This is such a romantic idea, but unfortunately Apple and Google are hostile to this model.

Of the two, iOS is /worst/ for running vibe coded apps.

You need to pay $99 a year to be an Apple developer if you want your app to live on your phone for more than a a week.

Distribution is a also pain in the ass even for personal use alone (you can't just toss around an IPA).

Finally, so many useful APIs are totally locked up. The fact that I cannot in 2026 extend Siri, for example, us infuriating.

Android is far more promising but Google recently shot themselves in the foot with their verified APK nonsense. Google's privacy posture is infamously nonexistent as well, and I have little interest in rooting a Pixel at my age.

Hopefully now that enough people can vibe code, these walls will crumble a bit.

I'm building a podcast app just for me, because the podcast app I typically use (PocketCasts) is really good but there's just a couple of features I'd like and they don't bring out a lot of new features since it's not a monthly SaaS.

LLMs are a good help here because side projects typically slow down for me when I run into bugs / troubleshooting. So while I genuinely believe struggle is necessary for learning, being able to get over that hump to build something I need makes a big difference.

I'm not vibe coding the app though, since I actually want to know what it does. But I can see it being helpful for people who just need something and don't care about how it works.

Can confirm. I spent maybe 5-6 hours rebuilding an app I did in WinForms (originally Java… I forget the framework, Swing or something?) as a web app for a small business. Nothing fancy, basic CRM with existing database ported to SQLite and hosted on a cheapo VPS. Pure Codex CLI play none of that Cursor Orca rubbish. They’re very happy with it. Responsive, dark mode, works even without JavaScript. Nice unit test suite, simple server-side rendered. The traditional way. It’s the cats ass. Additional 2 hours for a couple of new requested features. Whatever! Easy peasy.

At work the team is leaning be heavily into internal tooling. Doesn’t need heavy support. Doesn’t need a fancy designer. Duct tape glue and liquid wrench are more than enough. It’s quick enough that it’s throw away and so if need be we can always write a v2 without losing months or years of work. Just enough to be useful, and then back to actual work.

This mitigates problems with LLMs' low quality code. For a single user, the bar is much lower. The app doesn't have to have all the features that work for everyone's edge cases, implemented in a way that other devs can maintain. It only needs to be good enough for one user, and can be discarded and recreated when it gets too messy.

Things I've built in the last month or so:

* A personal music player for Apple Music with an embedded agent loop, so I can say things like "I'm going to work in the wood shop, play woodworking-appropriate music and keep the playlist full and non-repeating indefinitely".

* A calorie/protein tracker that takes 1-liner summaries of meals, resolves them to macros with GPT5 calls, and tracks them in SQLite.

* A macOS menubar combined Apple TV and Roku TV remote control.

* A calculator front-end to SageMath that renders Latex math notation and has point/click shortcut affordances for linear algebra and MVC.

* A "self driving wiki" macOS desktop llmwiki that imports and digests PDFs.

* A menubar tracker for the little temperature sensors I have scattered all throughout the house so I can click my menubar and instantly see the temps in the different rooms of the house.

* A layout tool for designing picture frames to get cut lists and rabbet depths and stuff.

That's just the desktop stuff. These applications are generally better than what I'd get from the App Store. The calorie tracker is one of the better-designed apps on my dock.

I feel like I'm not doing this enough yet, it hasn't fully sunk in, and I'm going to be building a lot more stuff when it does sink in. I haven't yet gotten to the point of writing my own note-taking application (still Bear.app for that), but how long can that last?

the post on BoopSnoop was very impactful for me too! As a software engineer, it's drilled into your brain that you have to think about high scalability and user facing products. I used to have a lot of ideas, but the first instinct was always to build a paid user facing product. None ever got built. But after reading that post a few years ago, my mindset was completely flipped. Since then I've built umpteen tools, services, macOS menubar apps, tail scale services .. just for myself. And I love it!

Yup! Can confirm, I wanted to blog, but I wanted it to work in a certain way to let me focusing on writing that no single system had, or cost too much.

Now I'm actually doing it.

I've had an idea for how I want to be social with friends and family (a website, but setup within my vision). Now it's done

Could I have done all of these things on my own or just paid for existing services? Yes

But now AI can do it for me while I watch TV. I just show up to test.

"building personal software won't require a developer's stack for much longer."

I will if you are building anything good. What even is this statement?

This was really interesting, but I admit I bumped on this throwaway detail:

> Our sleep consultant's plan arrived as a PDF full of conditional logic: wake windows, nap caps, what to do when a nap fails

Every so often, you get a glimpse into a whole world you never knew existed.

I thought the opinion of this article was widely known by now, as every thread about AI here talks about personalized software built with vibe coding.

Side note, why not just deploy onto a VPS and save the money from using hosted services, as well as protecting yourself from when they inevitably go down? The CBA clearly shows that while active development is going on its trivial to have hosted service subscriptions because the AI sub is way more, but what if that sub disappears? You're left paying (relatively) exorbitant amounts compared to $1-10 per month per VPS for life, or less if you have the privilege and wherewithal to self host. It's also dead easy with AI. Maybe this just reinforces how much a personal runtime solution is needed, as stated in YC's recent RFS.

Many people build calorie / macro tracker like OP but they don't build maintenance calorie tracker.

Your app tracks calorie intake, doesn't keep track of total calorie burn of the day (maintenance calorie tracking)

And no, calorie burn from watch is not good enough!

>A 2020 systematic review by Fuller et al. found that consumer wearables often perform poorly at estimating energy expenditure, even when they measure steps and heart rate reasonably well. Across brands like Apple, Garmin, Polar, and Withings, calorie burn estimates frequently showed substantial error, often in the 15–40% range and sometimes exceeding 50%. Wearables can still be useful for tracking trends, but not for precise calorie calculations.

Here's completely free one i built, https://macrocodex.app/ 16,000+ users already.

My first thoughts on reading the article and even now after is: sleep consultant?

“ The app took him a week to build, half of it lost to code-signing purgatory”

Maybe Google is eliminating sideloading to force people to not make their own apk’s now that it’s easy to do so.

Agree with the general spirit of the piece, but the examples that he gave create more problem than solving problems.

> A fitness app that sizes my smoothie to that morning's run

I don't feel I need more than the phone's calculator app for this particular problem.

Other examples could be solved by the Notes app, I feel.

I deliberately avoid creating new "apps", and make do with existing apps and solutions and create workflows rather than apps.

I write scripts, add features to scripts and understand all lines of them.

There are very few exceptions to this, like, I vibe coded a visual PDF cropper app that also handles scaling, merging in a GUI built with PyQt and GTK.

Having entire apps create maintenance burden and headaches.

Funny he said "Good APIs matter more than ever". My software for one these past few weeks has been my mega archive project, making an APIs & UIs out of 50+ providers whether they like it or not. I'm calling it clump chart. I even got into my turbotax TaxML files.

Genuine question: how will this "software for one" outlive its creator? I realize that if it were truly intended for just one user, it wouldn't matter, but in this specific case, the software is used by family members, so...

Clay Shirkey has a great article from 2004 about this called Situated Software.

https://devonzuegel.com/situated-software

Same thoughts here.

About four years ago I started building an RSS reader that was supposed to use an algorithm. The problem is, I didn't code in years and wasn't familiar with the modern web stack. I had to drop it, although was still able to sell the domain I got for $500 (nice).

And then, with Codex and Claude, I finally built it this year and enjoy it every day, along with 30 other strangers, since I made it public. It's a great feeling.

I now finally have an app that I use to save both links and articles to read, sort of in-between of Readwise Reader and Raindrop (and it does sync with Readwise).

I write my blog posts in a little browser-based note-taking app with sharing. It's minimal and looks great but has all I need.

I built a few Chrome extensions that I really wanted but couldn't find (well, couldn't find beautiful options).

I don't think everyone will do this. And getting the audience is a major pain, always has been, but now most of your early adopters just go and build their own things just like you. I'll still take it.

> sleep consultant

I'm not sure I believe this is a real job. Do we really need to pay consultants to tell us that babies need naps?

honestly happy for him, but i wish he would have written the article before posting it

Building software steadily becomes accessible to non-developers. A freelance client I had now does most things alone with chatgpt. As a developer I have less and less the urge to build software. Instead I lately started doing more hardware stuff - flashing devices, setting up RPis and antennas, learning to solder. I hope I can keep my software dev job until retirement, but I‘m a bit pessimistic on that matter.

Apps for one, but when I think there is even a mild potential others may use it, I share.

* Doom launcher and Megawad Steam-like library for macOS: https://github.com/stared/rusted-doom-launcher

* TRMNL X e-ink screen vibe coding usage screen: https://github.com/stared/trmnl-x-claude-codex

* And weather in Warsaw: https://github.com/stared/trmnl-x-weather-warsaw (here's location is hardcoded, so the expected use is fork and vive code to match both your location and visual preferences)

* Image upscaling script for a thermal camera, https://github.com/stared/thermal-upscale

And many, many others I did not share, mostly because they were too peculiar, really unlikely to be useful for anyone else than myself.

Been doing this sort of stuff for 30 years. Mostly in Excel.

Hasn’t cost me anything.

Writing code with real use is very different from writing code for the sake of writing (looks cool, sounds cool).

Writing code with one user is the base case of a “why am I writing this” recursion - because I use it.

Every action leads to next insight. For me, a browser extension that provides a table of content to chat interfaces because I always need to scroll up and down to read preview queries. Writing browser extension leads me to writing a RSS reader navigating with only keyboard. Writing RSS reader leads me to writing a virtual book shelf that visualize Goodreads record on a virtual 3D bookshelf. Writing virtual book shelf lead me to making a virtual climbing gym where I scan my local climbing gym into 3D model where I can map climbing videos on it. And it is just one chain

The article is also obviously written by Claude too. I’m starting to hate the internet.

I think that also extends to "software for few". It lowered the bar for building calculators and widgets for my users. Instead of lengthy explanations, I can just build little calculators and decision trees for my small user base.

Maggie Appleton said that it would enable "barefoot doctors" to bring helpful software to small communities. I have seen a lot of those underserved groups in my dev career.

I am not too happy about AI killing my business and inserting slop into every aspect of my life, but I am very hopeful about that aspect.

---

I also made some apps for one in the pre-AI days, and now I can quickly add features I've been procrastinating for ages. I can finally process data that I've been collecting but had no time to write code about.

I think it's sad that an article that to me was about sacrificing your own time to bring your family together has turned into sacrificing nothing to hyper optimise your life.

I've got a few of these.

There's one in particular that I use quite often and have for about a year, vibed for myself: it's a chat interface that walks you through processing an emotional or difficult moment, following a process / workflow. Supports Martin Seligman's ABCDE and Byron Katie's "The Work". Two techniques that I found most useful to improve my thinking and responses to difficult situations. You converse with it, and it leads you through the stages of the selected flow. More than a system prompt - it tracks and progresses through the workflow at the right times, and you download a consistent pdf of key details from the "session" at the end for your records.

The thing is, I can't sell it. I don't even think I can open source it. It's mental health (minefield of legal and ethical issues), and would probably breach copyright, trademark etc law.

Yet it's very useful to me. I guess it's the equivalent of making a system to do these things at home, like prompt cards or key points taken from the books, with a well formatted note taking structure. Except it's way easier because you just chat like you're talking to someone.

I would never have spent time building this. But now it's so cheap and easy to do.

Since the advent of these coding assistants, I gathered a list of software tool ideas I usually discarded due to lack of time. No more! Main one on that list: grocery assistant, with a barcode scanner for empty packaging to order new stuff, inventory management, coupling to recipes and most importantly: automatic ordering for delivery.

There's existing stuff for this but making a personal extension to this should be very well possible too.

It is never really for "One". If it is open source and published, It may be use by others... not to mention coding AI ML (Machine Learing), then for many.

I have written so much software for one... I cannot recall everything. I use some of it daily:

- I have my custom elf(glibc)/linux distro

- I use my own ffmpeg based x11 media player (will have an update for wayland).

- Since the "geniuses" at gogol blocked all accounts not using whatwg cartel web engines and blocked all self-hosted SMTP servers (I do not pay the DNS mob, then IP literals, which is stronger than SPF) to exchange with gmail.com users (now prisoners), I have my very own simple noscript/basic HTML servers (messaging, file transfer, openstreetmap browsing, etc). Unfortunately, most are C written from linux instead of assembly (at least, I removed most of the time the libc dependency with direct syscall programming). IPv6 is making everything internet software muuuuuuch easier to implement: I am lurking at an IPv6 only, super idiotic and real time voice/video/text/file transfer protocol, probably based on SIP (the main issue are randomly generated IPv6 addresses from mobile internet, which may require a mini-server for IPv6 address exchange, BAAAAAAAD!).

- Ofc, I still have my own minimal SMTP server (and a SMTP client to send emails), because there are still honnest people on internet. mutt forever.

- I am trying to build a RCS for linux, aka a Reduced Command Set with near direct hardwiring to linux syscalls. I lose comfort, but knowing that I removed giga tons of bloat feels so much satisfying it is worth it by light years. I will have to code my own command shell one day.

I still have C code since I currently need portability on IP-LOCKED ISAs (arm and x86-64). But I wish for RISC-V to be a success, namely as a modern, very often hitting the 'sweet spot' in technical design compromises, NON-IP-LOCKED ISA. I am writting much software in RISC-V assembly now... which I run on x86-64 with a small interpreter (written in x86-64 assembly)... trying to fix the bloat and kludge from corpo-like open source software (including the SDK).

Right now, I am writting my own wayland compositor using that framework. I was not expecting window management to be a bazillion of little things to do everywhere. And even if a wayland compositor is several orders of magnitude smaller and leaner than a x11 server, it ain't that a small project (ofc, I implemented myself the wayland wire protocol, no external libs here).

In my 'trying to fix the bloat and kludge' from corpo-like open source, I force myself to use my own exe/dynamic lib format for modern hardware (so lean, a simple RFC will be enough, and no more loader bloat/kludge). But I am scared at the abominations which are all the requirements of classic computer languages to run: I would like a mesa vulkan driver, but there is still c++ (super BAD) in there which makes porting to an alternative dynamic lib format a living hell, non trivial C won't be that easy neither (for instance the abomination of the ISO __thread keyword, amazing bright minds there). Taking perspective from that, I wonder why anybody sane would add on top of that a big runtime requirement??

And what people doing that have to keep in mind: IRL can put a violent stop to all of this.

That's literally 100% of my vibecoding...writing software I need

There’s software for one and then there’s “Apple Watch type shit” which is tech that is highly personal and seems useful on paper but is absurdly extraneous - like calorie tracking, step counting, and being able to check things that are already easy to check.

Not for me.

I like software for people, and in terms of affordances and utility mass buy-in and standardization is part of the point.

I can invent a new kind of key. I could…

In my line of work, we convert words to numbers, and we have a codex that defines meanings for the numbers; that way, we can write publicly but (in making sure we choose words that, when converted to numbers, convert to numbers that have the second meaning we want) our public writing will only be understood on this second level with this second meaning only by those who use this system and codex. It's something like a form of real/human language cryptography: write for the world to see but only those who know the key will see what we're also saying to them. This was traditionally very hard to do for anyone who didn't grow up in a family that did this naturally from when they were kids. And I vibe-coded tools to make it easy. It's been amazingly helpful and worth its weight in gold :)

  Thariq wrote "personal software was a bit early in 2020 but in 2026, it really can be as personal as a home cooked meal, or a handwritten letter."

Excuse me??? Vibe-coding personal software is not a homecooked meal or a handwritten letter! It is [at best!] more akin to tastefully combining microwaved ramen with microwaved veggies and toaster oven chicken, or using ChatGPT to write a letter then editing it afterwards. It's fine, maybe even very good. But it's not "homecooked."

Ugh. The most depressing thing about the AI boom is watching tech people devalue human experience.

The examples in this thread are all personal-life software (music, calories, thermostats). What I keep wondering about is the other end: the boring business admin that self-employed people carry — invoicing, chasing late payers, expense categorisation, tax set-asides, quoting. That's "software for one" too, except the stakes are money and most people seem to limp along with a spreadsheet plus a shoebox of receipts.

If you freelance (design, illustration, photography, writing, or solo dev): which part of that would you most like to never think about again, and what did you try that didn't stick? Genuinely curious rather than pitching anything — I don't have a product, I'm trying to figure out whether the real pain is the bookkeeping itself or the decision-making around it (pricing, when to chase, what to set aside).

I joked a while back that it was faster to vibe-code a white noise generator than to download a white-noise app.

I've since tested that theory on the Google Play Store (iOS has one built in), and it was depressingly true. The slow part was trying to find an app that didn't waste your time with ads.

    const audioCtx = new AudioContext();
    const sr = audioCtx.sampleRate;
    const buffer = audioCtx.createBuffer(2, 2 * sr, sr);

    for (let channel = 0; channel < buffer.numberOfChannels; channel += 1) {
      const data = buffer.getChannelData(channel);
      for (let frame = 0; frame < buffer.length; frame += 1) {
        data[frame] = 2 * Math.random() - 1
      }
    }

    const source = audioCtx.createBufferSource();
    source.buffer = buffer;
    source.loop = true;
    source.connect(audioCtx.destination);

    const button = document.createElement("button");
    button.append("Play");
    button.addEventListener("click", () => {
      source.start();
    });

    document.body.append(button);

It's somewhat unfortunate that programming is still pretty hard to start with.

Early home computers would boot up with BASIC. Granted, the user experience was horrible, but at least you could start programming right away.

What is stopping us from creating an operating system that has programming as a first class citizen?

There is JavaScript in the browser, but that still feels as an afterthought, and incurs all kinds of security problems.

Why must we wait for AI to work around this? Is it really true that only very few people are interested in programming? Why not teach it in primary school, along with reading and writing?

  in context/mail:
    when today/evening:
      if content excites me:
        send alert

This is nice, but Apple essentially blocks sideloading (outside test flight environment) and Google is moving there as well. While it has never been easier to produce individualized software, it was never more difficult on the official platforms, unless one wants to create their own OS (at some point that might be possible as well).

It still sounds quite complicated because you’re creating all this stuff but there has to be some overhead of keeping it all running, repos, hosting, builds etc. I feel like there needs to be a mash up of agents-cloud-MSAccess to actually make this into an accessible way of building for the average person. People build spreadsheets to provide them themselves with “apps” all the time, so it needs to be at that level of ease.

Oh my this is so true:

* I waited for Duolingo to support Mongolian for years, and in one evening, created my own DuoMongo https://github.com/matusfaro/DuoMongo

* I wanted an LLM to mock up a server to speak arbitrary network protocols across any layer (e.g. http/tcp/bgp/snmp/arp) for protocol development/testing/cybersecurity and I got it: https://smotanacom.github.io/netget/

* I wanted a way to inspect/route LLM calls coming from my laptop, something like OpenRouter, but locally running, so I built LocalRouter: https://localrouter.ai/

No one is using these, but I love them!

Also it allows me to prototype so quickly, currently had an idea on a Language Server Protocol (LSP) that compiles English language into a set of software requirements (Intermediary Results) and to generate code and tests against those reqs.

Before I officially got into development as a career I had a manual labor job at a local business. They were debugging issues in their operations and brought in a consultant that wrote out workflows using FoxPro [1] a Database Management System (DBMS) that was similar to MS Access. These DBMS systems allowed non-technical people (like the consultant) to create quick and dirty forms-based apps.

I recall at the time (late 90s) these were popular dev platforms for regular folks. People would create fitness apps, time trackers, meal planners, etc. using WISYWIG interfaces and visual schema editors.

Of course, the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s were massive consolidation events with winner-takes-all SaaS eating the world.

My intuition here is that software for one is a temporary thing. Longevity has a quality of it's own, and eventually people just don't want to debug their own stuff. Sooner or later $5/month (or freemium) takes over.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoxPro

I've been doing the same, building apps for myself, one per day, for stuff I only care, crypto stocks, baseball betting, medical ai assistant, gym trainer, pickleball rallies, raffles, coding assistants, some as full fledged apps, but lately as single page apps in plain html, css and js so I can use them anywhere, like a portable sudoku.html file you can drop anywhere and start playing

I love this and agree with it so strongly. But I'm also shaken to my core that there's a $30/mo Neon bill for personal software. Even if it's being used for "slightly larger projects" as well that's a ton of overkill for what seems like mostly read only data.

I'm the sort of person who leans on Postgres instead of sqlite, but I'll put aside the sqlite argument for now because the fruit is so low hanging here. These use cases could probably work just fine with something far less robust. A redundant cluster of two db.t4g.micro RDS instances is ~$20/mo. But you probably don't even need that. Even just a container with a persistent volume seems like it would do the trick. With a little bit of caching, all of this could probably fit in the AWS DSQL free tier. And it brings me no joy to say that using AWS managed offerings is the operationally cheaper option.

I love Neon and think it's an incredible service, but this is some Heroku-ass pricing.

Go away from AI marketing article

Too many marketing persons.

Let them talk to themselves

Two of my most commonly used apps are my personal nutrition and workout tracking apps. Vibe coded and hosted on a Raspberry Pi. They're exactly customised to my usage pattern so infinitely better than anything I could buy, and they cost me a few hours and a basic Claude subscription.

I postulate that most software of the future will have userbase of one.

single author, single user software is the one place where there is no rev limiter on ai. i spend the vast majority of my time on the computer steeped in my personal software now. some i publish for others to use, or so friends can point their agent at to adapt/rebuild:

https://stepwise.run/ Portable workflow orchestration for agents and humans

https://github.com/zackham/aloop Embeddable Python agent loop for integrating LLM agents into your projects. Multi-provider (OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq), built-in tools, hooks, ACP server, and persistent sessions.

https://github.com/zackham/plat An embeddable infinite canvas to build on. Bring your own node types; drag, zoom, edges, auto-layout, and undo come free. Host-agnostic storage, runtime API built for agents.

https://github.com/zackham/seance Shared live workspace for humans and agents — multi-pane terminals, notes, and a control plane for co-working in the open.

deep dive docs for my personal agent system i've been developing since dec, and using constantly: https://vita-docs.ham.xyz/overview/

browser replacement for stuff i control: https://vita-reports.ham.xyz/s/2119130b0b6b

a snapshot in time of the education system i run for my kids: https://vita-reports.ham.xyz/s/e7036ae931a7

if you want to talk about any of this stuff, or have a related project you think i'd appreciate, hit me up zackham@gmail.com or @zackham on telegram. abundance is here for personal software. take advantage of it and have fun!

Personal software has been my passion project for the past few months.

Part of my journey has been building out a platform for my apps to live on. Most web frameworks don’t have enough opinionated machinery built into them. You need user authentication, permissioning, MCP endpoints, database access, easy deployment. All of your apps could use this infrastructure and it’s what lets you focus on the actual fun stuff.

I’ve been working on [Homestead](myhomestead.dev) as my OSS solution to all of that.

This is the only app I've built for myself: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-mirror-timer/id6760243207

It's basically an adaptive timer for remaining oneself to be mindful and aware throughout the day, which is a prerequisite for my main practice. When it rings, it asks you if you were mindful since the last timer and adapts the next interval based on your answer.

I've wanted to do this for a while, but a physical device is beyond my skills and I never wanted to bother to learn mobile development. So having the computer take care of all the nonsense was ideal. Very different experience using LLMs when you don't know the technology, but all the nonsense behind creating and publishing mobile apps did not inspire me to learn it.

I built myself a package tracking web app. Only cost is LLM sub (Cursor at like $20/m). OpenAI API is free (sharing data). Rest is tailwind+shadcn+Convex - Convex’s free tier is plenty, and it gives me a db and hosting as well now.

With the same mindset i've build screenshot tool to replace shottr and paid license to cleanshot x, added missing features that I wanted to have for years (doing bunch of screenshots and videos daily)

and i love this tool

I've built a lot of software like this over the past year. It's always kind of there but not quite and over time feels dirty. I don't think I'm still using any of it.