Bring Git Pane to Mobile | Dataford Interview Questions

Company Context

You’re a PM at CodePilot, a cloud IDE and code review platform (think GitHub + VS Code in the browser) with 12M registered developers and 2.4M weekly active users (WAU). CodePilot’s revenue is primarily B2B SaaS: $25–$45/seat/month for teams, plus enterprise add-ons (SSO, audit logs, compliance exports). The desktop web app is the core experience, but mobile usage is growing fast: 31% of WAU open CodePilot on iOS/Android at least once a week, mainly to review PRs, triage issues, and monitor CI.

CodePilot’s desktop app has a “Git pane” (left sidebar) that covers: current branch, uncommitted changes, file diffs, staging/unstaging, commit message, push/pull, and quick actions like stash and checkout. It’s heavily used: 58% of desktop sessions interact with it.

User / Market Scenario

Mobile developer workflows are increasingly common due to remote work and on-call rotations. Competitors:

GitHub Mobile: strong PR review and notifications, limited local change management.
GitLab Mobile: similar strengths; power users complain about “too many taps” to find diffs.
Working Copy (iOS): powerful Git operations, but not integrated with an IDE and intimidating for casual users.

CodePilot’s differentiation is tight IDE + repo integration and a “single surface” for code, review, and CI. Leadership believes bringing Git workflows to mobile can reduce time-to-respond during incidents and increase seat stickiness in enterprise accounts.

Key Personas (from research)

Persona	Share of mobile WAU	Primary mobile context	Top needs	Top fears
On-call Engineer (Asha)	22%	Incident response, commuting, late night	Quickly inspect diffs, revert/patch, confirm what changed	Making a risky Git action on a phone
Reviewer/Tech Lead (Miguel)	34%	Between meetings	See what changed, leave feedback, sanity-check	Losing context / missing files
Indie Dev (Rina)	18%	Side projects	Make small edits, commit, push	Complex UI, accidental pushes
Student/Learner (Noah)	26%	Learning Git	Understand status, stage/commit basics	Confusion, destructive commands

Problem / Opportunity

Mobile sessions are frequent but shallow:

Median mobile session length: 2.8 minutes (desktop: 14.6 minutes)
Mobile “code view” opens are high, but only 6% of mobile sessions reach a “diff view”
Support tickets show a pattern: users can see files but struggle to understand what changed and what’s safe to do.

Enterprise customers specifically requested: “Let on-call engineers quickly verify and ship a one-line hotfix from mobile—with guardrails.”

However, there’s risk: internal data shows that on desktop, 0.7% of Git actions trigger a recovery flow (revert/reset/stash recovery). On mobile, leadership wants that rate to not exceed 0.9% after launch.

Your Task

Design how the Git pane should look and behave on mobile—not a 1:1 port from desktop.

In your answer, cover:

Clarify the primary job(s) to be done for a mobile Git pane and which persona(s) you’ll prioritize for an MVP.
Define the core information architecture on mobile: what’s the default view, what’s one tap away, and what’s intentionally hidden.
Propose interaction patterns for small screens (navigation, staging, diff viewing, commit composition), including how you handle limited space and touch ergonomics.
Make explicit trade-offs: which Git capabilities you will not ship in v1 (e.g., rebase, interactive staging, stash, cherry-pick) and why.
Define success metrics and an experiment/rollout plan that reduces risk of destructive actions.

Constraints

Timeline: MVP in 10 weeks with a team of 6 (2 iOS, 2 Android, 1 backend, 1 designer). No additional headcount.
Technical: Mobile app uses a shared “diff rendering” component, but it struggles with very large diffs (>5,000 lines) and can OOM on older devices.
Security/Compliance (enterprise): must support SSO, device attestation, and audit logs for write actions (commit/push). Some customers require “no force-push from mobile.”
Offline: limited offline support exists for viewing cached files, but Git operations require network.
Business: Goal is to increase enterprise retention; you must avoid increasing support burden. Support team capacity is fixed.

Additional Data (you may use)

44% of mobile sessions start from a notification (PR comment, CI failure, mention).
Among mobile users, the most common “write” actions today are commenting on PRs (19% of sessions) and approving PRs (7%).
Only 2% of mobile sessions attempt to edit code; when they do, 63% abandon before creating a PR.

What a Great Answer Looks Like

We’re looking for a structured approach that starts from user needs, proposes a mobile-native design, prioritizes an MVP, and defines measurable success criteria with clear guardrails.

Problem

Company Context

User / Market Scenario

Mobile developer workflows are increasingly common due to remote work and on-call rotations. Competitors:

GitHub Mobile: strong PR review and notifications, limited local change management.
GitLab Mobile: similar strengths; power users complain about “too many taps” to find diffs.
Working Copy (iOS): powerful Git operations, but not integrated with an IDE and intimidating for casual users.

Key Personas (from research)

Persona	Share of mobile WAU	Primary mobile context	Top needs	Top fears
On-call Engineer (Asha)	22%	Incident response, commuting, late night	Quickly inspect diffs, revert/patch, confirm what changed	Making a risky Git action on a phone
Reviewer/Tech Lead (Miguel)	34%	Between meetings	See what changed, leave feedback, sanity-check	Losing context / missing files
Indie Dev (Rina)	18%	Side projects	Make small edits, commit, push	Complex UI, accidental pushes
Student/Learner (Noah)	26%	Learning Git	Understand status, stage/commit basics	Confusion, destructive commands

Problem / Opportunity

Mobile sessions are frequent but shallow:

Median mobile session length: 2.8 minutes (desktop: 14.6 minutes)
Mobile “code view” opens are high, but only 6% of mobile sessions reach a “diff view”
Support tickets show a pattern: users can see files but struggle to understand what changed and what’s safe to do.

Enterprise customers specifically requested: “Let on-call engineers quickly verify and ship a one-line hotfix from mobile—with guardrails.”

Your Task

Design how the Git pane should look and behave on mobile—not a 1:1 port from desktop.

In your answer, cover:

Clarify the primary job(s) to be done for a mobile Git pane and which persona(s) you’ll prioritize for an MVP.
Define the core information architecture on mobile: what’s the default view, what’s one tap away, and what’s intentionally hidden.
Propose interaction patterns for small screens (navigation, staging, diff viewing, commit composition), including how you handle limited space and touch ergonomics.
Make explicit trade-offs: which Git capabilities you will not ship in v1 (e.g., rebase, interactive staging, stash, cherry-pick) and why.
Define success metrics and an experiment/rollout plan that reduces risk of destructive actions.

Constraints

Timeline: MVP in 10 weeks with a team of 6 (2 iOS, 2 Android, 1 backend, 1 designer). No additional headcount.
Technical: Mobile app uses a shared “diff rendering” component, but it struggles with very large diffs (>5,000 lines) and can OOM on older devices.
Security/Compliance (enterprise): must support SSO, device attestation, and audit logs for write actions (commit/push). Some customers require “no force-push from mobile.”
Offline: limited offline support exists for viewing cached files, but Git operations require network.
Business: Goal is to increase enterprise retention; you must avoid increasing support burden. Support team capacity is fixed.

Additional Data (you may use)

44% of mobile sessions start from a notification (PR comment, CI failure, mention).
Among mobile users, the most common “write” actions today are commenting on PRs (19% of sessions) and approving PRs (7%).
Only 2% of mobile sessions attempt to edit code; when they do, 63% abandon before creating a PR.

What a Great Answer Looks Like

We’re looking for a structured approach that starts from user needs, proposes a mobile-native design, prioritizes an MVP, and defines measurable success criteria with clear guardrails.

Problem

Company Context

User / Market Scenario

Mobile developer workflows are increasingly common due to remote work and on-call rotations. Competitors:

GitHub Mobile: strong PR review and notifications, limited local change management.
GitLab Mobile: similar strengths; power users complain about “too many taps” to find diffs.
Working Copy (iOS): powerful Git operations, but not integrated with an IDE and intimidating for casual users.

Key Personas (from research)

Persona	Share of mobile WAU	Primary mobile context	Top needs	Top fears
On-call Engineer (Asha)	22%	Incident response, commuting, late night	Quickly inspect diffs, revert/patch, confirm what changed	Making a risky Git action on a phone
Reviewer/Tech Lead (Miguel)	34%	Between meetings	See what changed, leave feedback, sanity-check	Losing context / missing files
Indie Dev (Rina)	18%	Side projects	Make small edits, commit, push	Complex UI, accidental pushes
Student/Learner (Noah)	26%	Learning Git	Understand status, stage/commit basics	Confusion, destructive commands

Problem / Opportunity

Mobile sessions are frequent but shallow:

Median mobile session length: 2.8 minutes (desktop: 14.6 minutes)
Mobile “code view” opens are high, but only 6% of mobile sessions reach a “diff view”
Support tickets show a pattern: users can see files but struggle to understand what changed and what’s safe to do.

Enterprise customers specifically requested: “Let on-call engineers quickly verify and ship a one-line hotfix from mobile—with guardrails.”

Your Task

Design how the Git pane should look and behave on mobile—not a 1:1 port from desktop.

In your answer, cover:

Clarify the primary job(s) to be done for a mobile Git pane and which persona(s) you’ll prioritize for an MVP.
Define the core information architecture on mobile: what’s the default view, what’s one tap away, and what’s intentionally hidden.
Propose interaction patterns for small screens (navigation, staging, diff viewing, commit composition), including how you handle limited space and touch ergonomics.
Make explicit trade-offs: which Git capabilities you will not ship in v1 (e.g., rebase, interactive staging, stash, cherry-pick) and why.
Define success metrics and an experiment/rollout plan that reduces risk of destructive actions.

Constraints

Timeline: MVP in 10 weeks with a team of 6 (2 iOS, 2 Android, 1 backend, 1 designer). No additional headcount.
Technical: Mobile app uses a shared “diff rendering” component, but it struggles with very large diffs (>5,000 lines) and can OOM on older devices.
Security/Compliance (enterprise): must support SSO, device attestation, and audit logs for write actions (commit/push). Some customers require “no force-push from mobile.”
Offline: limited offline support exists for viewing cached files, but Git operations require network.
Business: Goal is to increase enterprise retention; you must avoid increasing support burden. Support team capacity is fixed.

Additional Data (you may use)

44% of mobile sessions start from a notification (PR comment, CI failure, mention).
Among mobile users, the most common “write” actions today are commenting on PRs (19% of sessions) and approving PRs (7%).
Only 2% of mobile sessions attempt to edit code; when they do, 63% abandon before creating a PR.

What a Great Answer Looks Like

We’re looking for a structured approach that starts from user needs, proposes a mobile-native design, prioritizes an MVP, and defines measurable success criteria with clear guardrails.

Problem

Company Context

User / Market Scenario

Mobile developer workflows are increasingly common due to remote work and on-call rotations. Competitors:

GitHub Mobile: strong PR review and notifications, limited local change management.
GitLab Mobile: similar strengths; power users complain about “too many taps” to find diffs.
Working Copy (iOS): powerful Git operations, but not integrated with an IDE and intimidating for casual users.

Key Personas (from research)

Persona	Share of mobile WAU	Primary mobile context	Top needs	Top fears
On-call Engineer (Asha)	22%	Incident response, commuting, late night	Quickly inspect diffs, revert/patch, confirm what changed	Making a risky Git action on a phone
Reviewer/Tech Lead (Miguel)	34%	Between meetings	See what changed, leave feedback, sanity-check	Losing context / missing files
Indie Dev (Rina)	18%	Side projects	Make small edits, commit, push	Complex UI, accidental pushes
Student/Learner (Noah)	26%	Learning Git	Understand status, stage/commit basics	Confusion, destructive commands

Problem / Opportunity

Mobile sessions are frequent but shallow:

Median mobile session length: 2.8 minutes (desktop: 14.6 minutes)
Mobile “code view” opens are high, but only 6% of mobile sessions reach a “diff view”
Support tickets show a pattern: users can see files but struggle to understand what changed and what’s safe to do.

Enterprise customers specifically requested: “Let on-call engineers quickly verify and ship a one-line hotfix from mobile—with guardrails.”

Your Task

Design how the Git pane should look and behave on mobile—not a 1:1 port from desktop.

In your answer, cover:

Clarify the primary job(s) to be done for a mobile Git pane and which persona(s) you’ll prioritize for an MVP.
Define the core information architecture on mobile: what’s the default view, what’s one tap away, and what’s intentionally hidden.
Propose interaction patterns for small screens (navigation, staging, diff viewing, commit composition), including how you handle limited space and touch ergonomics.
Make explicit trade-offs: which Git capabilities you will not ship in v1 (e.g., rebase, interactive staging, stash, cherry-pick) and why.
Define success metrics and an experiment/rollout plan that reduces risk of destructive actions.

Constraints

Timeline: MVP in 10 weeks with a team of 6 (2 iOS, 2 Android, 1 backend, 1 designer). No additional headcount.
Technical: Mobile app uses a shared “diff rendering” component, but it struggles with very large diffs (>5,000 lines) and can OOM on older devices.
Security/Compliance (enterprise): must support SSO, device attestation, and audit logs for write actions (commit/push). Some customers require “no force-push from mobile.”
Offline: limited offline support exists for viewing cached files, but Git operations require network.
Business: Goal is to increase enterprise retention; you must avoid increasing support burden. Support team capacity is fixed.

Additional Data (you may use)

44% of mobile sessions start from a notification (PR comment, CI failure, mention).
Among mobile users, the most common “write” actions today are commenting on PRs (19% of sessions) and approving PRs (7%).
Only 2% of mobile sessions attempt to edit code; when they do, 63% abandon before creating a PR.

What a Great Answer Looks Like

We’re looking for a structured approach that starts from user needs, proposes a mobile-native design, prioritizes an MVP, and defines measurable success criteria with clear guardrails.