I'm not a programmer. I built and launched an app from my iPhone with Claude Code.

inuken — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 11:39:52 +0000

I'm an office worker in Japan. I've never learned to program, and I don't have time to start now.

But I wanted something simple: a list of every shochu I drink, like a collection. (Shochu is a traditional Japanese distilled spirit.)

So in late August 2026, I opened Claude Code for the first time. Four weeks later, my friends were using my app. I spent about an hour a day on it, and did almost all of the work on my iPhone.

I didn't write a single line of code myself. Here's what actually made it work, and two things you can try today.

What I built

A personal shochu notebook that runs in Safari and sits on my home screen like an app:

Log each bottle with a photo, and look back on a calendar
Browse 300 shochu distilleries across Japan on a map
Keep a wish list
Share records with friends I invite

What it cost

iPhone: the one I already had
Claude, paid plan: $20/month (plus tax in some countries)
GitHub (where the project is stored): free
Vercel (puts the app on the internet): free plan
Supabase (sign-in and saving data): free plan

Apart from the AI subscription, it has cost me $0 so far.

The problem nobody warned me about

The most important thing turned out not to be programming knowledge.

The AI forgets everything when you start a new conversation.

At first, I explained my app from scratch every single time: "This is an app for logging shochu…" And every time, I got something slightly different. Things I'd fixed the day before came back broken.

What changed everything was two small files that Claude Code reads every time:

A rules file (CLAUDE.md). Things I want it to follow every time, like "Don't use technical jargon" and "Always ask me before publishing."
Progress notes (PROGRESS.md). "What's done" and "What's next." The AI updates this itself after each piece of work.

Now I open a new conversation on my iPhone, say "Read PROGRESS.md and continue," and I'm right back where I left off.

My rules file grew one line at a time, every time something went wrong. It's in Japanese, and Claude Code follows it just fine. You can write yours in whatever language you think in.

Try this today #1: don't say "build it"

My biggest early mistake was asking the AI to just build the app. It fills in everything you didn't say, and you get something different from what you pictured.

Instead, I ask it to ask me first. The key parts of my first message look like this:

I want to build an app just for me. I have no programming experience.

■ Must-haves (3 at most)
1. ...
2. ...
3. ...

■ Please
- Before you start building, ask me what we need to decide. Give me numbered choices, all in one message.
- Don't use anything that costs money. Choose free services.
- Start by building just the screens, and show me.

Three things matter here:

Three must-haves, no more. List ten, and all ten end up half-done. My app started with just "log a bottle" and "see it on a calendar."
Questions as numbered choices. As a beginner, I can't answer "What would you like to do?" But I can reply "1."
Screens first. One look at a screen and you instantly know "No, not like that."

Try this today #2: one screenshot, three lines

When something looks wrong, I send one screenshot and three lines:

- Which screen:
- What's happening:
- What I want instead:

Real example: my own photos were showing up blurred in my records list. I sent a screenshot with "Which screen: the records list / What's happening: my own photos are blurred / What I want instead: show the whole photo without blurring." That got it fixed.

The third line is the important one. If you only say "this looks wrong," the AI decides how to fix it, and that's often another round.

And when a friend tells you something is hard to use, pass on their exact words. A friend told me "the dots on the map are hard to tap." I sent that sentence as-is, and it was fixed and live the same day.

Where I still needed a computer

To be honest: one kind of task didn't work on my iPhone. Some database settings need you to paste a long piece of text into a web dashboard, and that wouldn't paste properly in Safari. I open my laptop only on the days I do that kind of setup.

Everything else, I do from my phone.

If you want to start

Free: how I use a second AI to check everything before I publish, with a prompt and a copy-and-paste template → https://inuken.gumroad.com/l/checker
$7: my full guide. Setup on an iPhone tap by tap, both file templates, free publishing, every place I got stuck, and a real example of adding a feature → https://inuken.gumroad.com/l/iphone-claude-code

If you try it and get stuck, send me a message on X: @inuken_code. I mostly post in Japanese, but English is fine.

I wrote this in Japanese and translated it into English with help from Claude.

DEV Community: inuken