Comply with ZDNET: Add us as a most popular supply on Google.
ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Xcode 26.1 AI was unusable. Xcode 26.3 AI is an enormous leap.
- AI-driven migration delivered large change in below two days.
- One rule fastened it: no background brokers, frequent standing updates.
I’m positive that the time will come when AI coding would not look like some wonderful new magic ripped from the long run. However not at the moment.
The mission I have been engaged on for the final two days counts because the third main product I’ve completed utilizing AI coding. Really, it is extra just like the third main mission set, as a result of I added 4 premium add-ons to my WordPress safety plugin, I constructed iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch apps for my 3D printer filament supervisor, and I’ve simply made main inroads right into a surprisingly highly effective stitching sample supervisor on iOS.
I’ve discovered that after I work in a special AI setting, I wish to work on a novel codebase. That method, I do not get completely different AIs confused about the identical factor. So when Apple launched its Xcode 26.3 candidate, supposedly with considerably enhanced AI integration, I wanted a brand new mission to work on with it.
By combining a tightly built-in AI assistant and voice dictation (extra on that later) to construct a robust app with built-in machine studying capabilities, I actually do really feel like I am dwelling sooner or later.
The mission
My spouse urged I do a stitching sample supervisor, one thing to assist her (and probably different sewists) handle their massive stash of paper and digital stitching patterns.
It is a mission just like the filament supervisor, in that it makes use of pictures and NFC tags to trace the places of bodily gadgets. However it’s additionally a wildly completely different product in that stitching patterns have many extra attributes than rolls of 3D printer filament.
This isn’t a small market. There could also be a number of hundred thousand 3D printing geeks within the US, as much as possibly a max of one million. That pales compared to the stitching market, the place artful sewists quantity round 30 million within the US and Canada, in accordance with the Crafting Trade Alliance.
So, yeah, I selected this mission principally as a result of my spouse preferred the thought. However the complete accessible market is large sufficient that if I made a decision to take all of it the way in which to an App Retailer product, there’s some there there.
I attempted Xcode earlier than
I attempted utilizing Apple’s Coding Intelligence again in November. I used to be in a position to make use of Xcode 26.1 to vibe code a easy “Whats up, world” app, which I documented in my how-to article. However as quickly as I attempted to get it to do extra, it acquired silly. Then it hung.
At the moment, I used it with each OpenAI’s Codex and Claude Code. That method, it did not need to depend on Apple’s personal AI. However I could not paste in any screenshots for it to interpret. I could not get it to run for a couple of or two steps. It could not create any of the configuration recordsdata wanted to create an app for any of Apple’s platforms. And it acquired caught. So much.
It was, just about, unusable, at the very least for vibe coding.
As an alternative, again in November, I used Claude Code within the terminal to create highly effective iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch apps. These used NFC tags and the interior photograph capabilities of the iPhone to assist me set up my 3D printing filament. The problem when you may have loads of 3D printers, every of which may help 4 completely different spools of filament, is protecting monitor of what is on every printer and what’s accessible in your filament stash.
It took me a number of hours a day, over 11 days, to construct the primary model of the iPhone app. It took a number of extra days every to construct the Mac and Watch apps. I exploit that app each day as a result of it solves a private productiveness problem. For extra particulars, you possibly can learn this text.
Claude Code, working out of the common-or-garden terminal, was nice. It might do all that Xcode 26.1 could not, together with configuring these recordsdata.
Now there’s Xcode 26.3
Xcode 26.3 is not Xcode 26.1. When it got here to the built-in AI assistant, Xcode 26.1 was simply plain dangerous information. Xcode 26.3’s developer preview, with some tolerable exceptions, is superior.
Let me let you know about what I in-built lower than two days utilizing Xcode 26.3. To any extent further on this article, after I say Xcode or “the brand new Xcode,” I imply the developer preview of Xcode 26.3.
I wrote in regards to the new Xcode a number of days in the past on this article. The massive change is that the brand new Xcode helps agentic operations and might let these brokers faucet into virtually every part that wants doing. The brokers even have entry to Apple’s coding documentation, which proved to be very useful.
To get began, I made a duplicate of my filament spool mission, renamed it for stitching patterns, and set to work with Xcode and Claude Agent. I did not even actually get to work on it for 2 full days. I had loads of different work to do for ZDNET yesterday. I additionally needed to cease early as a result of it ran out of token allocation for some time. At the moment, I needed to cease early sufficient to put in writing this text.
Even so, Claude, Xcode, and I inserted 52,947 new traces of code and deleted 10,626 traces of code over 689 recordsdata. The present codebase consists of 116 code recordsdata totaling 32,381 traces of code. This consists of some tremendous cool machine studying additions I made utilizing Apple’s newest AI/ML libraries.
I do not code full time. Not even shut. I steal a number of hours right here and there from all my different tasks. But when I have been in a position to dedicate full time to coding, I estimate it might have taken me an absolute rock-bottom minimal of 4 to six months to do the identical work I did for a part of yesterday and a part of this morning.
For me, as an unbiased lone developer, the power multiplier of AI coding is nothing in need of breathtaking.
The half that broke
There have been two most important phases to the mission to this point. The primary was migration. The second is including and eradicating options.
Migration is so much tougher than you’d suppose. As I mentioned, I copied the unique mission folder and renamed it. However every part inside was oriented towards spools of filament. All the things on this mission needs to be oriented round stitching patterns.
It isn’t doable to only do a search and exchange. A lot of strings of characters needed to change, however so did all the info buildings, in addition to all of the app configuration knowledge. That is good work for an AI. It’s totally technical, very exact, and really, very tedious.
That is additionally the place I virtually gave up.
The expertise of vibe coding in (at the very least the preview construct of) Xcode 26.3 alternates between exhilarating and wonderful, and “what the hell simply occurred to me?” and “did I simply destroy every part?” It isn’t feeling.
Think about you are on the Starship Enterprise. You go to warp, and all the colours are streaming previous you at warp pace. It is exhilarating. It is an unimaginable feeling.
After which, impulsively, every part goes darkish. You see a tiny glimmer of sunshine, and also you notice you are in some cave someplace. You haven’t any thought what occurred, the place you’re, or how you bought there.
That is what it feels wish to vibe code in Xcode with a number of brokers working. On this new construct of Xcode, Claude and Xcode love to run a number of parallel brokers.
You are cooking alongside simply tremendous, after which all of the sudden nothing. The system hangs. You haven’t any thought the place within the set of adjustments you’re. There’s nothing you are able to do about it besides stop Xcode and begin again up. The massive hope is that nothing acquired utterly destroyed. This isn’t feeling.
This deep, darkish second of despair is just not attributable to only one factor. It isn’t attributable to simply the AI agent working out of context and needing extra tokens. And it isn’t attributable to only a background agent getting caught as a result of it would not have permissions and is not reporting again. And it isn’t attributable to simply having a number of background brokers making adjustments on prime of one another, inflicting all of them to cease working.
It is attributable to all of those conditions. Impulsively, you are cooking alongside properly, after which the following factor you recognize, you are caught in concrete for 3 hours. Do you restart Xcode? Do you wait? Do you want as soon as once more you’d listened to your mother and gone to legislation college as an alternative of engineering college?
In my case, I launched one other occasion of Claude Code within the terminal and requested it to research. That was useful as a result of it was in a position to determine caught processes. However working Claude Code within the terminal defeated the entire objective of doing issues within the Xcode IDE.
There would not look like a strategy to cease working background agent duties, so they only maintain working. So far as I can inform, there is no such thing as a strategy to keep within the Xcode IDE and confirm their standing, and Xcode will not allow you to cease them until you simply abnormally stop the appliance completely.
It acquired worse. Impulsively, the terminal Claude Code occasion advised me I had used up 91% of my utilization cap and was about to hit 100%. That resulted in a 3-hour and 19-minute work stoppage. The stalled Xcode background brokers that ran for greater than 3 hours had consumed most of my token allocation. Apparently, even idle or caught periods can eat into the session price range due to the context they maintain.
When Claude Code does a compression within the terminal, it stops working for fairly some time. However at the very least there is a message there telling you what is taking place. With Xcode and its penchant for launching background brokers, there’s nothing. Apple, in the event you take no different recommendation from me at the moment, take this: you want higher administration and visibility for background brokers. Stat.
That was yesterday. In a single day, I considered it. This morning, I inserted a brand new instruction into the overall CLAUDE.MD directions for this mission. I advised it, “Do NOT use background brokers or background duties. Do NOT cut up into a number of brokers. Replace me repeatedly on every step. Do NOT run steps that take greater than a minute or two with out having an replace heartbeat.”
At the moment was very productive. Very productive. Nothing ran within the background. No agent tried racing in opposition to the opposite brokers. Claude and Xcode simply did their job. It took about 20 minutes for the AI to scrub up the migration mess from yesterday.
After which it was time so as to add new stuff. That is the place issues acquired actually enjoyable.
The cool new hotness
So here is the factor. Sewists love them their patterns. So much. For many years, patterns got here in little paper envelopes. You have seen them. Perhaps you have used them or seen your mother purchase them. Paper envelope patterns nonetheless exist, however digital PDF-based patterns are additionally huge. So are patterns that are available in books of patterns.
My spouse needed to handle all three sorts of patterns within the new app. As you possibly can see from the image, she has bins and bins of paper patterns. We even have a server share devoted to her digital patterns. And there is a complete bookcase crammed with sample books.
Though I am together with help for digital patterns and books of patterns, my consideration was principally targeted on the paper envelope-style patterns. That is as a result of they might be managed in a method just like my filament spools. They might be tracked with NFC tags and moved from location to location.
However there’s additionally an enormous distinction. The back and front covers of sample envelopes are like gold to the sewists who accumulate them. They present what’s being constructed, present inspiration, and likewise typically present helpful and crucial buy info for all of the provides wanted to make regardless of the sample describes.
My app needed to seize very high-quality pictures of these back and front covers. Basically, I needed to construct a scanner app into my sample database. Not solely does the app need to seize a picture, it has to resolve what a part of the picture is the sample envelope, then straighten it, reshape it so corners are proper angles, and crop it.
After which I needed to do yet one more factor. Paper patterns are principally listed by vendor title (Simplicity, McCalls, and so on) and sample quantity. I needed my app to extract these two items of knowledge from the photographs, after which let customers select them for naming and indexing the patterns.
To do that, I wanted to make use of Apple’s machine studying APIs, most of that are fairly new. It seems that Claude Code, working within the terminal, wasn’t acquainted with most of them. However Claude Agent, working in Xcode, was in a position to simply question Apple’s documentation and create these options.
I bumped into one different snag. The AI in my app was having a tough time distinguishing between the numbers which are a part of bar codes and the sample numbers. So I had Claude and Xcode practice my app on the right way to determine bar codes and get rid of them from consideration from the sample quantity choice course of.
As a bonus, since my app needed to OCR the photographs so as to discover the seller title and quantity, I added an OCR knowledge area to every sample, so customers can search on something on the entrance or again cowl. I additionally determined to avoid wasting the bar code quantity and the precise bar code with every sample, simply in case the consumer desires it for one thing.
Claude, Xcode, and I did much more in our brief improvement cycle. My huge purpose was to get the AI to construct machine studying into the app and make it work by the point this text was printed. We met that purpose.
My spouse is fairly stoked in regards to the app. I am having a blast engaged on it. So I will most likely maintain tinkering with it over the weeks till it meets all her wants. I am unsure if I will put it up on the App Retailer. I do have plans to do an article known as one thing like, ” vibe code your method onto the App Retailer,” so that you would possibly see extra of it or the filament app sooner or later sooner or later.
Different tidbits
There may be one usability characteristic within the Xcode implementation I like much more than Claude Code’s terminal implementation. You may Command-V paste a picture into Xcode’s AI assistant. In Claude Code, it’s a must to use Management-V. It isn’t an enormous factor, besides that I’ve many years of muscle reminiscence doing Command-V to stick on a Mac, and Management-V takes me out of move. So I like how Xcode does it.
The AI assistant may do builds, which implies that it might probably see if the code works. If there are errors, it might probably repair them by itself. Generally, it runs for an hour or extra all by itself. At the moment, that allow me take a stroll within the park (actually), whereas the AI staff of Xcode and Claude have been busy determining the right way to correctly orient and crop a sample cowl.
Talking of move, I have been utilizing Wispr Circulation to dictate to Xcode. I would say about 75% of the prompting I did to the AI was completed utilizing Wispr Circulation. The product has a vibe coding mode that made it work very well throughout coding. I used to make use of the Mac’s personal dictation, however it’s notoriously unreliable. I’ve discovered Wispr Circulation way more dependable.
Why do I dictate to my improvement setting, you ask? I’ve an 8-pound Yorkipoo that likes to curve up on my left shoulder and be held by Daddy whereas he sleeps. So, after all, I do a ton of my at-computer work utilizing just one hand. Dictation makes this doable, and Wispr Circulation does an amazing job of doing so successfully.
As for this being a developer candidate for Xcode 26.3, Apple says the total launch will likely be up on the Mac App Retailer throughout the month. So keep tuned. I am hoping it does one thing about managing these runaway, rogue background duties.
However even with these troublesome beasties harshing my coding buzz, I’ve to confess that I am having a ton of enjoyable vibe coding my method into my spouse’s iPhone’s coronary heart.
Have you ever tried agentic or vibe coding workflows but? If that’s the case, what labored effectively and what broke down? Do you suppose tighter IDE integration beats utilizing AI instruments from the terminal, or do you favor protecting them separate? How involved are you about background brokers, runaway duties, and token utilization when AI is deeply embedded in improvement instruments? And at last, do you see your self trusting AI to deal with large-scale refactors or migrations, or does that also really feel like a step too far? Tell us within the feedback under.
You may observe my day-to-day mission updates on social media. You should definitely subscribe to my weekly replace publication, and observe me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Fb at Fb.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at @DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.
