Join 6,727+ iOS/macOS developers using Codex and Claude to build and ship apps. Expect practical tutorials, repeatable workflows, and hard-earned lessons from 7 shipped apps and time at Apple, Microsoft, and GoPro.
Codex Built 8 Features Overnight: My 5-Step PR Loop
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This week, I woke up to 8 new features moving toward release in Super Easy Timer, including stopwatch, clock, pomodoro, and autocomplete. One Codex thread ran for 12 hours and 19 minutes. Part of that happened while I slept. Apple recently featured my app on the homepage, so downloads are spiking (270+ downloads/day). If you show up and make something useful, Apple might feature your app. Back to my new Codex workflow: The setup is one Codex thread that manages all the others. I call it Chief of Staff ("Chief" for short). It runs a simple PR loop:
My favorite part: Chief is a bug inbox. I dump a bug in, it writes a markdown plan into the repo, and a worker branches off main to fix it. I wrote up the full setup in 5 steps: Read the article: Codex Built 8 Features Overnight: My 5-Step PR Loop (about a 4-minute read) What have you pushed forward with a manager thread? Hit reply. Talk soon, P.S. Working on an iOS/macOS app? I do 1:1 App Strategy Sessions. Book a time and let's talk about yours. |
Super Easy Apps Weekly - Paul Solt
Join 6,727+ iOS/macOS developers using Codex and Claude to build and ship apps. Expect practical tutorials, repeatable workflows, and hard-earned lessons from 7 shipped apps and time at Apple, Microsoft, and GoPro.
Hey Reader,This week, I started a manager agent before bed, and it worked all night. When I woke up, it had broken a working feature, added weird workarounds for a problem that wasn't real, and dropped the feature. The feature? Distinguishing between a PiP video close vs. pause in my timer app on iPhone. We had a random 250ms delay to differentiate the two, and removing it broke some behavior. Except the delay wasn't necessary, and the feature was fine before the agents touched it. This kept...
Hey Reader,You can now use Super Easy Timer on iPhone. I had my agents use the Mac app as a reference and extracted a shared library of code using the Swift Package Manager (SPM). This is the brains of my timer app, and it's shared across iOS and macOS. The MVP worked last week, but it wasn't reliable until I added AlarmKit. That allows timers to persist even if the app is force-quit or the iPhone is locked (just like Apple's system alarms). That was my biggest blocker, and now that it's in,...
Hey Reader,My Mac app made $7,900+ over 8 years as a paid app. It made $0 in the three months I gave it away for free. Learn why I made it free, what happened, and what I'm charging next. Read the entire article here. I overhauled the UI this year, localized the App Store Page to 46 languages, and then Apple began featuring it on the front page. Super Easy Timer on the front page (Best New Apps and Updates) Did you know? You can nominate your app to Apple for feature consideration. The Free...