Clean Slate Focus belongs to an earlier moment in AI-assisted programming, before an agent could inspect a project, edit several files, run the build, and respond to its own errors. The app was assembled through a much more literal conversation between ChatGPT and Xcode.
A small iOS focus timer built around a stripped-down Pomodoro workflow.
The aim. Create a minimal personal focus timer and learn how to get an app from Xcode to a working phone.
01The problem behind the project
Josiah wanted a clean focus tool and, more importantly, a concrete way to learn the app-building and shipping process.
Josiah wanted a minimal Pomodoro-style timer, but the larger objective was learning how an iPhone application actually moves from an idea to a working device. The narrow feature set made that path visible without requiring a backend or complicated product model.
It primarily served Josiah as both a focus aid and a learning project. No broad user adoption is claimed.
02How it took shape
Swift and Xcode through a pre-agent workflow: copying code and compiler errors between ChatGPT and Xcode on Josiah's father's computer, then testing the result manually.
Working on his father's computer, Josiah copied proposed code into Xcode, copied compiler errors back into ChatGPT, interpreted the response, and repeated the cycle. That awkward loop still required product decisions, debugging judgment, manual testing, and persistence.
Josiah chose the product, assembled and debugged it interaction by interaction, made the design decisions, and completed the app despite not yet having an integrated coding agent.
A working app was completed as Josiah's second iOS application, though it did not develop a meaningful user or sales base.
03What the project means now
The app did not acquire users or revenue, and that is not the point of preserving it. It documents an early stage of Josiah's development practice and shows how much of the modern agent workflow was once performed manually across the boundary between two separate tools.
The surviving source and current compatibility need review, and the implementation reflects an early learning-stage process.
Even an inefficient copy-and-paste workflow can teach the full feedback loop of building, debugging, and finishing a real application.
Preserve representative screenshots and source history as an honest early-work record rather than modernizing away its context.