Why your favorite creator is building an app

Creator life involves using a lot of software. Bad software. Stephen Robles is one of the creators who decided to build something better, for himself and for his community. He tells David how he thinks about his responsibility as a developer, how he makes apps, and how AI is changing the way he builds things for his audience. Further reading: Apple teases MacBook Pro event next week You Can See Everything has the biggest opening weekend for a doc in 20 years TikTok says ban of Musk documentary account was ‘an error’ Video game ownership bill introduced in Congress Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of making apps for your phone on your phone. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show, what it's like to be a vibe coding app developer and also a content creator. But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  I'm Josh Kahas and this is 90 Seconds on The Verge from Monday, October 19th, 2026. Apple has sent invites to a second product launch this month. According to Bloomberg, the big announcement is expected to be a new lighter MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen and an iPhone-like dynamic island. The event is next week, October 28th, at 1:00 PM Eastern. And as always, we'll be covering it here, live at The Verge. Meanwhile, you can see everything had the biggest opening weekend for a documentary in 20 years. Nathan Fielder's three-hour doc about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes raked in $15 million in its opening weekend, landing in second place at the box office behind Street Fighter. But that's not the only doc making headlines right now. Just ahead of the wide release of the new Elon Musk documentary this past weekend, TikTok banned the film's social media account

• 1:03Speaker 01

  from its platform. While TikTok has no affiliation with Elon, part-owner Larry Ellison appears in the film via text message, offering to help Musk fund his Twitter purchase. A TikTok spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the ad account for the Musk doc has "been restored after an error." Our TikTok feeds may be blessed by Elon Musk once again. And finally, in a world full of digital licenses and no guarantee of ownership, there is some hope. New York Congressman Richie Torres introduced the Power to the Players Act last week. If passed, this bill would direct the FTC to establish regulations that guarantee consumers' ownership of a game when they pay for it, rather than a licensing agreement. Hopefully, this bill has better luck than that store, once PlayStation phases out physical

• 1:44Speaker 01

  games in 2028. You can read more at theverge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge from Monday, October 19th, 2026.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Support for the show comes from AWS AI. AWS AI is helping the world's leading organizations transform their industries in production at scale right now. From bringing fans inside every swing at the PGA Tour, to helping small businesses grow online with GoDaddy, to taking vehicles from concept to customer with Audi, AWS AI is how businesses innovate, lead, and revolutionize. AWS AI is how.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Over the last several months, there's been this really interesting trend, at least in a particular corner of the technology world, which is that a bunch of people on YouTube and elsewhere, who have spent a long time reviewing apps, recommending apps, talking about apps, have started making apps. People who, especially in the productivity space, have spent years being mad that no to-do list app did exactly what they wanted, have turned to things like Codex and Claude Code to actually make their own to-do list apps, trying to put their own values and ideas into software into the world. I think this is really interesting and really cool. I don't know if it's leading to better software or just more software, but I think it's a really interesting change in how a bunch

• 3:06Speaker 00

  of creators and thinkers are actually able to put their ideas into the world. So I wanted to get one of them, Stephen Robles, who has been on the show before. He's also the co-host of podcasts like Mac Power, Users, and Primary Technology. He is also, I believe, the world's foremost expert on Apple shortcuts, to come on the show and talk about his experience as a vibe coder. He's built a bunch of different apps at all different scale, and I want to know what it's like to become an app developer and make things that are used by other people, that other people are actually starting to pay for, and how that changes your relationship with your community. Let's get into it. Stephen Robles, welcome back to The Vergecast.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Hey, David. Thanks for having me. Congrats on baby number seven.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Thank you very much. They all just run around in the background. That's just part of the family now. I just want you to know that I still get emails from people who tell me how right you were and how wrong I was when we fought about shortcuts. The world does not appear to be on my side, even though history and facts are on my side.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  You know, I prepared specifically by wearing a shortcut shirt on the show and even

• 4:08Speaker 00

  It's a very good shirt.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  made a shortcuts pillow, just to troll you.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  That pillow is amazing.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  That's pretty nice.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  That's the best the shortcuts logo has ever looked in its entire history. That's very good. But I have not brought you here to talk about shortcuts. I have brought you here because you are, I think, at the tip of a trend I find really interesting, which is a lot of creators, a lot of people, but especially a lot of creators, people who have been making content and thinking about tech stuff for a very long time, are now becoming app developers in a very, very real way. And I want to start at kind of the beginning of your journey here. You've been a shortcuts guy forever. You're sort of deeply immersed in how a lot of these platforms work and how a lot of these apps work. You've been covering apps in meaningful ways for forever. When did the turn happen to you became a person who made and shipped your own apps?

• 4:59Speaker 03

  I always wanted to, and years ago, I knew enough Xcode to ship one app that was like all web views and got it in the App Store. Like, it actually worked. And then just did not get into actually learning the code after a long time. But then, once ChatGPT was coming out and coding was better, I was like, let me just see, is this even possible? Like, can I get an app in the App Store? And I made something very silly. It's still in the App Store, called Coffee Finder. And I spent the Saturday afternoon

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Is it what it sounds like?

• 5:29Speaker 03

  It is exactly what it sounds like. You open the app, you give it access to your location, and it just shows you coffee shops using the built-in Apple Maps plugin or whatever.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Pretty good.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  You know, some people like it. But I just wanted to know, like, is this possible to vibe code an app and get it through App Store review and get it out there just for fun? And so I did that. And I was like, that's cool. Never going to do it again, but it's out there. And I left it out there. But as a creator, and a lot of creators do this, you know, we talk about apps all the time. I do lots of videos with the top 30 apps for this. And sometimes you just have an idea that's like, I wish I could try to make this into something, like manifest this into a real thing. Or there's an app that I just want to tweak a little bit, and like reminders, which is what I was using before, I just want to see, can I actually now make something with the tools available? And turns out, you can.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  So what's your AI coding setup? Like, when you sit down to make something, how does it all go?

• 6:22Speaker 03

  So I used ChatGPT before, but for some reason, me and Claude just get along better. Not to say well.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  I feel the same way. I could not describe why I like Claude Code better than Codex at this point, but I do.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  It's for both. Well, I can describe because I started using Claude more and more. And when Fable came out, I realized it is like one-shotting a lot of my prompts into just real things, and they work. And so I've stuck with Fable 5.1 for everything. And now I've given it API key to my App Store Connect. I've given it access to my CloudFlare account. So all I do now is just go into Claude Code and type something, and everything else just happens. I never have to leave that app. And I did try, back when it was 5.6, I downloaded Codex, I put it on 5.6 Ultra, which was apparently a bad idea because then it disperses multiple agents. But I had it work on an iCloud sync issue for four

• 7:15Speaker 03

  days. And I had my iPhone and my iPad connected to Xcode with full access. I saw weird code things running on my iPhone screen. I didn't know what was happening. But I found that I did not prefer the UI and design decisions that ChatGPT and Codex made. And I would have to like tell it more, like, bro, put more padding around this radio button or whatever. And Claude just gives me better UI. And now because I have so much, so many conversations there, I've made so much with Claude, I can have a very small prompt, and it kind of already has a bunch of context for what I want.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  That makes a lot of sense. The real, like, working relationship with these tools is a real thing. It feels strange to say it that way, but it is a real thing. I wanted to talk to you in particular because you've made two different kinds of apps. And the first, I think, is the most sort of straightforwardly understandable vibe coding tool, which is like, I have a single thing that I need to be able to do. I'm going to build the tool to be able to do it. You've built a bunch of these for things like pulling transcripts out of a video, or for quickly pulling the audio out of a video that I downloaded. Like, I can sort of see you going through your day-to-day workflow and being like, this is a thing I don't have. Can I just make one of these? Are these things you're building

• 8:28Speaker 00

  in like, an afternoon? And just sort of two prompts, ship the thing, move on into your life, you solved your problem?

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, a couple of them were like two hours from first prompt to shipped on the website. You know, I wanted an app called Leveler, because the video, I do a bunch of video podcasts, and when I download that video file from Riverside, I had to tweak the audio a bunch just to get it to sound leveled. And I didn't want to have to edit the audio and then re-export it from Final Cut. So I just wanted to make an app that leveled the audio between me and my coast, and it sounded good. And so I gave Claude a raw file from Riverside. I gave it an audio file that I edited how I like, and I said, make it sound like that. And it built an audio engine in a, like, what, 20 to 30 minutes? I tried it. It worked. I said, you know what? Put this on the website.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Let's just ship it. And so now anybody can download that for free.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  So why ship it either to the App Store or just to the website, rather than just keep it for yourself?

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Well, the leveler one, I figured if I have this issue, other people have this issue. And turns out, a lot of people, especially beginning or mid podcasters, they were like, yeah, I struggle with audio levels. And so this just lets me drop something in and get it out. And for another, like I made Captioner, and I was using the edits app from Meta for adding animated captions to my reels. But I had to do it one at a time. I had to airdrop stuff to my phone to do it. And I was like, man, if I could just make an app that's free, I could just do this in batches. And so I made Captioner where I can give it 10 reels, because I make them in batches. And then it adds the same captions on all of them. It exports the files in the source folder and I'm done. And I'm like, I think other people would benefit from that, too. And so it's free and open source and anybody can download it.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  How does the release process for those go? Like, are you, when you make one of these, are you making them thinking, I'm going to ship this to the world? I need to make the UI understandable. I need to have X, Y, and Z feature that other people might want that I've seen on Reddit. Or are you like, I've done this one thing. If it works for you, terrific. If not, terrific. Here it is.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  Basically, the latter, like with Captioner, I said, hey, I wanted to do this. I said, hey, you know the edits app, Claude? Like, kind of like that, but different. And, you know, kind of gave it a one paragraph prompt and it basically did it one shot. And I said, you know, just upload this as a DMG file to my CloudFlare website and it just ships it all, packages it. And that one, I thought, well, people might want this as an iPhone app. And I kind of gave it that prompt at the beginning. I said, I'm going to ship this on the website as a Mac app, .dmg. But also, keep in mind, I might ask for an iPhone app. Claude was like, sure, bro. And then I did. And so now that one's in the App Store, because I just told it, hey, try to make an iPhone version. Let's see if it works.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  It did after a couple prompts and now that one's live in the App Store, too.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  What responsibility do you feel for those apps? For other people who download them and have experiences with them? We're going to get to your other app, which I think you have a really different set of responsibilities about and I want to talk about them. But for something like this, which you're fairly clear about, I made this very quickly. It's very simple. It is designed to do this one thing. It seems to, do you, do you feel responsible for it and for other people's experience of it?

• 11:40Speaker 03

  Because these are free and open source, I don't feel particularly responsible, but I like being responsible. And so people will message me, like James Kridland of Podnews was like, I love this Captioner app. I would love for it to do blank lines and let me edit the timing. So I will, as I see that reply on social media, take a screenshot. I have a shortcut automation that takes that screenshot, puts it on my desktop and renames it. And then when I'm back on my Mac, I will take all the screenshots that I've gathered from people just asking for stuff. Give all those screenshots to Claude and be like, hey, can you add and fix this stuff? And that's it. It just does it all, which is crazy and it works.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  So your bug report system is you take a bunch of screenshots?

• 12:23Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  And you say, Claude, here's all the things everybody's mad at. And then it, it goes out and fixes them.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Literally that. And I have one guy.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  That's awesome.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  He sends me an email every week for Can Do, which we'll get to, with like a long list of bugs and requests that he has found, which is very helpful. And I command A, select all, command paste in Claude. I'd be like, Claude, analyze this. Let me know what's actually fixable. It gives me a report that's very verbose that I don't read at all. And I say, yeah, go ahead, do that. And then it ships those updates.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  One of my favorite things is dealing with Claude code. And it's like, it has a very specific technical question. And I'm just, I'm always like, buddy, if I knew the answer to this, we would not be here. Like, what, what are we doing, Claude code? Just go.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  A lot of times I say, like, give it to me in like two sentences. Or like, give me three options. And even then, I don't read all that.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Treat me like I'm the idiot. We both know that I am, Claude code. Like, come on.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's getting, it's getting better at interacting with me, I think, because I give these instructions periodically. And now, like, I have a bunch of conversations in my Claude code sidebar, but it has all the context. So sometimes I'll be in my Captioner conversation and I'll be like, oh, someone asked for Swedish translations. Can you put that here and in the transcriber app? And Claude's like, sure, buddy. I'll do that. And then it just does it. And I don't even have to like switch conversations. It just has all that context.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's really interesting. And I think part of the reason I like these apps is because they feel like the perfect sort of personal software outcome of vibe coding, where you've just described a bunch of things that some people have. But like, there's no company in building any of the apps you just described, right? People are not going to pay for it. There aren't even enough people who need it to actually have this thing work. But it doesn't matter. You can build it in a couple of hours. People who want it can access it. They can build it for themselves. They can fork it and build it into something different. Like, if you, if you look at a world in which everybody has access to coding tools, it's tools like this that come out of it that make me the most excited.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  I think it gets messy and like, should these things be approved by the App Store? And live next to things that are run very differently and built very differently and managed very differently? All that gets very messy, but this feels like an AI victory to me in a lot of ways.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  I think so. And I figure if it solves even a small problem for me, there's some small group, even if it's just single digits, but it's usually not, that have the same kind of problem. And like, when I released the leveler, a bunch of people said, man, Levelator was a great app. And some users have tried to perpetuate it, you know, the people who made it kind of left it aside. And people were like, this is a great replacement. And that was a free app. Mine is a free app. And so I think it's kind of a win-win.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I agree. Have you run into anything that these tools just straight up can't do? Has, has Claude code failed you in one of these projects?

• 15:06Speaker 03

  I mean, I had a dark night of the soul when I was trying to figure out iCloud sync and a couple of other things. And I had some very helpful listeners that would send me like markdown files. They were like, listen, you need to give it these instructions. Like Siri AI, I wanted to build that functionality into Can Do. And I just could not get, like, it would gaslight me and it would say, yep, Siri AI, it's built in, you're good to go. And I'd be like, I just tried it on my phone and it didn't happen. And Claude was like, no, no, it's there. Don't worry about it. And then someone would send me this instruction file and I'll give it to Claude and Claude was like, oh, you, that's what it is. Like Claude, you, you know, and I shake my fist, but, you know, so sometimes it can be dumb still, especially with the more complex syncing,

• 15:47Speaker 03

  these kind of integrations and happen tense. But with some instructions, it eventually gets it.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Okay. All right. So let's talk about Can Do, which I think, at least as far as I can tell, always was intended to be something different. This is not a simple one-off tool. Like you, you decided to become a person who makes a productivity app, which as you and I both know, that way lies madness, right? Like for, for everyone who has ever done this, you are signing yourself up for a certain kind of pain. Tell me a little bit about where Can Do came from in the first place.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  So I was using reminders for my video management. And I've discovered the Kanban board view in reminders and I loved it for moving little cards from in progress to editing to complete. And I liked how fast reminders was and it was native. I have used Notion before, Trello. They all do similar things, but none of them felt great in using it. And reminders was very limited because it didn't have like rich markdown notes for a reminder. You couldn't attach PDFs to a reminder easily or multiple. So I was like, maybe I can make something. And I just want, you know, one board, one Kanban view, where I can do my video projects and I can have a note and I can attach stuff.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  So let me see if this is possible. And I started down the road again, just trying to make something for me. And eventually I was like, well, maybe others would find this useful. And in my shortcuts community, I gave a test flight beta out, figured how to do that. Well, Claude told me, you know, what to do. And people were like, you know what? This is kind of useful. And so I thought, maybe this is a thing and I should keep pursuing it.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  What, do you remember the very beginning of the conversation with Claude code? Like, did you sit there and sort of sketch out a giant document of the whole thing you wanted to do? Or were you just like, Kanban boards are cool?

• 17:36Speaker 03

  I think, I mean, I have the conversation if I go back, but I basically took a screenshot of my reminders Kanban view. And I said, I, this is reminders. I like this, but I want to do X, Y, and Z. You know, I want it to be as native as possible, swift. I want it to feel fast. I want it to, you know, just those kinds of things. And even the very first version it spit out, it was decent, you know, it did a lot of the things. I didn't realize how many intricacies there are into like text formatting in an app. Just like a numbered list and how you have to program that behavior in. And it doesn't work out of the box a lot. And so, you know, giving it just those parameters and I try not to say, make it look like this,

• 18:20Speaker 03

  because that feels very much like stealing and vibe coding in general, people have feelings about. But being reminders, being Apple's like main, you know, it's a free app when you have Apple devices. I was like, I feel okay about this. And it's very different from reminders at this point.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't think Apple would feel any feelings about you trying to do something with it. I think if Apple could stop worrying about reminders, it would probably be happy to do so. But I'm curious about that early phase of developing, because I think one of the things that has struck me as a person who has, has dabbled in making some of these things, but also spends a lot of time using and evaluating other people's software, is that it's so easy to be impressed by, like you're saying, sort of the first output of one of these tools. When lots of things are broken, but it's sort of remarkable that it exists at all. And I think I, I use a tool that I built basically because I think Todoist is ugly. And it just makes Todoist easier for me to access and looks nicer.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  And everything about it that isn't that is broken. But I don't care about any of the other things. And, and the thing I need it to do, it does and it doesn't fine. And I move on with my life. I would never in a million years ship that software to anybody else. Because any reasonable person would look at it and be like, well, most of these things are broken. And so what I'm curious about your perspective on is going through this process as somebody who has used a lot of software, has thought very critically about a lot of other software. Knowing you, you want to get this into other people's hands, how to sort of train your own brain to be like, no, I need to make this something that doesn't just work for me, that I can't Stockholm syndrome myself into thinking is very good. That I actually need to ensure is of a certain kind of quality before I put it in other people's hands. Was that a hard process?

• 20:02Speaker 03

  Well, I guess my aspirations at the beginning weren't super grand, but what I quickly discovered as more and more people got it in their hands, wow, people use task apps very differently and many ways that I wasn't. And things were broken and didn't work properly.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Which puts you in an interesting position, by the way. And I think a lot of people are finding themselves in this position where you say, either I've solved this problem for myself. If it works for you, terrific. If not, go build your own. You can have Claude code too. Or you go down the road of, oh, no, I just became a productivity app developer. And, and now I am responsible to a set of other people who aren't me, who don't have my needs, who want other things. And I have talked to so many people who have struggled to make that decision, frankly. It's a hard one.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  It is hard. That's one of the reasons why I chose to charge for it $3 one time purchase.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  You greedy, greedy man.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  Because at first I was like, one, I would love to recoup the $1,000 of tokens I've spent on this thing.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  And two, like, I don't want a subscription because I don't know how long I can keep this up. Although I do think I will keep it up for a while. But I also wanted that barrier of I didn't want everybody trying it. Like, I did kind of want that $3 barrier to say, like, there's probably thousands of more people who would try this if it was completely free. And people asked for that immediately, like, hey, can you do a free with an in-app purchase? And I was like, I actually don't want that much feedback. And so there's kind of, there's kind of a little bit of a gatekeeper. But in the initial process, as I was hearing these issues, but people were also loving how it worked. I felt a growing responsibility of like, oh, people want to shift their entire workflows to this app, which feels like a super heavy burden as someone who is not a developer.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  But I said, maybe I can keep doing this. And, you know, everyone is very, I've been very clear, this is a vibe coded app. I don't know what I'm doing as far as the code. And everyone's been very gracious. And I wanted to keep trying and keep doing it. And I think it's kind of working.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  So was the, was the process sort of the same you were describing before, where basically you get a bunch of feedback, you pour that feedback into Claude code and kind of let it go to work?

• 22:14Speaker 03

  Yes, you know, when people would submit crash reports via test flight, I would basically take all the screenshots and give it to Claude and be like, this is a crash, this is a bug, can we fix this? And of course Claude is always like, you're absolutely right. That is a bug and I will fix it. So, you know, you go through that. And then there is the line of decisions you have to make, which like, I'm project managing an app now where someone has a feature request or someone wants a change. And I have to decide, like, is this how I want the app to function? Like, people wanted the ability to have a start date and a due date for a task, which is not something I cared about in my initial version of this. And I don't use that feature at all. But I understood I had several requests for it, so I said, let me build it in.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  So I'm choosing, you know, what to build, what features to build. And that part is, you know, kind of messy. But yeah, people would, anything that was broken, I would collect all that feedback. And, I mean, I was doing it every day, just giving it to Claude, trying to fix it, using the expedite app review page daily and getting it to work.

• 23:19Speaker 02

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• 24:05Speaker 00

  A thing that I've heard from a lot of people who have gone through this journey is that one of the things you discover is that actually making the code of the app is only one relatively small portion of being an app developer. You have, you have customer service problems. You spend a lot of time dealing with Apple's review team. You spend a lot of time like managing distribution and trying to figure out how people are going to find your app. There's just a lot of things around wanting and growing an app that are not writing code. Have you been able to AI your way through that whole process?

• 24:38Speaker 03

  So Claude actually has access to my fast mail, which is where all emails go. And I've been tempted to set up a scheduled task and just say, look at my fast mail every day, anything related to bug fixes or feature requests, just in just that, and then do it. And I never want to see it. But I thought that's probably a terrible idea, so I've not done that.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  Wait, why? Tell me why it's a terrible idea. This seems like potentially a great idea.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  It seems like a great idea, but if Claude, you know, I will inject some fix this in this way type instruction. Or actually, that's not a feature I want to do right now. Like, I've had lots of requests for can do on Windows and the web. People want to be able to collaborate. Those features don't exist yet. I do not want Claude trying to do that without me knowing. And that's probably a huge lift. So I have not done that yet. So I read every feedback and request personally. But when it comes to the entire app submission process and screenshots, I was very surprised how well Claude does that. So I have, like, when iPhone Duo was coming out, different screenshot sizes. I wanted to do new screenshots when Siri AI was available.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  I just told Claude design, like, hey, can you like make some screenshots and put in like filler content in the app and just make it look good? And it actually did. And there's now like product headers and search images that App Store Connect is accepting. So I just asked Claude, hey, can you make these too? And I see it working on my Mac. I see the simulator open, it's taking screenshots on its own. So that entire like distribution nuts and bolts process, I let it kind of do all of that. And I watch it and I set the apps to manually distribute rather than automatically. But Claude does really good at all that. So I try to handle the person interaction. And if I'm actually, you know, picking and choosing what bugs and fixes and features to work on. And then for the entire nuts and bolts, you know, text in the update field,

• 26:31Speaker 03

  release notes, like Claude is doing all of it.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  That's really impressive. How much time are you spending on all of that at this point?

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Initially, it was hours and hours a week. But now, you know, I'll spend a few hours in a week across all the apps. Cause now I have Can Do, I have Stash, I have these free apps that people are asking for. And so it will be the minutes a day of taking screenshots of things, putting them on my desktop. And then when I sit down on my Mac, you know, I'll just go over to Claude, give it all the screenshots, tell it to work, and then I go do something else. So collectively, it's probably a couple of hours, but I'm multitasking, you know, it's just kind of working in the background.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Is there a version of it that you would work much harder on? Like, part of what I think is interesting about this, and a question I have for you is, if you've started to conceive of yourself as an app developer, or if that is a thing that you even really think about. And part of me wonders, like, do you look at this and say, okay, I've built the things and people like, I'm starting to make money from it. Should I start pouring more of my time into this? And I wonder if you even have an idea of where that time would go if you decided to do so.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  I think about that. I do not consider myself an app developer and would never call myself that. I would say I'm an app project manager and I'm vibe coder.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  You know, because I could not look at the Swift UI code in these apps and tell you anything. I just could not. And people have asked, like, do you get curious now about learning this stuff? And it's like, maybe, but like you, I have three kids and they're all older and like, life is busy. And I do want to keep making these apps. I want to keep making Can Do. I think maybe a year from now, I'll try to figure out how to put it on Windows and the web and do collaboration. But I also need to remember, like, what is my business? It is shortcuts. That's why I have a pillow on it. You know, but it also kind of plays into that. Like, many of my apps now have shortcuts actions. And so I can kind of, and that's the other thing too, is I was in my YouTube videos and my shortcuts community. I talk about other apps that have these features. And it's like, that's cool, and I want to keep doing that.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  But man, part of my business could be making apps with the shortcut actions that I then talk about and then build cool stuff with as well. And, you know, there's this flywheel of the creator economy. And it's like, if I can actually put myself in another spoke of that flywheel, it helps not only my business, but also gives me something creative to do. And I think as a creator, there's the wheel of making YouTube videos and podcasts. And this has kind of been like a nice side thing, kind of like the hobby that has become part of the business. But I want to keep it still in that hobby section.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  My wildest take on this is that I actually think app development is going to become a core part of being a creator in a way that I really did not expect. And it's probably not true for everybody, but, I mean, truly, it's gotten to the point where everybody on YouTube who like makes videos about productivity apps is now starting to be like, and also I've started making my own productivity app. And on the one hand, I think that's good, right? Everybody should have this experience, understanding how these things get made is a useful way to better understand what they are and how other people make them. Like, all of this is good. But I think it's so fascinating that that flywheel is growing to include, and I've made software you can use that expresses my values in some way.

• 29:40Speaker 00

  And it feels like that's only going to get more prevalent across all kinds of creative work. Are you seeing that among other folks that you know?

• 29:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I see the trend. You know, my initial desire was, this is a huge part of the tech news sphere. And so I need to know how these things work and how to use it. And then that turned into all of this. You know, I do think for some, maybe it'll be part of the business. It is interesting as like a level of expression, like this is who I am in videos. This is who I am in podcasts, and then this is who I am in apps. And if you use these apps, you kind of have another connection to me as the creator. And it also might be another door. You know, people might find me on YouTube, they might find me through podcasts, they might find me through my apps and whether that's mentioned elsewhere. So it's that, but I also think, I mean, five, 10 years from now, That self-service software thing, it's, it might just be so accessible that not just

• 30:33Speaker 03

  creators, but more people just do it. And I just started messing around with LM Studio and local models because I was tired of paying tokens for Anthropic's API. And I'm like, oh, shoot, this works too. And I built a shortcut that actually works with their local LMs. And I'm like, this, it just opens a whole new door and to everything. And I think when people get a little taste of what it feels like to make an app so tailored to them that works how they want, and it's free, and if they want to change something, they can just ask this chatbot to do it. It feels really empowering. So I think it's just, I think more people are going to go that way, whether they're creator or not.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I tend to agree. And I think frankly, the idea that a lot of people who have built sort of shady courses to make money from their community are going to build software, I think is actually in a lot of ways, just a gigantic improvement. So I will take that. For you in particular, right? You're, you're a person who has been doing shortcuts and automation and this kind of work for a really long time, in part because you have a big audience for it, but in part because it like, it very clearly sort of scratches an itch for you in understanding how this stuff works and putting all the pieces together. Does vibe coding do the same thing? Like, do you get the same kind of rush and feeling of, from working in, inside of Claude Code and building one of these things that you get from putting together like history's most complicated shortcut?

• 31:57Speaker 00

  Which you're very good at and do every week, it seems?

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Thank you. Yeah. I mean, 100%. I mean, I've always been a tinkerer and I love just messing around with little things. I mean, I'm on Mac Power Users now where I'm trying 30 different Mac utilities a week. And then getting to make my own Mac utility is just another extension of like, I get to tinker even further. And I think that because the ease of entry is, you know, it took a few months to probably get used to talking to Claude Code, getting it to work with all the things. But man, it just, yeah, it scratches an itch. It is somewhat addictive when you can go from idea to an app on my website that can be downloaded by anyone for free. That just feels amazing and it's super fun.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  And I got that with shortcuts for years and I still do, sharing a shortcut to the internet, sharing it in a reel. And now to do that with a whole app, like, that's super cool. It's just super fun.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Is it, what do you see happening to shortcuts as this goes? Obviously, Apple is trying to AIify shortcuts in a lot of ways, which some other day we will talk about. I don't think it's working very well, but it's a, it's a good idea, right? Sort of naturally describing shortcuts and having them work is a good idea. But there's also a case to be made that this new world of code and bespoke apps kind of obviates that whole world of shortcuts. Do you see that coming?

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, the shortcuts, it's been different because with Siri AI, there's actually a lot of shortcuts that I had made that were very popular, that Siri AI just took over, that it can just do now. Like, you know, taking multiple calendar events from a screenshot and parsing them quickly, like visual intelligence does that. It can even do things like if I'm, if I see a YouTube video screenshot on Instagram, I had a shortcut before that would like, look at what's on screen, find this YouTube video. And now Siri AI just does it. So I've been thinking like, okay, well, what is a shortcut? What is just Siri AI? And then what is an app? And as I've been creating these little apps, I realized, well, sometimes you need a UI. You know, if I want to put animated captions on a reel, I need some kind of UI. I need, what does the font look like? Where am I placing it?

• 34:04Speaker 03

  What are the colors? So I think I know what is an app. I think I know what's a shortcut. Like when I prepare Primary Tech Daily every day, it's a shortcut that runs in the background, going through different RSS feeds. Like, I know what's a shortcut, but it has been interesting to, I still love shortcuts and that's like my main thing. Sometimes I think, is this more of a shortcut? Is this more of an app? Is this something that Siri AI can just do? And so it's an interesting time, but I think there'll still be a place for shortcuts.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  I think you're right. And I, it's, that's an interesting trio of things. And part of me wonders if they're all collapsing in on each other, or if actually we're going to get more delineation over time between like, here is what you need, sort of bespoke, repeatable software, right? Like I, I do a thing over and over and actually having an AI try to design new ways to do it every time doesn't make any sense. So I'm going to build software versus, you know, building blocks of other software, which is where shortcuts are. And then the kind of, let's build something out of whole cloth that is much more what these AI tools are good at. We are all going to have to kind of figure out which parts of our lives live in which of those things. Whether, whether you're creators or not, like where, where you go for those things feels like an important

• 35:14Speaker 00

  part of this whole next phase of tech for people.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. And sometimes I think, well, I could just give this file or this transcript to Claude and ask it questions, or I could run it through this shortcut. But then there's very good things. I think a shortcut I made for you last time I was on the show was, how do I share my latest podcast episode quickly? Like, I want the link to Spotify, to Apple, to YouTube, and just puts it on my clipboard and sends it out. Well,

• 35:36Speaker 00

  I use that more often than I'm proud of. I would never admit that to you, but I do use it.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Shortcuts. You know, that's, that's, I just held my pillow for the listeners. Like, that's a shortcut. That's not an app. Asking Claude to do that, it's going to be thinking for five minutes for no reason. And so, you know, there's still some delineation, but yeah, I, I feel that collapsing a little bit. But also, man, Siri AI can be pretty slow sometimes. And so it's like, you know, can I do this faster here? Or do I want something in my menu bar on my Mac rather than having to go to a chatbot? So it's a weird time, but I'm excited about it.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  I like it. Do you have a next big idea? What's the next thing at the top of the vibe code list?

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Well, I don't have anything just yet. I do really want to build collaboration into Can Do, and I think that would open it up. And I might go subscription for that. You know, I've not done any subscription app. I feel a little funny doing that, being a vibe coder, but I, I, you know, that would be a nice recurring revenue as an independent creator. But we'll see. I'm going to try and get collaboration into Can Do. And I just like putting stuff out there for free as well. And so just looking for maybe defunct apps. You know, I made iPod Pro Max because I wanted to sync my old iPod video to a new Mac. And I'm like, I could just spin this up quickly. And then people fork it on GitHub and do whatever they want. So we'll see. There'll be something new.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  That's pretty good. All right. Stephen, good to see you. Thanks for coming back on.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, David.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Support for the show comes from AWS AI. AWS AI is powering transformation across the world's leading organizations, moving AI from possibility to production at scale. Like how AWS AI helps Formula One turn race day data into real-time insights that bring fans closer to the action. Or how it helps booking.com personalize every trip for travelers around the world. AWS AI is even transforming how things get built, helping Siemens power the production of smarter cars. Across industries, AWS AI is helping businesses innovate faster, lead with confidence, and transform what's possible today. AWS AI is how.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  All right. Thanks again to Stephen for being here. Before we go, I have one more thing, which is I need to do some quick follow-up on a thing I mentioned offhandedly on the show before I went on parental leave, which is that I had bought two different grips for my phone and I was testing both of them. I got the, the O-Snap grip, the low-profile, super skinny one. And I bought the PopSockets Low Pro as well. These two things, they're like 40 bucks. I have been a PopSockets user for forever. I don't even know how to hold my phone like a normal person anymore. Do we do this thing? Do we use our pinky? I don't know. So I bought both of these. I've been testing them for two and a half months now, and I have a verdict, which is that I started with the PopSockets and it broke.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  This is, this is the end of this story, is the, the actual mechanism just broke on me. Which is a shame because I actually really like this low-profile PopSockets. It has a little stand so you can prop it up. I think one of the best things about any of these grips is that often they double as kickstands. So you can just prop your phone up when you need to watch something or look at a recipe or whatever. I used this one for a while. It's a little awkward to like sneak your finger underneath and pull it up, but I was using it, it was fine. And then it just ripped apart. So RIP to the PopSockets. I'm back on the O-Snap. So this one is a little different because it's, it's a more sort of metallic-y grip. And there's really only one correct way to put your fingers in it. There's one

• 39:11Speaker 00

  way you can use your one finger to go in the middle, but this feels weird to me. Really what it is, is you end up putting two fingers around it. You have to kind of find the exact right place for your fingers to go, which I don't love quite as much. It's also not nearly as good a kickstand because you have to tuck it under the thing and it's a little plasticky and it kind of falls apart. But this is the one because it didn't break. And that is, that is where we are. In general, these things are super thin and I don't actually see the point of them being super thin. The, the Low Pro PopSockets is not so much thinner than the other one that it has like completely changed my life forever. But the one to get, I think, is the O-Snap. O-Snap makes good stuff. A lot of people really like it. Every time I've ever written about or talked about PopSockets, I get emails from people being like, try O-Snap. I did, and you were right. This is the one I would

• 39:56Speaker 00

  get. The, the O-Snap grip is the one. It's very good. I also really like it in red and it looks really good on the back of my green iPhone. All right. And with that, let's get out of here. Thank you again to Stephen for being here. Thank you for watching and listening. As always, I want all of your feedback. If you have been vibe coding stuff and you want to tell me about it, if you think people who vibe code are monsters and we shouldn't be touching into these tools, I think neither of those is a totally wrong opinion. And I want to hear all of them. Email us, [email protected]. Call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. We love hearing from you about this and about everything. And as a reminder, the best way to support everything we're up to is to subscribe to The Verge. You get all of our podcasts ad-free, including this one. You get all of our newsletters. If we ever vibe code something, I don't know, you'll probably be able to get it. Theverge.com/subscribe.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Thank you in advance. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Josh Kahas, Kabeer Chopra, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Starchuk. See you tomorrow. Rock and roll.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Support for the show comes from AWS AI. AWS AI is helping the world's leading organizations transform their industries in production at scale right now. From bringing fans inside every swing at the PGA Tour, to helping small businesses grow online with GoDaddy, to taking vehicles from concept to customer with Audi, AWS AI is how businesses innovate, lead, and revolutionize. AWS AI is how.