iOS Corner: the survival kit

The minimum you need to know to build for your own iPhone. Everything here is done through Claude, you never open a terminal, but you will click around Xcode occasionally when Claude asks you to.

The cast

• Xcode: Apple's giant app for building apps. Claude drives it; you mostly watch it, and occasionally click a button in it that Claude can't.
• Swift / SwiftUI: the language and toolkit your app is written in. You don't need to write it; you do read bits of it (rule: always read the diff).
• The simulator: a fake iPhone on your Mac screen. Fast, convenient, and not your phone, notifications and real-thumb ergonomics only count on hardware.
• A device build: the app installed on your actual iPhone, signed with your Apple ID.

The debug bridge (what /ios-sync installs)

Your app runs on the phone; the agent runs on the Mac. The debug bridge is a small piece of code added to the app during development so the agent can see what's happening inside it, that's what makes /ios-qa and /ios-fix possible on a real device. It is scaffolding: part of the construction, never the product. /ios-clean removes it completely at the end (Session 8), and the diff after removal should read: product intact, scaffolding gone.

Gotchas that are not bugs

• The app vanishes off your phone after 7 days. Free Apple accounts sign apps with a 7-day certificate. Re-run it from Xcode (ask Claude) and it's back. Annoying; normal; Apple economics.
• Three-app limit on a free account. You have one app; fine.
• "Untrusted Developer" the first time you launch: Settings → General → VPN & Device Management → trust your own certificate. One-time, per account.
• Developer Mode must be on (Settings → Privacy & Security → Developer Mode), the setup guide covered it; the phone occasionally asks again after iOS updates.
• Xcode's first build of the day is slow. Sometimes very. Make tea; it's compiling, not crashed.
• Baroque error messages. Xcode's errors are famously ornate. Don't decode them yourself, paste them to Claude, or better: /investigate.

The rhythm (same as ever, phone edition)

/context-restore → build the stage → /ios-qa on the device → evidence, not "done!" → commit → /context-save