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A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

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Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#211
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first prompt was: "Help me develop a MacOS app that blurs my screen the closer my mouse is to the top of the monitor" That was my PoC to see if there's APIs Claude could find that would make this easy to do. Once I proved that worked, I asked it to instead help me devise a way to adjust that blur based on my posture. It suggested the vision framework and measuring head height. Just kept iterating, one step at a ti…

This is going to sound very basic, but did you do it in a blank repo or did you use the cloned integration in Xcode, or a third thing I'm not thinking of?

Not the OP, but I’ve had success starting with a blank app created by Xcode with the appropriate language/frameworks (ie something that will already run but does nothing). You then ask Claude to start from that point.

The only issue I’ve had is sometimes Xcode not ‘seeing’ new files that Claude has created along the way, and needing to add these manually into the Xcode project. (A Google around suggests this shouldn’t happen if you create the project in the right way, and yet it still sometimes does.)

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#212
Very cool. I did something extremely similar for a personal project.

However, I was not familiar with Swift, the app was more or less vibe coded.

My next goal was to learn swift patterns to refactor the app into something that was understood and robust.

I will be reading though your sources to understand production quality Swift!!

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#216

No image in the readme, bummer.

Why are programmers so bad at this? It's never been easier to take and share screenshots, but a lot of technical people would rather write and have you read 500 words than post a single screenshot. Boggles my mind.

Maybe it blurs on a level lower than what the screenshot can capture

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#217
post #44

You can measure my productivity by how slouched I am. Sitting up straight at my desk, chair locked, perfect posture? I’m doing nothing, maybe looking through System Preferences to change the system highlight color. Sliding down in my chair like jelly, with my shoulders where my butt should be and my head resting on the lumbar support? I’m building the next iPhone and it’ll be done by 2 AM.

It's not about productivity, it's about good posture

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#218
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first prompt was: "Help me develop a MacOS app that blurs my screen the closer my mouse is to the top of the monitor" That was my PoC to see if there's APIs Claude could find that would make this easy to do. Once I proved that worked, I asked it to instead help me devise a way to adjust that blur based on my posture. It suggested the vision framework and measuring head height. Just kept iterating, one step at a ti…

This is going to sound very basic, but did you do it in a blank repo or did you use the cloned integration in Xcode, or a third thing I'm not thinking of?

I have had good success with using xcodegen and only a project.yml checked in. Claude can get tripped up on managing the xcode project xml.

However, before that, i set up a blank project in xcode, used the xcode github integration to create a new repo on github, set up one xcode cloud workflow and use it to push one build to testflight. That way, you get all the automatic config of app ids, profiles etc, and xcode cloud can not be enabled other way. Then tell claude to migrate to xcodegen and to run it in CI automatically.

I've started to develop iOS apps from scratch using only claude code web (no mac), by setting up a "Branch Build" workflow in xcode cloud, and a skill that teaches claude how to check builds and fetch logs.

Along with a workflow that pushes any merge on main to internal TestFlight, the dream of developing iPhone apps on the iPhone finally lives. I've tried most options for this over the years and they never stuck.

These are simple apps that build in 1-5 min on xcode cloud. For larger builds it probably won't work so well.

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#219
post #44

You can measure my productivity by how slouched I am. Sitting up straight at my desk, chair locked, perfect posture? I’m doing nothing, maybe looking through System Preferences to change the system highlight color. Sliding down in my chair like jelly, with my shoulders where my butt should be and my head resting on the lumbar support? I’m building the next iPhone and it’ll be done by 2 AM.

Funny, I’m the same. I also like taking walks to think but I’ve found that I must have my head pointing almost directly down (I.e. looking at my feet). It’s also how I stand thinking in the shower, with the warm water hitting my angled neck. Maybe something beneficial about that position of the neck, or maybe just habit! I will also have conversations in my head during my walk, I’ve done this my whole life and I’m no…

Talking to myself is the only way to crystallize certain thoughts.

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#220
I love this, but I’d rather have an indicator in the menu bar, an app notification, or maybe a nice flow around the "notch" like NotchNook. (https://lo.cafe/notchnook)

Can't really afford to play with an app that would have such an obvious hit on productivity and mental clarity.

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