tips with using xcode on mac os using agentic coding

By Zach M, 20 April, 2026

Forum
App Development and Programming

Hi all,
So, I managed to get my hands on an m1 macbook air. Before the comments come flooding in, yes, I know this is an older product. However, seeing as Mac OS is still supported, and it was the cheapest entry back into the mac ecosystem, I figured this is the best way to get started. So, I'm creating an app for iOS and Mac OS, called blind markdown editor. Future posts will expand on exactly what this app does and how it differentiates itself from the competition, but long story short, I'm pretty useless with programming. therefore, I'm using an agentic coder, particularly claud. I was wondering two things. are there any good tutorials I can use to learn xcode with the latest Mac OS, and I know Claude is going to do most of the programming work, but for those who have dealt with it, what's the best way to make most of the tokens you get, because I used the opus and sonnet model today, the combo option, and within three prompts, I already ran out of tokens. How much different is it using the default model, literally called default in the list, versus sonnet, vs opus, etc. also, how do I run and test apps using my iPhone instead of using iOS simulator, since xcode is already going "not responding" while doing all of this. Any help appreciated.

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Comments

By Ashley on Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - 14:04

to fully cover what you're asking would require pages upon pages. However the short answers are these:

1) Claude is expensive, and 'vibecoding' directly within XCode isn't really practical. YOu'd be better off instantiating a project with XCode, using something like Claude Code, Gemini CLI or GPT Codex to do the vibecoding. Vibecoding a full iOS / MacOS app isn't really practical as modern LLMs don't fully udnerstand swift UI and aren't up on apple's latest APIs and frameworks, though there are some agent skills which can help. YOu won't ge ta working, bug-free, stnadards-compliant, memory safe swiftUI app out of an LLM though.

Agentic AI is fine for debugging and working with you as a developer, laying groundwork and writing placeholders for features that you'll then complete manually, but unless you're building web apps it won't replace a programmer.

Anthropic recently brought in some insane rate limits which make even the Pro plan unusable for anything but basic bug fixing, and extra usage costs a lot of money. If you really want ot get into vibecoding I would look at Codex or Gemini. But due to compute costs all of the major AI providers are decreasing usage now so rate limits are tight across the board.

2) To get your apps onto your iPHone, you have to put your iPhone in developer mode, link it with an apple developer acount (you don't necessarily need a paid membership unless you're using some Apple services or frameworks), change the product destination in XCode and run the app.

WHat exactly do you want in a Markdown tool? There is an existing MacOS app called MacDown which is fully accessible and open source. It might be a better starting point than starting from scratch.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - 14:09

I didn't know, will try it out.

By Zach M on Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - 15:47

I know with google gemini I was able to create an android app. but, in fairness, I was using the website plus manually copying and pasting code. I do know a few other people that have made apple apps with swift and claude. As for the reason for making a markdown app, I want ulysses without the locked-down nature of ulysses and its databases. yes, I know external folders exist, but again, it's limited to icloud and a native open dropbox button.