AI coding tools may be the only freemium apps available

With the recent introduction 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 applications may not last long in this world. Here is the reason.

Despite my best efforts on and off over the past twenty years, every time I decided to learn to code, it just wouldn’t start.

I understand the concepts well, but I’ve never been able to turn the actual act of programming into the kind of fun challenge that developers seem to enjoy. For me, it has been an endlessly disappointing experience.

That’s why I’ve been following the evolution of low-code, no-code, and AI-assisted programming tools very closely. And I will be the first to say that all kinds of absorption.

Lately, though, as I keep seeing my engineer (and non-engineer, but technically inclined) fans enjoying what they’ve been accomplishing with newly released tools and coding models, I’ve decided to give them a shot. And I’m glad I did.

Codex upgraded my app in 15 minutes, and I can’t get over this

For the past few weeks, I’ve been using OpenAI’s Codex to build a small utility for Mac, to solve a special 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, click on Apple’s Foundation Models there, let me know if X or Y happens, and so on.

Are there any Mac or iOS apps that can do the basic work of what Codex has built for me? Of course. I tried some of them. The free ones are completely filled with annoying, low-quality ads, and they don’t really work. Those who are paid or working do not behave well indeed as I like.

My Codex-developed app, on the other hand, works indeed as I like. And if I don’t like something or think of anything new, all I need to do is ask the Codex to fix it. After about 10 seconds, it’s done.

Does this mean I can build a Fortune 500 company using Codex or another AI-powered tool? Definitely not. At least, not yet. It probably doesn’t even mean that my app will be ready for public release. But it works meand that’s all I needed.

It’s still early days, but big change is coming

My broader point is this: as these tools get better at coding and their adoption grows, I’m sure the days of poorly designed, poorly populated, single-purpose apps are definitely numbered.

Alas, I would like to say that this also means that independent developers who focus on building beautiful, well-made, single-purpose apps will ultimately be at a disadvantage. Low risk, sure, but still.

Currently, few tech-savvy users even know of tools like Codex that exist. Few are willing to try them. Fewer still will know how to use the power of agent models with Xcode 26.4.

However, as companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Apple continue to improve their development tools and also remove the basic programming languages ​​(which will always be important), we are not far from a world where building a single-purpose application will feel as normal as asking ChatGPT a random question (and much more pointless than trying to remove it with shortcuts).

On the other hand, is there a chance that the App Store could be flooded with even more low-quality, ad-laden, single-purpose apps? Definitely.

But I think this may end up accelerating the transition to vibe coding personal solutions, although it will be really interesting to see how Apple reacts to the elimination of the barrier of building and releasing the application going forward.

Have you been using these tools to develop your applications? Let us know in the comments.

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