Let me be clear: no one asked for this. But I’m going to walk you through how I built and published an iOS app using Claude Code, Xcode, and pure vibes.
I don’t know Swift. I’ve never written a real line of Swift in my life. But I’ve now shipped four apps to the App Store, mostly by telling AI what I wanted and watching it make the magic happen.
This post isn’t a tutorial in the traditional sense. It’s a field report from the future, where anyone with an idea and some time can build software without writing code.
Let’s get into it.
🧰 What You Need (It’s Not Much)
You’ll need just two things to get started:
- Claude Code – Download it from Anthropic’s site.
- Xcode – Apple’s all-in-one IDE for building and submitting apps.
That’s it. No Swift knowledge. No CS degree. No excuses.
🧪 My App Idea: A Data Sheet, But Make It an App
I hate product data sheets. PDFs that no one reads, packed with boilerplate and buzzwords. What if, instead, you could open a beautiful, interactive app that explains what your product actually does?
That’s what I set out to build: an interactive data sheet for incident.io, the company where I’m CMO.
So I created a new iOS project in Xcode and named it (very creatively) incident-io-datasheet. Then I opened Claude Code, pointed it at my project folder, and told it what I wanted:
“Build a beautiful, interactive iOS app that showcases the four products incident.io offers. Make it look like Apple made it. It should be WWDC-award-worthy.”
A tall order. But Claude said “Yes.”
🔧 Vibe Coding in Real Time
Here’s what happened next:
- Claude scanned the project and figured out I was building an iOS app in Swift.
- It asked to initialize the Claude project and created a claude.md instruction file.
- I gave it the prompt above. It broke the job into 5 steps: research incident.io, design the app, create the data model, build a Swift UI interface, and add interactivity.
It wrote real Swift code. Created product cards. Designed a sidebar. Built the views. Even added animated transitions.
I watched the whole thing unfold like it was Christmas morning. No clue what the code did, but it looked legit.
🐛 Fixing Errors (The Lazy Way)
Like any good dev, Claude got some stuff wrong. Build failed. A bunch of red errors in Xcode.
But unlike normal devs, I didn’t debug anything. I just copied the error messages into Claude. It fixed them.
Rinse. Repeat. Eventually: build succeeded.
Then came the moment of truth: I hit play in the iOS simulator.
And there it was: a real app.
📱 The App Actually Worked (?!)
It had:
- A home screen with our tagline: “Move fast when you break things.”
- Tabs for each product (Alerting, Response, Status Pages, Postmortems)
- Beautiful floating bullet points with key features and benefits
- A sidebar nav that just… showed up on iPad, like it knew it belonged there
I even told Claude to add a flame emoji next to the company name. It tried. It was the wrong emoji, but hey, it tried.
📤 Publishing to the App Store
Building the app was surprisingly easy.
Getting it on the App Store? Slightly trickier, but still totally doable.
Here’s what I had to do:
- Join Apple’s Developer Program ($99/year)
- Create an App Store Connect record (name, description, screenshots, pricing)
- Archive the app in Xcode
- Generate and add an icon (Claude vibe-created a 1024×1024 flame emoji PNG—somehow perfectly sized on the first try)
- Fix minor metadata and compliance things
- Submit for review
It took about 45 minutes total to go from working app to “Waiting for Review.”
🏁 Final Thoughts: You Can Actually Do This
Vibe coding is real.
I didn’t know Swift. I barely touched Xcode. I just told Claude what I wanted and helped it fix the errors it created along the way. The end result? A working, beautiful app that’s now on the App Store.
You can do this. Whether it’s a data sheet, a dumb game, or a side hustle you’ve been sitting on… Claude Code and Xcode are enough to get something shipped.
And if you’re lucky, maybe your flame emoji app will win a WWDC award. Or at least confuse a few Apple reviewers.
Tom Wentworth 