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Friday, August 14, 2026personal-pomodoro-build

A full macOS menu bar app in 14 minutes flat

SwiftApple Silicon

Tested Gemini 3.7 Flash by asking it to build a native macOS Pomodoro timer from scratch — and it delivered a complete menu bar app in a single session. 18 Swift files, zero external dependencies, running dockless via NSApp.setActivationPolicy(.accessory). The app lives in the macOS status bar as a 🍅 icon, opens a 330×550 glass popover with NSPopover, and ticks down via DispatchSourceTimer at 250ms intervals against a wall-clock targetEndDate so the countdown stays accurate even if the system sleeps. The model chose SPM over Xcode, wired MenuBarController through Combine's objectWillChange to keep the menu bar title reactive, and even handled click-outside-to-dismiss with a global event monitor. No hand-holding, no corrections — the architecture decisions were the model's.

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Andrew Voirol

Builder, hacker, shipper. Currently leaving localhost.

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