I've been using essentially this process (with Claude Code) for about six months. There are a couple of places where I've opened xcode; mostly to update the simulators for new betas of xcode 27, and once to add a target for Apple Watch (and I think something for HealthKit).
Interestingly, since about Opus 4.6, Claude has been able to reason its way into this process on its own. It was clunky until 4.7, and in 4.8 it's managed to find its way around every reason I had to open xcode myself.
> I had Claude Code create mine: I told Claude, more or less: I want to archive, Developer ID-sign, notarize, staple, and install this app to /Applications without ever opening Xcode. Write me a script that does the whole chain and fails loudly if any step breaks.
Even though the text we're reading is Claude talking to us as well :)
Also it was weird to see the mention of "ask your LLM" at almost every stage in the blog post:
> point Claude Code or your LLM coding tool of choice to this blog post, and let it figure it out
> When in doubt, ask your LLM of choice about them and have it help you get set up. It’s the one that’s going to be using Xcode for you anyway.
> The whole point of using the LLM in the first place is to avoid doing things manually that you don’t want to do.
> Again, if in doubt, ask Claude Code or your LLM of choice to create this for you.
> Again, this is why you talk to your LLM, tell it what you want, and have it help build your workflow.
Thank you for your service. Xcode gets a bad rap from developers but for beginners, it doesn’t overwhelm them, giving them a great entry experience into app development.
This is cool but also makes me worried about the tendency with llms for all of us to make bespoke solutions rather than building a better community tool or extending an existing tool to solve the problem. fastlane exists to solve exactly this problem in the mobile space.
If it's okay to mention my own complementary open source project, Axiom¹ does a good job of helping coding harnesses know how to do this effectively for Apple OS development.
In addition to a deep roster of skills and agencts, Axiom includes several for-LLM tools². xclog, xcprof, xcsym, and xcui are designed to be used by LLMs, and expose capabilities in a token-efficient way. These tools are equally helpful for non-Axiom skills/agents.
I just set up my pipeline to do this exact thing for both the Apple and Android ecosystems, dispatching loads to my mac studio or Linux box accordingly. I moved the runners off GitHub because uptime for GitHub actions has been trash lately, and the Apple Silicon runners are pricey.
Claude was great at figuring out what was broken when and either fixing it, or clicking as far as it could until it needed me.
You could say I'm mostly just IRL hands for the AI now.
Being outside of the approved development loop has rough edges. How do you keep the app from putting up that permission to access documents folder all the time while you rebuild it?
Making your app buildable from the CLI is not something I do personally to use on my Mac but it is very useful when you're automating your CI. If you have GitHub Actions set up to build your app, so can Claude, assuming you have the right signing setup on your machine.
Oh god, the app store does not need more slop. If you can't be bothered to open XCode (which I agree is a dumpster fire, but), you shouldn't be bothered to submit an app that a person has to review and another person has to filter out of their search results.
So you can develop ios apps, run it on a real iphone that is activated without going through app store as a native app? But, you have to reinstall it every week?
Check also Sweetpad CLI. It’s basically wrapper around xcodebuild, but humans and agents. It’s my next project after Sweetpad VSCode extension for developing iOS/Swift applications in VSCode. Cli is still in beta, but I see on my own project that it’s already quite pleasant to use
Wait, I am not aware that I've done ANY of those setup steps, yet I'm building iOS and macOS apps without XCode. Both Claude and Codex handle it just fine and didn't ask me for any setup steps.
I went to build an open source app from GitHub and was pretty surprised that it requires Xcode and that Xcode can't really be installed without an apple id. I do not want to make one and I certainly will not sign my computer into one.
I did end up somehow installing Xcode via some shady download and was on my way. But the whole ordeal left a very sour taste.
Tangentially, I despise Xcode and love the Expo ecosystem and all the lovely tooling that they have built. It is React Native but Expo honestly makes it so trivial to build stuff from the CLI without ever needing to open that abomination of an app. And with AI, I have built a lot of side project apps onto my iPhone, like a homelab app for monitoring my cameras with push notifications whenever someone is at the door, starting my irrigation and a whole lot more. Plus Tailscale of course. Kind of a crazy world that we live in now.
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[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 95.7 ms ] threadInterestingly, since about Opus 4.6, Claude has been able to reason its way into this process on its own. It was clunky until 4.7, and in 4.8 it's managed to find its way around every reason I had to open xcode myself.
> I had Claude Code create mine: I told Claude, more or less: I want to archive, Developer ID-sign, notarize, staple, and install this app to /Applications without ever opening Xcode. Write me a script that does the whole chain and fails loudly if any step breaks.
Even though the text we're reading is Claude talking to us as well :)
Also it was weird to see the mention of "ask your LLM" at almost every stage in the blog post:
> point Claude Code or your LLM coding tool of choice to this blog post, and let it figure it out
> When in doubt, ask your LLM of choice about them and have it help you get set up. It’s the one that’s going to be using Xcode for you anyway.
> The whole point of using the LLM in the first place is to avoid doing things manually that you don’t want to do.
> Again, if in doubt, ask Claude Code or your LLM of choice to create this for you.
> Again, this is why you talk to your LLM, tell it what you want, and have it help build your workflow.
I am getting a little tired of every single HN comment being about how the linked article is written by an LLM.
I'm not getting that vibe from this one; I'd bet money on it at least being substantially human edited. What are the tells you're seeing?
In addition to a deep roster of skills and agencts, Axiom includes several for-LLM tools². xclog, xcprof, xcsym, and xcui are designed to be used by LLMs, and expose capabilities in a token-efficient way. These tools are equally helpful for non-Axiom skills/agents.
¹ Axiom: https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ ² Axiom CLI tools: https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/tools/
Claude was great at figuring out what was broken when and either fixing it, or clicking as far as it could until it needed me.
You could say I'm mostly just IRL hands for the AI now.
* and giving Anthropic all your secrets, env vars, certificates and your source code to them.
https://rubynative.com
“From bundle install to your phone in minutes. To the App Store and Google Play without a line of native code.“
Useful sanity check!
Surprisingly, it's very easy. This works like a charm: https://github.com/xtool-org/xtool
You do not need to upload to TestFlight or the App Store; you can just install the app locally to your iPhone via usb -- even from Linux!
When in doubt, just ask your coding agent of choice to help you create and upload a Hello World iOS app. It's really easy.
So you can develop ios apps, run it on a real iphone that is activated without going through app store as a native app? But, you have to reinstall it every week?
1. https://sweetpad.hyzyla.dev/
2. https://github.com/sweetpad-dev/sweetpad
The most useful one is a little weather sparkline to show local temperature forecasts. Useful every day.
I did end up somehow installing Xcode via some shady download and was on my way. But the whole ordeal left a very sour taste.