I Built and Shipped an iOS App in 3 Weeks Using Claude — Here’s How

#ai #claude #ios #showdev

The Idea

After deciding to build an iOS app using AI, the first thing I set out to create was a metronome app designed for dark stage environments.

Back in college, I played drums — and while that was a while ago, there weren’t many metronome apps that felt both clean and professional. (Turns out, that’s still true today.)
Most apps are packed with features but suffer from dated design and cluttered interfaces, making them impractical to pull up quickly on stage.

That’s what led me to the idea: a simple, black-and-white metronome where the beat is front and center — and nothing else gets in the way.

Claude Free vs. Paid

I’d already made up my mind to use Claude as my AI of choice. I’d been using things like Gemini and Google AI Studio recently, but the word on Claude was hard to ignore.

So I started with the free plan — and honestly, it held up pretty well. (This was on Sonnet 4.6.)

I think if you’re patient and chip away at it a little each day, you could probably build something at the level of this metronome app entirely on the free tier.

But building an app turned out to be more than just building the app.
Once the core structure was in place, there were countless small tweaks to make. And throughout the App Store submission process, I had a lot of questions for Claude — about Apple’s requirements, review guidelines, all of it.

The token usage from all of that adds up faster than you’d expect.
I eventually upgraded to the paid plan. I went with Pro, and found that an hour or more of intensive vibe coding tends to burn through the session limit. That said, Max felt like more than I needed.

Claude Projects vs. Claude Code

In hindsight, Claude Code might seem like the obvious choice — but for this first app, I used Claude’s Project feature instead.

Projects let Claude maintain context across long, ongoing conversations. You can also store conversation context in markdown files, which helps a lot.

My workflow was simple: ask Claude to write the code, take what it gave me, and paste it into Xcode.

Claude had no access to my files — I didn’t give it any — but it kept the full structure and logic of the project in mind throughout. When something needed fixing, it knew exactly where to look.

For a simple app, Claude Projects is more than enough.

That said, the moment things get even slightly complex, Claude Code is the better call — no question.

Built and Shipped in 3 Weeks

I’ve studied Swift before, but I’m honestly not at the level where I could build something like this on my own — certainly not to a standard I’d actually be happy with.

And yet, with Claude, I put together a metronome app I’m genuinely proud of in about two weeks, then spent another week navigating the App Store submission process to get it live.

It’s kind of remarkable, when you think about it.