Building Features Took 30 Minutes. Connecting APIs Took 4 Hours

Last weekend, I sat down to build what I thought would be a simple feature.

The actual functionality took me about 30 minutes.

The rest of my day?

Gone.

Not because the feature was difficult.

Because I had to connect everything around it.

• GitHub
• Slack
• Email
• Authentication
• Webhooks
• API keys
• SDK documentation

By the time everything was working, I had spent nearly 4 hours writing code that wasn't part of the product itself.

And that's when it hit me:

Modern software development has a glue-code problem.

The Part Nobody Talks About

When people talk about building products, they usually focus on:

• AI
• Scaling
• Architecture
• Frameworks
• Databases

But for most developers, that's not where the majority of time disappears.

A surprising amount of development is simply connecting systems together.

GitHub triggers Slack.

Slack triggers an email.

A form submission triggers a CRM update.

A webhook updates a database.

A database triggers another API call.

The actual feature often becomes the easiest part.

A Typical Workflow

Let's say you're shipping a release.

You want to:

1. Create a GitHub release
2. Notify your team on Slack
3. Send release notes to users
4. Create a tracking issue in Linear
5. Log deployment activity

Sounds straightforward.

But in reality, you're suddenly dealing with:

• multiple APIs
• different authentication methods
• rate limits
• retries
• webhooks
• monitoring
• maintenance

The complexity compounds fast.

The 30-Minute Feature Problem

I've noticed this pattern repeatedly.

The core idea takes minutes.

The integrations take hours.

Not because the APIs are bad.

Not because the tools are bad.

Because every tool was built independently.

Developers become responsible for stitching everything together.

And every new integration creates another layer of maintenance.

What If We Focused on Workflows Instead?

Instead of thinking:

"How do I connect Service A to Service B?"

I've started thinking:

"What workflow am I actually trying to achieve?"

The workflow is the real product.

The integrations are implementation details.

That shift in thinking led me to start experimenting with workflow-first development.

Rather than spending time wiring services manually, I wanted to focus on defining the process and letting the infrastructure handle the orchestration.

The Project I'm Building

To test this idea, I'm building a workflow called ShipIt.

The goal is simple:

When a release happens:

• Create a GitHub release
• Post to Slack
• Send release emails
• Create Linear tasks

One workflow.

Multiple actions.

A real-world developer use case that almost every startup eventually needs.

More importantly, it demonstrates something bigger:

Developers shouldn't have to reinvent the same integration layer every time they build a product.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

AI agents.

Internal tools.

Automation platforms.

Developer tools.

Modern products are becoming increasingly connected.

Every application talks to multiple services.

Every service introduces complexity.

And that complexity isn't slowing down.

It's accelerating.

The developers who ship fastest aren't always the ones writing the most code.

They're often the ones spending less time on repetitive infrastructure work.

Final Thoughts

I still enjoy building software.

I still enjoy solving technical problems.

But I'm becoming increasingly convinced that developers spend too much time maintaining connections between systems and not enough time building the things that actually matter.

The future probably isn't fewer APIs.

It's better ways to orchestrate them.

And that's the problem I'm currently exploring with workflow-first tools like Swytchcode.

What's the most time-consuming integration you've built recently?