting.com Because the checking account is built in, you can assign real money to digital envelopes for bills, groceries, savings, and everyday spending, then spend from the money with built-in checking, debit cards, and envelope-based spending controls.

The idea is to guide spending before it happens, not just track transactions afterward.

joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)
I'm building Envelope, which is a checking account with built-in budgeting: https://envelopebudgeting.com It's like if Mint, YNAB, or Copilot was built into a bank account. The goal is to help people budget, spend, and save from one account, instead of using a separate budgeting tool, spreadsheet (yuck!), or cash envelope system. It does that by allowing users to get paid via direct deposit and then organizing their money into digital envelopes for bills, groceries, savings, sinking funds, etc. It's attached to a debit card so everything updates instantly and has individual or joint accounts.

I'm currently working on the paycheck prediction algorithm so Envelope can automatically determine how much needs to be set aside from user's paychecks so their bills are paid on time.

joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?
Someone needs to solve barbecue. The entire industry is based on feel and experience. Why can't a beginner replicate Franklin's brisket by following a recipe online?

It's probably because the main measuring instrument (a probe thermometer) doesn't provide any feedback about fat rendering, moisture, etc. Plus, every brisket cut has different fat ratios and thickness, which means a recipe can't guarantee identical inputs like bread baking. I'd love for someone to throw some over the top engineering & experimentation at this.

joshuakcockrell··on ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did
Cofounder at Envelope here. Yes, a well polished banking app is much easier to use for many tasks

- Push notifications within seconds of swiping your card - Frictionless to check your balance/budget/cards with bio auth - Mobile check deposit (as others here have stated) - Instantly locking/unlocking your cards - Budgeting built-in

If, to you, "doing online banking" means "sitting down at my computer and scrolling through the PDF statements on Chase's website" (I don't blame you, I've been there), then yes, doing that on a desktop is much easier. I'd encourage you to take a look at how far banking apps have come recently.

joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)
Envelope https://envelopebudgeting.com

It's a budgeting app I'm building for iOS and Android. It's an alternative to YNAB, Goodbudget, or Monarch, but the checking account and debit cards are built-in, so it avoids the unreliable syncing issues that make budgeting apps suck. It's named after the digital envelope system and helps you organize money into categories for bills, spending, savings, upcoming expenses, etc. Individual and joint accounts.

Right now I'm working on an upcoming paycheck detection system to automatically split your paycheck across your budgets.

joshuakcockrell··on Why No AI Games?
> Maybe there are some cool AI-centric games that I’m overlooking?

The enemy locomotion in Arc Raiders was almost entirely created with reinforcement learning. It’s a very impressive modern example (the game has been out for less than 6 months).

Here’s the documentary explaining how the RL locomotion works. Skip to 10 min 36 sec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRlhpzc7ImA&t=636s

joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)
Lately I’ve been interested in how budgeting apps model cash flow over time. A lot of tools are either expense trackers or monthly budgets that assume clean month boundaries, which breaks down quickly if you’re paid biweekly or irregularly.

Envelope budgeting (the method) works by allocating money up front so future obligations are actually covered before spending happens. But the hard part is handling income timing and paycheck variability without overfunding the future.

Anyways, I’m currently adding a cash flow detection algorithm to Envelope (the budgeting app) https://envelopebudgeting.com that only allocates paychecks to obligations before the next paycheck unless future funding is strictly required. That approach has avoided a lot of timing edge cases I kept running into.

joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
https://joshcockrell.com
joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (January 2026)
I’m building a budgeting app called Envelope, it’s like the envelope budgeting concept but has the checking account built in. https://envelopebudgeting.com
joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)
I'm building Envelope — a banking product purpose-built for envelope-style budgeting.

Most “budgeting banks” (Ally Buckets, Wells Fargo Budget Watch, etc.) bolt budgeting on after the fact. Envelope was designed from day one as an integrated budgeting bank account. The checking, savings, and debit cards are all built around real-time envelope balances.

Each envelope acts like a dedicated account with its own balance and optional virtual card. Spending directly from an envelope means your budget is always accurate — no syncing, no spreadsheets, no “catch-up” categorization. Everything runs on-ledger with automatic spend-locking and instant visibility.

We’re a small YC-backed team (former Robinhood and Apple Card team members) focused on rebuilding personal finance from the ground up to be simple, and transparent https://envelopebudgeting.com

joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025)
I’m currently 4 years in to doing everything possible to build the best budgeting app https://envelopebudgeting.com

This week I’ve been working on predicting upcoming paychecks with Nodejs so we can automatically decide how much funds to move into your budgets when you get paid. I pull the past 3 months of transaction data from our Postgres database using Prisma and run some analysis.

People think syncing and delayed transaction data is normal, and I’m working on changing that by having the budgeting built in to the checking account. Along with a high yield savings account, goal envelopes, bill envelopes, etc, joint accounts, etc.

joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)
A budgeting app that comes with a built-in checking account https://envelopebudgeting.com/

Currently trying to convert the SwiftUI app to Compose using Skip.

joshuakcockrell··on Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]
Have you scrolled through the Switch store? The UI freezes for seconds at a time while network requests lock up the main thread.
joshuakcockrell··on School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study
I worked on the Twitter iOS app. Can confirm my kid isn’t allowed a phone until they’re a teen. Once they get one, I’ll be spending hours figuring out how to MDM brick the thing so they can’t get anywhere near social media.

Having said that, I’m still an app dev (personal finance & budgeting) and I’m excited to onboard my kid into that world.

joshuakcockrell··on Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson
This is my biggest issue with Prime Video. You never know what's included and what costs extra.
joshuakcockrell··on Ask HN: Life-changing purchases since 2020? (Under $100 and under $1000)
I bought a used Apple Watch for sleep tracking for $230. It took a few days to get used to sleeping with a watch on but I have a 1.5 yr old daughter and it’s been a game changer to quantify how much I’m waking up for her and how my nightly routine impacts my productivity.

There are apps in the App Store that give you a sleep score.

joshuakcockrell··on AI is an impediment to learning web development
JavaScript needs a Python 2->3 moment, but like 100x the damage
joshuakcockrell··on Show HN: Skip – Build native iOS and Android apps from a single Swift codebase
> Sure there's more money in the Western app ecosystem for iOS apps, but that doesn't mean your app should inherently cater for iOS first

That's exactly what it means. When I was at Twitter, the Android app generated 1/10th the revenue of iOS. If you care about building a business that generates revenue, you should definitely cater to iOS first.

joshuakcockrell··on Things you're allowed to do (2020)
What’s wrong with making cosmetic changes solely to improve low self esteem?
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