Are custom decentralised app the future?

Building custom apps are not easy, they are expensive and they take a lot of time to build. It requires team of people to interpret the problems and find solutions for not just one use case but most often generic enough that others can also find it useful.

Every app I've used, has had the same problems that I've experienced. For example:

• The app have a long onboarding process.
• The app needs a lot of data before it starts becoming useful.
• The app needs to have friends or community for it to be useful.
• The app is bloated and slow and 80% of the features are useless to me.
• The app is generic and I have to fit my workflow or my process into how the app want's me to, which is backward and not natural.
• The app requires me to pay for features that I don't need.
• The app requires a subscription and its cheaper to buy an annual subscription than monthly.
• The app shows me ads that only distracts me from doing what I need to and some apps give options to be a paid customer to remove ads but charge an arm and a leg for the privilege.
• They want data that has no requirement for the app, e.g. location or microphone etc. just so that they can collect and sell that data to brokers.

Many more but i don't want to go on and on ...

This has got me thinking, with the advancements in technology specially Artificial Intelligence, Machine leaning and Large language models that are for even becoming smarter and better at coding, why can't we build tailored custom apps that can run securely on the user's computers or hosted by them securely in the cloud ? They control the data and privacy, they only get features they need and no bloat or ads that get in the way and not to mention the keeping you hooked for longer hours that will only make us do things like:

• Not spending time with family or friends.
• Not having time to exercise or staying healthy.
• Not having time to cook and having take out food using apps like Uber eats and pay higher amount to have the same meal that they can either by going to the restaurant or picking up the food themself ?
• and many more ...

Now admittedly, I've been building apps for almost two decades and I am very comfortable with building apps that are secure and privacy aware. Operating systems vendors like Apple, Microsoft, and Linux can be the platforms that allow users to build custom tailored applications: Nothing more, nothing less that runs on their infrastructure so that the user can have the peace of mind and focus on just building out a solution for their very specific problem and their way of solving it for what will work for them.

I'm starting on this journey on building apps for my problems. Along the way I will try and figure out how this can scale to other users that might not be as technology versed or aware as someone like myself who has relevant industry experience.

Here's an example of an app that is very specific to my needs, a very simple fitness tracker. This is built using Claude Opus 4.5 and claude code. It's very specific to what my fitness goals are and any feature in this application thus far is what I need, nothing more, nothing less. I will build on this and improve the application as my needs or requirements progress. And I don't need to share this data with anyone, everything stays on my computer, in my control, safe and sound.

This is in a way a decentralised application. If a hacker wants to get this data, they will have to hack my computer which takes a lot of time and effort. If they have to do it for every single user in the world, it will be a very expensive exercise on their part to do this which makes it's not as viable as attacking a central server where a lot of data is stored is a lot more attractive.

Here's the app: Its not hosted anywhere, it sits on my computer, is available to me locally on any of my devices and is hosted within my private network.

My Custom Fitness App

I would encourage everyone to learn this technology and not be fearful of the future that this promises. Centralisation and DecentraliSation both have their advantages and disadvantages so by no means is this the solution that will solve all the problems in the world, but at least it will give the user the power of using or creating solutions to their problems in the way that really works for how they think and how they work. If you have a question on how I've built this, feel free to leave a comment and I'm happy to share how I've built this so that you can be on the same journey as I am.

Start local to mitigate any risks of your data being exposed or sensitive information getting in the hands of people. Once the infrastructure catches up with this idea, I'm hopeful that those things will not be something a user will have to think about. Eventually they will only think about their problems and their solutions.

Declaimer: This article is fully human written, no help from AI to write or polish this article, this is original human content.