Making iOS Apps with AI

I've been tinkering on a few iOS apps lately with the help of AI and having a ton of fun with it. My approach isn't total "vibe coding" though - I'm trying to learn along the way, so here's what I've been doing:

- Shoring up my PO skills by writing clear requirements, roadmaps, and stories. I didn't hand AI anything until those were clear and my brain was exhausted. Then, I write stories in Github Projects where I get them as detailed as I can, pop into AI and say "work on #23". More often than not I don't need any iteration with the agents. They just go an execute on it and match my expectations. This is pretty simiilar to how I like to use AI at work as well. If I have to go more than one or two rounds on an idea with AI I take that as "I wasn't clear enough in the first place".

- Shoring up my Swift UI skills. I let AI handle most of the crunchy stuff while I've been using it as an opportunity to learn SwiftUI and how to design views in App. It's been fun, and challenging, and frustrating. Swift UI is... interesting... to say the least.

I'm not making these to distribute them and hope they'll become popular - they just scratch an itch to learn things while also solving a few problems I regularly have: one is a very specific take on a "Dinner planner" app and the other is a quiet Bookshelf app. If you're interested in trying them out they both have TestFlight links. I have some pretty tightly held concepts when it comes to software, and both of these are meant to reflect that: calm, quiet, passive, data portability (full import/export), no tracking, no login, no analytics, just a tool.

Bookshelf app (AKA Nutmeg): https://testflight.apple.com/join/T1FND9zy

Dinner app (AKA Mace): https://testflight.apple.com/join/2WUcXwpn

Give 'em a poke if you'd like (keep in mind they're beta, and really built for my brain... so you might not like them). Or reply here if you'd like to talk more about my workflow or see examples.