Building for iOS with AI

About this course

You have an app idea, but you cannot code.

That used to be a fairly serious problem. Now, you can direct an AI that writes the code while you focus on the parts that still need your judgement: what the app should do, how it should feel, what should be included and whether it is actually good enough.

In this course, you will build SnapCal, a simple calorie-tracking app for iOS. Take a photo of food, get an estimate, correct it, save it and watch your day add up. Then run the app on your own phone.

SnapCal is the example. The method is the thing you keep.

You will learn how to brief an AI builder, build one piece at a time, test what it produces, fix what breaks and gradually turn an idea into a working mobile app.

Our Introduction to Building with AI and Building AI Agents courses are useful foundations, but neither is required. You can start here.

No coding experience is needed, and you will not need to write code yourself.

What you'll do

Plan a small app before building anything: the screens, the user journey and what actually belongs in version one

Write a clear brief for the AI, then work in a simple loop: build, look, steer, test and save

Build the interface for SnapCal and learn to improve it by describing what you see, rather than editing code

Send a food photo to an AI service and turn its response into useful information inside the app

Let users review and correct the result before anything is saved

Store meals on the phone and turn them into a useful daily total

Test both the obvious path and the ways your app can fail

Run the app on your own phone through Expo Go and test it with real food

Put the app in somebody else's hands, watch where they struggle and improve the experience

Go further with accounts, cloud data, analytics, API keys, spending limits and a private GitHub backup

What you'll leave with

SnapCal running on your own phone

A repeatable way to build iOS apps with AI: brief, build, inspect, steer, test and repeat

A practical understanding of how mobile apps fit together: screens, data, servers, APIs, accounts and analytics

Experience deciding what belongs in an MVP and what should wait

The vocabulary to work confidently with AI builders, including concepts like APIs, databases, environment variables, happy paths, failure paths and rate limits

Experience testing an app with a real person rather than assuming it works

Your next app idea mapped out and ready to build

Who is this for

People who have an app idea but have never known how to build it.

You do not need any coding experience, and you will not be expected to type code.

You should be comfortable making decisions, testing imperfect versions and telling the AI when something is not working.

For the course setup, you will need a Mac with Xcode and Node installed, a phone with Expo Go, and Claude Desktop on a Pro, Max or Team plan.

All of these can be downloaded for free to get started.

Building for iOS with AI

About this course

What you'll do

What you'll leave with

Who is this for