With the recent launch of tools like OpenAI’s Codex, Anthropic’s Claude Agent, and the upcoming support for these tools right in Xcode, the market for single-purpose apps might not be long for this world. Here’s why.
Despite my best on-and-off efforts over the last two decades, every single time I decided to learn to code, it was a non-starter.
I understand the concepts well enough, but I’ve never managed to turn the actual act of programming into the kind of fun challenge developers seem to enjoy. For me, it’s always been an endlessly frustrating experience.
Which is why I’ve been following the evolution of low-code, no-code, and AI-assisted programming tools very closely. And I’ll be the first to say that they all kind of sucked.
More recently, though, as I increasingly saw my developer (and non-developer, but tech-inclined) friends get excited about what they’d been accomplishing with newly released tools and coding models, I decided to give them a shot. And I’m glad I did.
Codex developed my app in 15 minutes, and I can’t get over this
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been using OpenAI’s Codex to build a little Mac app just for myself, to solve a very specific productivity need I’ve always had.
In fact, Codex got the app’s core functionality up and running in less than 15 minutes, starting from a single empty folder on my Mac. Since then, I’ve been asking it to add a button here, tap into Apple’s Foundation Models there, notify me if X or Y happens, and so on.
Are there Mac or even iOS apps that can perform the basic functionality of what Codex built for me? Certainly. I tried some of them. The free ones are filled to the brim with intrusive, low-quality ads, and don’t really work. The paid ones, even when they do work, don’t behave exactly as I’d like them to.
My Codex-developed app, on the other hand, works exactly as I’d like it to. And if I don’t like something or think of anything new, all I need to do is ask Codex to tweak it. About 10 seconds later, it’s done.
Does this mean I can build a Fortune 500 company using just Codex or any other AI-powered tool? Definitely not. At least, not yet. It probably doesn’t even mean my app would be ready for a public release. But works for me, and that’s all I needed.
It’s still early days, but a major shift is coming
My broader point is this: as these tools get better at coding and their adoption grows, I am convinced that the days of poorly built, ad-filled, single-purpose apps are inevitably numbered.
Alas, I’d venture that this also means that independent developers who focus on building good, well-made, single-purpose apps will eventually be at risk. A lower risk, for sure, but still.
For now, only a sliver of tech-savvy users even know tools like Codex exist. Fewer are willing to try them. Fewer still will know how to leverage the power of agentic models through Xcode 26.4.
Still, as companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Apple continue to improve their development tools and further abstract away the underlying programming languages (which will of course, remain valuable), we’re not far from a world where building a custom single-purpose app will feel as mundane as asking ChatGPT a random question (and far less finicky than trying to pull it off with Shortcuts).
On the flip side, is there a chance the App Store may soon be inundated with even more low-quality, ad-filled, single-purpose apps? Absolutely.
But I think this may just end up accelerating the shift toward vibe coding one’s own solutions, though it will certainly be interesting to see how Apple reacts to the obliteration of the barrier to building and releasing an app going forward.
Have you been using these tools to develop your own apps? Let us know in the comments.
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