---
title: "My First Mac App"
description: "I described a workflow problem to Claude. It wrote me a compiled Swift app using Xcode. That sentence still feels odd to type."
url: "https://hoeijmakers.net/my-first-mac-app/"
date: 2026-04-04
author: "Rob Hoeijmakers"
site: "hoeijmakers.net"
language: "en"
tags: ["AI in Practice", "AI"]
---

# My First Mac App

The problem was simple and specific. Every time I wanted to save something to a Markdown file, I had to open an editor, paste, name the file, save. The sequence could take a minute. I looked for a web clipper, but every option pulled me into browser extensions and cross-platform wrappers. What I needed lived at the OS level, not the browser level.

So I described it to Claude. And Claude wrote me [a Swift app](https://hoeijmakers.net/clipboardmarkdown/).

## What it does

The app sits in my Applications folder. I copy something, open it, choose between plain text or HTML, and save directly to a folder. That is it. Along the way I learned something I hadn't known: clipboard content exists in multiple formats simultaneously. The same copied text is available as plain text, as HTML, as rich text. Choosing between them is itself a design decision. The app makes that choice explicit.

## The category shift

What matters here is not the app. It is the category it belongs to. Swift is a compiled language. Xcode is a professional framework. This is not a Python script or a browser extension. It is native software, built with the same tools Apple developers use, running with the same OS-level access.

I am not a developer. I can think in terms of digital products, reason about edge cases, describe behaviour precisely. What I have never had is the ability to translate that into something executable at this level. That translation layer is what shifted.

## Software for one

Most software is general-purpose because specificity doesn't scale. The economics push toward horizontal tools: something that solves a problem for enough people to justify building it. What AI makes possible is the opposite: software for one workflow, one environment, one person's exact friction. It doesn't need a product launch or a pricing page. It just works.

I have a mental list of problems like this, accumulated over years: too specific to find an existing solution, too niche to commission. That list is shorter now.

The question I keep returning to: as more people with product thinking but no coding background start shipping their own narrow tools, what does that do to the market for the broad ones?

---

**Related**
- [ChatGPT Thinks With You. Claude Builds With You.](https://hoeijmakers.net/chatgpt-thinks-with-you-claude-builds-with-you/)
- [Using markdown for blogging](https://hoeijmakers.net/using-markdown-for-text/)
- [OS-Level Translation: A Multilingual Productivity Hack](https://hoeijmakers.net/os-level-translation-a-multilingual-productivity-hack/)