Mastodawn

I've been vibe coding SwiftUI menu bar apps for my new Mac, turns out Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.4 are both competent at Swift programming, no need to even open Xcode! https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/27/vibe-coding-swiftui/

Vibe coding SwiftUI apps is a lot of fun

I have a new laptop—a 128GB M5 MacBook Pro, which early impressions show to be very capable for running good local LLMs. I got frustrated with Activity Monitor and decided …

Simon Willison’s Weblog

Show thread

Jeff Triplett 1d ago

@simon I have been writing iPhone apps this way too. I have 5 now, but haven't paid the Apple tax, so I can run them on real hardware.

My first two are in Flutter, then I decided to have Claude port them to Swift and it's been nice.

I have a TV viewer app so I can use a FireTV, both audio and video, on my Mac and it nailed it.

Show thread

Jeremy Carbaugh 1d ago

@webology @simon I've had a need for an iOS app for a while but never had time to learn. Claude knocked it out in a weekend and I'm about to submit to the App Store. Gotta try some menu bar apps now!

Show thread

Jeff Triplett 1d ago

@jcarbaugh @simon I'd love to know how that goes. I have two iPhone apps that I want for PyCon US, but I thought I should probably set up a new LLC first before paying the Apple tax.

I was really happy with how my PNP app came out. I don't have my hdmi+usb input here, but it makes it possible to frame an AV source, resize, and float it over other windows.

Show thread

Jeremy Carbaugh 1d ago

@webology very cool! How many iterations did it take to work with audio and video inputs? I've got an AirPlay/Raspberry Pi project on my todo list.

I debated over an LLC for the App Store but am keeping it US only to hold off until I'm ready to set one up for EU trader registration.

Show thread

Jeff Triplett

@jcarbaugh My MVP was a one-shot. I started it then walked with Frank to get coffee and when I got back it was built and running. I put 45 minutes into over that day to get everything look how I wanted.

This was a month ago and I was using Claude 4.5 but used Codex to fix some crashes trying get resizing the window to respect our input video's aspect ratio.

I'm not doing AirPlay though.

Show thread

Jeff Triplett 1d ago

@jcarbaugh CC has been amazing for hardware though. I connected an old Kindle Fire to an RPi4 and asked CC to connect to it and use a web browser to grab a screenshot and it didn't miss a beat with ADB even over a weird setup where it has ssh'ing from my mac.

I have had similiar luck with Home Assistant and even some random ESP gear with micro python.

I don't think people realize how good this is.