I finally released my first iOS app! 🥳 It was a personal project I’ve been working on in my free time, primarily to learn iOS development and figure out how to leverage AI tools to bring my vision to life with almost 100% accuracy. I always wanted to centralize my media backlog (movies, TV shows, books, and games) in a private, easy to use way, without all the unnecessary bloated features. Having so many accounts with different user experiences and limitations was very annoying. During the ideation phase, I was also playing a lot of Balatro on my phone. The interactions in that game were amazing, organic and incredibly fun. It made me realize that most of the utility apps I was using were boring and completely wasting the potential of our smartphones. Once I had the idea clearly defined, I started working in Figma to map out every flow and screen. I explored different concepts while simultaneously building a foundation and a component library for everything I knew I would need. I started reading the Apple Developer documentation, watching YouTube tutorials, and trying to wrap my head around iOS development concepts. Thank goodness we live in this day and age, combining Apple's documentation with AI gave me a massive head start and the confidence I needed to begin coding. Finding the right AI workflow, however, took some trial and error: 1. Gemini Pro: I started here, using it to build the basic architecture and develop the first few components. It worked well initially, but as the app grew more complex, copying and pasting code between the browser and Xcode became hard to manage. 2. GitHub Copilot and Claude: I bought subscriptions to try working directly inside Xcode. Copilot gave me decent results, but I didn’t love the workflow, and I couldn't get the Figma MCP server to work properly. With Claude, I was burning through tokens super quickly and running into inconsistencies. 3. Codex: I shifted to a new model here, which also worked great, but I wasn't enjoying the interface mix between the AI and Xcode. I still wanted to code, and the workflow felt disjointed. 4. Cursor: After running out of tokens on the other platforms, I created a Cursor account just as Composer 2.5 was released. It was a massive improvement. I manually handled the design and architecture decisions, and Cursor made the execution fast and efficient. For complex tasks or full code reviews, I used their advanced models, and it was perfect since I never ran out of tokens. The final step was applying for the App Store. There were several hoops to jump through and things to figure out. After one initial rejection (I forgot to link my privacy policy!), the app was officially approved. TalonDeck is now slowly rolling out to the world. 🙂

TalonDeck: Interactive Media Tracker

watchlist,backlog,tracker,movie,tv,show,book,game,media,list

watchlist,backlog,tracker,movie,tv,show,book,game,media,list