Bangle.js: the missing manual?

kitchen combo as it has been the first time I've really felt I was getting the full functionality out of the watch!

Interesting! I've actually been working on some changes that should make this kind of thing possible with more watch faces (allowing you to move between apps just using buttons/swipes). So hopefully this will improve soon.

It would get to the bangle logo screen and the only output would be a prompt which said "bluetooth>" at the bottom when it was connected

That's odd. Have you been using the Web IDE to play around at all? That's usually what happens when you follow these steps to load in a fail-safe mode: https://www.espruino.com/Bangle.js#reset­ting-without-loading-any-code

But it can be what happens if you leave the Web IDE set to upload to 'Flash' and then upload code (you overwrite the main watch's code with your own code). All you need to do to fix it is reinstall the 'bootloader' app.

So is correct that you would need a monolithic app like Kitchen Combo to get all the functionality at once in a watch face?

The idea was that you'd have a basic clock app, but then the widgets would add other functionality like step counting. However, the widgets have to fit into a small bar at the top/bottom of the screen, so several of the watch faces choose to implement bigger versions of what the widgets display themselves.

For Kitchen combo/step counting, the step counter widget provides some functionality like keeping track of how many steps there have been during the day - so rather than reimplementing that, Kitchen combo just uses the widget's step counter.