Buiding simple mobile apps with Claude Code

👋 Hey there, I’m Jeff. I tackle real software problems using AI. This newsletter is about building meaningful projects using bleeding-edge AI tools (and accelerating your career)

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I’ve built things for myself that I really wish existed but have little-to-no commercial value, and I think that rocks. Years ago, it was hard to justify spending dozens of hours making an app that only I would use. Now it’s single digit hours.

With tools like Claude Code and Expo, you can make little apps that fit your exact use case in very little time. Recently I made a mobile app, a React web app, and a Rails web app. All without a single line of code:

The biggest unlock that AI has opened for me is personal software. Here’s a few recent examples in case you’re new:

A couple days ago I was talking with a good friend and he was thinking out loud about an app he wished existed. He said he wanted a super simple task manager to help him manage time blindness, but every app on the app store was overengineered.

There’s a good idea! Today we’re going to use Claude Code, React Native, and Expo to build an iPhone app that lets you:

• Add a task to your current task list

• View your current task list and cumulative totals for time spent on each

• Push a single button to start a timer that adds to the tasks cumulative total

By the end of it, we’ll use ChatGPT’s image generation to make a logo, then put it on the app store. Ready to get started?

Installing Claude code is simple. Open your terminal and install it with NPM:

Make sure you get a successful install.

You can also do this with Homebrew if you’re not already using NPM. Then, start the CLI with:

You’ll be prompted to authenticate on the web to your Anthropic account, then we can get started.

My first step with a new project (or a big change to an existing project) is to work things out in plan mode. You can enter plan mode with SHIFT + TAB twice. Then, I describe the project: