A starter project is not valuable because it has many files. It is valuable because the next person can understand it quickly.
That next person might be you, a teammate, or a coding agent. The requirement is the same: clear structure, obvious naming, and a small number of decisions that are easy to inspect.
For SwiftUI, I would rather ship a starter with fewer screens and better conventions than a huge folder full of random components.
The useful pieces are boring: navigation, empty states, settings, preview data, loading states, reusable buttons, and a README that explains where to start.
This matters more now because coding agents amplify whatever structure you give them. A clean starter makes the agent more useful. A messy starter gives it too much room to improvise.
A good starter should answer: where does state live, where do screens go, how do I preview this, how do I add one feature without touching everything?
That is the product angle too. You are not selling code snippets. You are selling a base that reduces the first few hours of confusion.
Small, clean, easy to extend. That beats a giant component dump almost every time.
I use this structure in my SwiftUI starter pack: https://boosty.to/swiftuidev/shop/10?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=freefarm_devto_viral_20260610&utm_content=swiftui-starter-humans-agents
I post shorter notes and free samples here: https://t.me/SwiftUIDaily?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=freefarm_devto_viral_20260610&utm_content=swiftui-starter-humans-agents_telegram
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