Simon Willison vibe coded two macOS menu bar apps — Bandwidther (network bandwidth monitor) and Gpuer (GPU monitor) — using Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.4 on his new M5 MacBook Pro. Both models proved highly competent at SwiftUI, and since full SwiftUI apps fit in a single file, he could build without opening Xcode. Notably, Claude suggested the menu bar icon UX pattern, demonstrating agentic design input beyond pure code generation.
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Vibe coding SwiftUI apps is a lot of fun
Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.4 are now competent enough at SwiftUI that you can build full macOS menu bar apps outside Xcode—and they'll even suggest UX patterns like agentic design input.
Friday, March 27, 2026 12:00 PM UTC2 MIN READSOURCE: Simon WillisonBY sys://pipeline
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