Projects
All the things I've built, one day at a time.
Sicht: Übersicht, Rewritten in Swift
Übersicht puts widgets on the Mac desktop and has done it well since 2014. It's also in maintenance mode, ships its own Node.js server, and runs every widget's command around the clock, even with the display asleep. Sicht is a from-scratch Swift rewrite that runs the same widgets unchanged: one process, 13 MB instead of 259, and widgets that pause when nobody can see them.
Mother: A Command Center for Too Many Claude Sessions
Dozens of features, a handful of them hot on any given day, and Claude sessions scattered across a Mac, a Windows box and a Linux machine. Mother sorts them into lanes, knows which sessions are running and which are waiting on me, and lets Claude read and write the lanes through its own MCP server. Named after the Nostromo's computer, lamps and all.
Skiff: A Native Mac Client for Seafile, Built on Seafile's Own Engine
I like Seafile. I don't like its Mac client, and the alternatives are thin. Skiff keeps Seafile's own sync daemon, replaces the Qt app around it, and rebuilds the rest in Swift: a menu bar panel, Finder badges, a file browser and share links. Two days, 26,000 lines and 1,500 tests later, it's the client I use every day.
Voight: My First Project, Rebuilt as a Native Mac App
iPhone Explorer was my first vibe-coded app: Node, Express, a browser tab and libimobiledevice from Homebrew. Sixteen months later I rebuilt it in Swift with zero dependencies on the device side. Voight talks to the iPhone directly, scores privacy labels in any language, removes apps for real, and answers questions from Claude through its own MCP server.
Offload: The App Nobody Thought Of, via the App That Crashed
A Mac app auditor in my Threads feed crashed on first use, turned into a Claude skill in an hour, and the skill's advice exposed the real gap: macOS has no way to offload an app the way iOS does. Now it does. Plus a lesson about vibe-coded product management.
Zen: A Clipboard Manager Where the Best Interaction Is None
A new clipboard app caught my eye with a real idea: convert what you paste to what the app understands. Its answer was a popup with 39 actions. Zen's answer is zero interactions—enrich at copy time and let macOS negotiate the rest. Named after the Liberator's computer in Blake's 7.
TARS: One Thing Really, Really Well
macOS 27 removed the hook every menu bar manager depends on, and watching them fall apart made me realize how much of their bloat I never wanted. So I built a menu bar hider that does exactly one thing. Named after the Interstellar robot—folds to a slab, unfolds on demand.
Esper: The Desktop from That YouTube Video, For Real
Scott Jenson demoed a desktop where the focused window sits center stage and everything else parks at the edges as small live windows. I watched the talk, then built it for macOS—with mirrors you can actually click.
Cloak: The Sidequest Esper Forced on Me
Every time Esper opened its stage, Do Not Disturb switched on by itself. The culprit was Muzzle, an abandoned utility I'd forgotten I installed. The paid alternative is $12.99. This is the age of personal apps, so I built my own in an afternoon.
Bespoke Menu Bar: Reshaping Stasis and Netfluss Into Apps Just for Me
Two macOS menu bar apps in a week: added features to a battery app that was 80% there, stripped features from a network monitor that was 300% there. What actually changed about open source in the AI-coding era: 'close enough' is now the perfect starting point.
UGREEN LEDs That Actually Mean Something: An Unraid Plugin
Migrated my Unraid NAS to a UGREEN DXP4800 Pro after the old motherboard died. The LEDs on the front did nothing interesting. Forked a driver plugin so the power LED shows array health, the network LED breathes with traffic, and the disk LEDs become a progress bar during parity checks.
Sleeve: A Native macOS VNC Viewer Because Nothing Else Worked
Built a Swift VNC client in a day after Screens couldn't type quote marks to a Windows box and Apple's Screen Sharing rendered the remote desktop wrong. Named after the bodies in Altered Carbon.
Wintermute: A TUI for macOS launchd Management
LaunchControl went paid and kept growing. I use it once a month. Built a focused terminal replacement in a morning with Go and Bubbletea—named after the AI from Neuromancer.
Birgit Studio: A Desktop CMS for Pottery
A family member wanted to show her pottery online. Built a full desktop CMS with Electrobun and Bun that manages creations, edits images, and publishes to Cloudflare Pages—in one morning.
Drift: Cross-Platform Clipboard Sync with End-to-End Encryption
Building a clipboard sync tool between macOS and Windows—two different languages (Swift and Go), one shared protocol, and end-to-end encryption via 6-digit PIN pairing. Named after Pacific Rim's neural handshake.
Bishop: A TUI for npm Package Management
Built a terminal UI for managing npm packages after topgrade kept showing cryptic warnings with no context about where issues came from.
Holly: Personal Presence Sensor for HomeKit
ESP32-C6 BLE sensor that detects when specific people are in the room, integrated with HomeKit via Matter—enabling personalized lighting automations.
Lock: Building a macOS Menubar App Without Learning Swift
Building a Bluetooth proximity screen lock for macOS—AI agent chose Swift/SwiftUI stack, wrote all the code, and guided me through Apple's code signing and notarization process. Built in one day without touching Swift syntax.
Welcome to one.daybuilds.ai
The first post - explaining what this site is about and why I'm documenting my quick builds.
Building This Site in a Day
Building my.daybuilds.ai with Astro 5, from zero to deployed on Cloudflare Pages—including content schema, theme system, and RSS feed.
iPhone Explorer: What's Actually on My Phone?
A Node.js web app that connects to iPhones via USB, lists installed apps with metadata, and scores privacy concerns—built in one day because a family member needed help deciding which apps to delete, and the tool didn't exist.