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Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

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Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#81

Post by jacobx »

saagarjha wrote: post #80

I've been using the app a bit and I like the idea but one of the major things keeping me from using it is that the model is just fundamentally lazy and without having an easy way to review the code on my phone it's not easy to check its work. If it needs to do something which requires talking to a web API it will often just populate the app with fake data silently. Apps for phones are very dependent on web APIs and w…

Yeah this is an area we want to make a lot better. What we're currently thinking is giving the model a way to more explicitly call out that it is adding a call to something that needs an API key, which would add something to the UI to allow you to just paste in your key.

I think there's also work when need to do in the system prompt to guide the model away from all of the placeholder data (or at least so that when it adds it there's a better affordance to transform it to real data).

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#82

Post by QuantumNomad_ »

jacobx wrote: post #73
QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #62

> We’re ingesting Apple’s SDK frameworks into Bitrig piece by piece. If you try to build something and hit a missing framework, let us know and we’ll prioritize adding it. Submitted request for WebKit to be added. In the app I asked it to make, I requested that it use a web view to log into YouTube. The generated app opens a mostly blank screen with no web view, and from what your app told me I think it’s because it’…

We’ve gotten a lot of requests for WebKit, so we’ll try to add it soon. If we hit issues we can try to pull in just a subset, but one nice thing about Swift is the frameworks have .swiftinterface files which list all the APIs in them, so we’ve generally been able to pull in whole frameworks at a time.

Nice :)

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#83

Post by tdonnelly »

dcreater wrote: post #68

The data collection is very concerning and is preventing me from using the app though I want to

Is there a certain part of the data that the service collects that you're wondering about?

We aren't doing anything shady or unexpected with the data given the server-based model – projects are stored on the Bitrig server, but we aren't selling the data, using it for training, etc.

We may use the data to improve Bitrig in the future (e.g. by gathering information on the popularity of certain APIs to prioritize bug fixes and new features).

All AI requests use Claude, which of course sends some data to Anthropic.

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#86

Post by debdut »

This is crazy, you guys basically rebuilt Swift (interpreter instead of compiler) and also the frameworks. This is the level of engineering that does the magic of "it just works". I, personally, am very interested in swift, and would love to work for free for you guys.

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#88

Post by Terretta »

ForceBru wrote: post #17
kylemacomber wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can edit the code directly in Bitrig, but we haven't optimized the experience around that. Are you imagining you'd be editing the code with the software keyboard or a paired hardware keyboard?

I'm imagining quick prototyping (including on-device, offline execution) of small pieces of code (potentially growing into a small app) with the software keyboard, like in Pythonista or Pyto. My workflow often goes like this: got an idea, let me quickly test it on the go, like while walking down the street, working on unrelated stuff or just chilling. Open up Pythonista, write some code, run it, tweak it, etc. If a p…

I use both those for Python, very much enjoy them on iPhone in particular for little UI apps. Equivalent iPad workflow for me had been Swift Playground on iPad and Mac, although it seems stuck about a year ago at Swift 5.10 and iOS 17.5 SDK.

Much slower (minutes) with Xcode Cloud and a git repo, if I can git commit from my iPhone, I can edit app code and commit, watch Xcode Cloud Build see my commit, watch it build with debug logs, and when it works it shows up in TestFlight. Very much not offline, and minutes long loop.

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