Daily Read

Such a fun idea / no way...!!@!!

When SwiftUI was released, SwiftUI Previews was one of the features that seemed such a great idea, but unfortunately, they have been more reason for grief than joy for most iOS developers - at least inside of Xcode.

axe is a CLI tool for running SwiftUI Previews with hot-reload support. This is super useful for any agentic tool chain. It also comes with a VS Code plugin which will automatically display a SwiftUI preview for any file that contains a #preview section.

Okay, Zcode just dropped on my radar and it's got me thinking. We've talked a lot about AI assisting developers, but this takes it further. The idea of truly 'bringing your own AI' agents to not just suggest code, but to build, test, debug, and iterate on your iOS and Mac apps alongside you, even inspecting console output? That's the agentic future I'm always looking for, and it feels like a genuinely powerful shift in how we approach problem-solving.

What really caught my eye for us iOS devs is how Zcode positions itself: it's not trying to replace your favorite editor (looking at you, VSCode users!), but rather to be that smart, AI-powered orchestration layer that sits above it. Getting out of Xcode for the mundane build/run/test cycles, yet still tapping into its core capabilities, and having a unified workspace for multiple projects – that's a serious upgrade to developer flow. It's about empowering us to focus on the 'what' rather than getting bogged down in the 'how' of the tooling.