The Instinct Is Real and Cross-Brain
A cable install — Apple Development signing, a wire, an unlocked phone in hand — feels like shipping. It is a build check. It expires in seven days. It reaches one device. It cannot launch if the phone is locked, which is how a session can "install" an app Dad never opened. TestFlight signs for a year against the team, lands over the air on every enrolled device, and gives an install he can accept on his own schedule. That is delivery. The family already has the pipeline. Firebrand is the declared canonical iOS reference. Smolder vendors the same script from Sibling Kit, with this app's facts in a local config. Change the pipeline in the kit. Change the facts here.
The recorded failure this rule exists for is not theoretical. A session finished the first usable mobile version, signed it Apple Development, installed it over a cable, and logged TestFlight as a remaining gate. The knowledge existed, in writing, in the family, twelve days earlier. It did not fire. Name the instinct before the work starts, not after Dad points at TestFlight.
First Build Is Not a Special Case
"The first build of a new app can be a cable, TestFlight later" is how later never arrives. The pipeline is already built. One paid Apple Developer team carries the family. The Macs' self-signed identity has no iOS equivalent, which is why the cable feels like the only door. It is the wrong door.