# 21 Top-10 Rankings Lost in a Day: How Peter Šutarík's AI agent localized the ReelMeal App Store listing, then broke part of it

Peter Šutarík handed the App Store listing of ReelMeal, his iPhone app, to Claude Code. The agent worked with Sonar's keyword data and a small App Store Connect CLI. Over two weeks it researched 35 storefronts, wrote the name, subtitle and keyword field in 29 languages, translated the screenshots and set up rank tracking. Of 491 tracked keywords, ReelMeal went from 0 in the top 10 on August 3 to 47 on August 5, and first-time downloads went from 19 to 90 in the 30 days after release. A second agent pass then appeared in search on August 28 and removed 21 top-10 rankings in one day, ten of them at #1.

| | |
|---|---|
| **Who** | Peter Šutarík, founder of Sonar ([trysonar.app](https://trysonar.app)) and developer of ReelMeal, an iPhone app that turns TikTok, Instagram and YouTube cooking videos into recipes. X: [@PeterSutarik](https://x.com/PeterSutarik) (verified 2026-11-04) |
| **Problem** | Localizing ReelMeal's App Store listing across storefronts. The app was getting 1 to 7 first-time downloads a week |
| **Stack** | Claude Code, Sonar's keyword data and rank tracking (through Sonar's MCP server), Sonar's Screenshot Studio API, a small Python CLI over the App Store Connect API, App Store Connect connected to Sonar |
| **Confidence** | Medium (first-person, vendor-hosted, small numbers, one-day baseline) |
| **Last verified** | 2026-11-04 |

## The problem
ReelMeal had been live since March 30, 2026. It was getting 1 to 7 first-time downloads a week across the weeks of June 15 to July 27. In July he handed its App Store listing to an AI agent to do the whole localization. He gave it "a lot of permission."

## The blueprint (as he describes it)
1. **Give the agent data and write access.** Keyword popularity, difficulty, suggestions, competitor keywords and rank tracking came from Sonar. Localized screenshots went through Sonar's Screenshot Studio API. Metadata was written to App Store Connect through a small Python CLI. Downloads and impressions per country came from App Store Connect, connected to Sonar.
2. **Research and draft every storefront in one afternoon.** On July 21 the agent generated 40 listing drafts in Sonar for 36 storefronts in 29 languages, with 178 target keywords between them. The drafts took 18 minutes. Sonar's API log for that day shows 58 keyword-metrics calls, plus keyword search, suggestions, keyword extraction from the existing listing and an ASO score. The same day it wrote name, subtitle, description and keyword field for all 35 locales into version 1.2. That version stayed unsubmitted until August 3.
3. **Take the trademarks back out.** The German and Italian draft names used "TikTok" because people type it. App Review guideline 2.3.7 warns against packing metadata with trademarked terms. On August 2 the agent stripped TikTok, Instagram and YouTube from all 35 keyword fields, including transliterations. It refilled the freed characters, wrote brand-free names for German and Italian and rewrote eight subtitles. He writes that "the agent did it once it was asked."
4. **Translate the screenshots.** The screenshot set has 8 screens. The agent filled captions per locale through the Screenshot Studio API, with 75 translation updates across 31 locales on August 2. The set was uploaded on August 3 for 35 locales. The agent also hit two bugs in his screenshot tool and one missing feature, all fixed the same or next day.
5. **Track keywords before release.** On August 3, between 12:27 and 12:42 UTC, the agent added 491 keywords across the 35 storefronts to Sonar's rank tracking. Version 1.2 went live overnight. He calls that timing "the most useful thing in the whole run".
6. **What broke: a second pass that did not check rankings.** On August 26 a second agent session, working from the app's repo, rewrote the listing for version 1.3. It flipped all 35 names to keyword-first ("Video to Recipe AI: ReelMeal") and wrote new subtitles and keyword fields for 13 locales. Its own notes said the Danish and Norwegian storefronts "serve the English fallback", with no Danish metadata, so it wrote new metadata there. Sonar had ReelMeal at #1 in Denmark for the Danish subtitle all through August. His best guess, which he says he has not confirmed in App Store Connect, is that the iTunes Search API still returns the English name for those storefronts. On that guess, the agent read the English name as "not localized" instead of checking the ranking data it had access to.
7. **His rules for any agent before it touches a listing.**
   - Track before you ship.
   - Read the ranking data before rewriting a field. Have the agent list every ranking keyword that depends on a phrase or word it is about to remove. He says "That one check would have flagged the ten #1s."
   - Verify "missing" localizations in App Store Connect. "Public search APIs don't always show what a storefront's users see."
   - Keep a human pass for trademarks in names and subtitles. "Agents optimize for what people type."
   - Let the agent do the breadth, keep the judgment. "Deciding what not to change is still the expensive part."

## Stated results
- **Rankings, version 1.2:** of 491 keywords, top-10 count was 0 on August 3, 30 on August 4, 47 on August 5 and 50 on August 10.
- **Downloads:** 19 first-time downloads in the 30 days before (July 4 to August 2) and 90 in the 30 days after (August 4 to September 2). Outside the US, 18 to 73.
- **Version 1.2 alone, no ads:** 38 downloads in 13 days, 2.92 a day against 0.63 a day before.
- **Reach:** storefronts with at least one download went from 11 to 24, and 29 in the latest 30 days.
- **Search share:** outside the US, the share of impressions from App Store search rose from 88% to 97%.
- **By country:** Germany went from 3 downloads to 15 and Japan from 1 to 7.
- **The loss:** when version 1.3 names appeared in search on August 28, 31 keywords that had been in the top 50 disappeared from results. Twenty-one had been in the top 10, and ten had been #1. Most were exact phrases from the version 1.2 names and subtitles.
- Across all 675 tracked keywords, the top-10 count fell from 143 to 124 overnight and hovered between 118 and 132 until October 11. Only one lost keyword came back: German "smartes kochbuch" reappeared at #5 after the October 12 switch.
- **Version 1.3 gains:** in the US, "video to recipe" entered the top 10 at #10 the day after, with a best of #6 on October 9. In Vietnam, "ai nấu ăn" went from #18 to #1 on August 29. In the Netherlands, "recepten opslaan" reached the top 10 by October 10.

## Caveats
- **Vendor source.** Peter Šutarík is the founder of Sonar, the ASO tool used throughout the run. His X bio reads "Building trysonar.app to 10k €/month". The post is on the Sonar blog and ends with a Sonar free-trial pitch. The screenshot tool he calls "my own" is Sonar's Screenshot Studio.
- **Bundled release.** Version 1.2 shipped localized metadata, new screenshots and an app update with its interface in 22 languages together. He says the download step "can't be pinned on metadata alone."
- **US ads.** Apple Ads ran in the US from August 17 and brought 12 paid downloads for €33.45 through October 13. The 30-day "after" window also contains version 1.3 from August 28. He calls the outside-US numbers the cleaner ones.
- **One-day baseline.** Rank tracking for most keywords started the day before release. The keywords were picked to match the new metadata, so the old listing was never expected to rank for them.
- **Approximate ranks.** Before October 12, Sonar read iOS ranks from the iTunes Search API, which orders results by relevance. After the switch to Apple's true ranking, the top-10 count moved from 130 to 143 overnight with no metadata change.
- **Small numbers.** He says 19 to 90 downloads a month is "far too few for statistics." Seasonality can't be checked.
- **Prior work.** An earlier keyword audit in May covered 11 locales and was done with another ASO tool. The August pass started from those notes for some locales.
- **Trademarks.** The August 26 pass put "tiktok", "instagram", "reels" and "youtube" back into three English keyword fields, and that version passed review. He says one approval isn't a guarantee.
- Handles: X @PeterSutarik (verified 2026-11-04: bio links trysonar.app; linked from petersutarik.com). LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/peter-sutarik (verified 2026-11-04: linked from petersutarik.com). Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, Mastodon: none verified.

## FAQ
### What did the agent do for ReelMeal's App Store listing?
Claude Code researched 35 storefronts, wrote the name, subtitle and keyword field in 29 languages, translated the screenshots and set up rank tracking. It did this over two weeks in July and August.

### Did localizing the listing increase downloads?
First-time downloads went from 19 to 90 in the 30 days after release, and from 18 to 73 outside the US. The same release also localized the app's interface into 22 languages, and US numbers include Apple Ads. He says metadata alone can't take all the credit.

### What went wrong?
The first drafts used trademarked platform names, which the agent removed on August 2. A second pass for version 1.3 replaced subtitles that ranked #1 and removed 21 top-10 rankings on August 28. He guesses a public API made some storefronts look unlocalized, but has not confirmed it.

### How does he say to prevent it?
He says to have the agent read the ranking data and list every keyword that depends on a phrase it is about to remove. He also says to verify "missing" localizations in App Store Connect and keep a human pass for trademarks in names and subtitles.

## Sources
- https://trysonar.app/blog/ai-agent-app-store-localization-case-study (primary: first-person case study by Peter Sutarik on the Sonar blog, October 14, 2026)

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