Is My Development AI Driven?

Everyone is talking about AI right now. About AI slop. About apps that build themselves. And if you use AI at all, the question seems to follow you around: is what you make just slop too?

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think it's fair to be open about how I build Unplugged today. Especially for the people who pay for it. You should know how the thing you're paying for gets made.

There's also a second reason. I'm trying to be more vocal lately, which doesn't come naturally to me. I'm bad at social media, and frankly, I hate it. I barely use Instagram. I don't even like WhatsApp groups, even small ones. For some reason anything public gives me a bit of a phobia. But right now everyone can build an app, and it seems like talking about how and why you build has become part of the job. So this is me making that attempt.

So, is my development AI driven? It depends on what you mean by that.

There's a concept in software called test-driven development. It might be a bit technical, but bear with me. A lot of developers say their software is test-driven because they write tests. But that's not what it means. Test-driven means the tests literally drive the development. You write the tests first, and the code follows.

If I take that same idea and ask whether AI is driving my development, my answer is no.

I'm definitely using it. I've used AI since ChatGPT came out, always at different levels, depending on how much I trusted it and what I thought it could do. That trust has grown over time. With the right instructions, there are moments where AI writes code better than I would. And it definitely writes it at a speed I can't match.

That isn't always the case. Code is a very personal thing, in style and in what you care about. But the amount of knowledge out there is just huge. Even inside iOS development alone, every technology is its own world. It's impossible for me to be an expert in all of them.

A lot has changed in how I work. I write a lot less of the code myself. I still do sometimes, but most of my time now goes into describing how I want the code to be and writing the rules the AI should follow.

If you're not a developer, here's the closest comparison I have. I used to be the person on the construction site laying the bricks. Now I'm more like the architect. Probably still a very hands-on architect, but the architect.

What I still do is make the decisions. And that's the part I want to explain.

You might ask: so are you shipping more? Yes, and not necessarily.

I'm building more. I'm not sure I'm shipping more.

Before AI got this good, software was expensive. Every risk you took was calculated, because if it failed, you had spent weeks and had nothing to show for it. And because coding was slow, you had time to figure things out on the way. You'd understand the technology, hit its limits, and adjust what you were building.

That's not true anymore. You can ask for something and it just happens. Building isn't the hard part now. But building something that's actually useful to people, that works the way they expect, I believe that's still hard.

And with everything moving this fast, it's easy to lose sight of what you've actually accomplished.

This is my favourite thing about software. There's rarely one perfect answer. There are better and worse ways to do things, for sure, but most of the time you're choosing between options that each have a cost. Maybe one is cheaper to run. Maybe one is easier to build, or harder to maintain. Maybe one holds up better when a lot of people use it.

That was true before AI and it's still true today. What changed is that building the thing is less of the cost, because I don't have to write all of it myself. The trade-offs still have to be made.

And if you don't make them, then yes, your development is AI driven. Because someone is making those decisions, and it isn't you.

That's really the whole point. I'm still on top of what I ship and why. Can I afford it? If a thousand people use this, does it still work, and does it still make financial sense for me? When there's a new iOS release, will it hold up? Those are my calls.

Here's one way AI changed things for me. I've now built more apps than I ever could have before. Some of you might not know I have other apps: Articulated, Inspired, Roasted, and most recently Notified. For some reason they all ended up with past tense names. I didn't plan it, it just happened. I wouldn't have been able to build any of them without this technology.

Almost nobody pays for them, and they don't get used anything like Unplugged does. And that's sort of the point. They're where I can take risks, experiment and see what AI can actually do, without putting the app you rely on at risk. Then I bring what I learn back here.

It also keeps me sane. If I only ever worked on Unplugged, I'd burn out. I do this for fun, next to a full-time job. Unplugged brings in a few hundred euros a month, and after taxes and fees it's a nice extra, not a living.

But building more doesn't mean solving more problems. You can always build something now. That doesn't mean it solved anything for anyone.

I think people have lost some respect for how hard software is. I still believe it's extremely hard. What people often don't see is all the work that goes into iterating on something.

For me, that's where AI really helps. Iteration means getting better over time. Not every version is better than the last, sometimes it gets worse. But if you consciously try to make something better a thousand times, it'll usually beat the first attempt in a lot of ways. AI lets me try more versions, compare more trade-offs, and decide faster.

The problem is when you skip that. When you don't make the choices and just ship whatever comes out. That's what hurts, and it hurts me as a developer, because I care a lot about what I make.

I really love Apple software. I love the polish, and the feeling that someone cared. Of course there's always something to improve, but on a lot of levels I see more attention to detail there than anywhere else, and I genuinely appreciate it. I like things that are well made, whatever they are.

I had this discussion with a friend once, about whether quality is subjective. We were talking about food. And sure, taste depends on the country and the culture. Some food takes a while to learn to love, and something people call great can taste awful to you the first time. So it's not a universal truth. But when something is really well made, with a lot of thought behind it, most people will try it and agree it's good, even if it isn't their favourite. Maybe that's my own bias, but I think that kind of care gets noticed.

I think software works the same way. You can't make everyone happy. But when you put enough thought, care and iteration into something, you get there. AI alone doesn't get you there. It can help, because it lets you iterate. But you have to be the one driving.

I'm not going to stop using it. Honestly, if I didn't, I think I'd be risking my job in the future. At my day job I can't use these tools because of company policy, so I'm still very hands-on there. Unplugged is where I get to learn, explore and try things out.

So yes, I use AI to build Unplugged. I'm still on top of the things I care about, and I iterate a lot before anything ships. There's actually more I haven't shipped than I have. How would you know? You wouldn't, which is why I want to show some of it in a future post.

All I can really do is tell you what I care about and hope it shows in the app. Saying it is one thing and doing it is another, and I know I won't always live up to it. But earning your trust by showing the care I put into things is what I'm aiming for. And I truly believe that if you keep improving something long enough, the quality starts to speak for itself.

It also means I have to keep learning. Not just code anymore, but design, and understanding the problem, and a lot of things I'm honestly not great at yet. I'll keep trying, because this is what I have the most fun doing. It's still amazing to me that I can build something, and someone anywhere in the world can use it with one tap.

If you have thoughts on any of this, I'd really like to hear them. You can find me on X at @chris_iosdev.

Written by Christian Skorobogatow