Here’s a fun thing I did the other night while watching Seinfeld — I made my first macOS app.

Well, technically I guess it’s an Electron app, so it could work on Windows and Linux. Maybe. But that’s neither here nor there.

I didn’t build this app for anyone else but myself. And I did 90% of it while watching TV.

The app is stupid simple. It’s a quick-capture tool for blog post ideas. Opens with a keyboard shortcut, takes a title and a few notes, saves it to a file. That’s it.

I used Cursor. Described what I wanted. It built it. I tested it. Tweaked a few things. Built it again. Installed it. Done.

Total time: maybe an hour. Most of that was waiting for npm installs and figuring out how to sign the app so macOS wouldn’t complain.

Five years ago, building a macOS app would’ve taken me weeks. I would’ve had to learn Swift. Set up Xcode. Watch tutorials. Read docs. Give up halfway through.

Now? I just describe what I want and it exists.

The weird part isn’t that AI can build apps. The weird part is how casual it is. There’s no ceremony. No learning curve. No setup. You just… make stuff.

I’ve been building websites for 20 years. I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I can hack together PHP if I have to. But I never learned Swift. Never learned native app development. Always felt like too much work for too little payoff.

AI doesn’t make me a better coder. It makes coding irrelevant.

I don’t need to know Swift. I need to know what I want to build. The AI handles the rest.

This is what I’ve been trying to explain to other designers. You don’t need to become an engineer. You just need to be able to describe what you want clearly enough for an AI to build it.

And then you iterate. Just like design.

I’m sure there are better ways to build macOS apps. More performant. More native. More correct. But this works. And working is better than perfect.

The best part? I can edit the app whenever I want. Add features. Fix bugs. Change the UI. All while watching Seinfeld.

Software on-the-fly.