Technology

The tools available to independent developers today would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. This page is not a corporate technology stack — it is an honest account of what we use, why we use it and what it has made possible.

The barrier that no longer exists

In 2011, having an idea for an app and being able to build it were two entirely different things. Turning a software idea into reality required either a large budget to hire developers or years of technical training. For most people, that gap between idea and execution was simply too wide to cross. The cost alone was enough to stop good ideas before they started.

Artificial intelligence has changed that entirely. Tools like Claude and ChatGPT can now write, explain and debug code in real time — acting as a development partner for someone who understands exactly what they want to build but does not have a traditional programming background. The barrier that once made independent software development cost-prohibitive has gone. That is not a small thing. That is a fundamental shift in who gets to build software.

How we build

We build using Swift — Apple’s modern programming language — inside Xcode, Apple’s development environment. Swift is fast, readable and designed specifically for building apps across Apple’s platforms. Xcode brings everything together: writing code, testing, debugging and preparing an app for release, all in one place.

Alongside Swift and Xcode, we use AI throughout the development process. Claude and ChatGPT help write and refine code, work through technical problems and suggest approaches we might not have considered. They do not replace the thinking — the ideas, the decisions about what to build and why, the judgement about what works for the user — but they make the execution of those ideas faster and more accessible than ever before.

What Xcode makes possible

One thing that genuinely surprised us when we started building was the scope of what Xcode covers. Write an app in Swift and you are not just building for iPhone. You are building for iPad and MacBook as well — the same codebase, adapted across Apple’s entire ecosystem. For a small independent team, that reach is extraordinary.

We are at an early but genuinely exciting point in what independent software development can achieve. The combination of AI-assisted coding, powerful modern development tools and a clear understanding of what users actually need has created possibilities that simply did not exist before. We think we are only at the beginning of what that means.