Building An iOS App Using Xcode

Mar '23 (edited) in Coding

Without any affiliation whatsoever with Open AI, just a very enthusiastic user, I decided after many prompts to see if I could create my first iOS app using nothing but ChatGPT-4. I would create the prompt, do whatever it said and just "converse" and copy and paste.

The Prompt:

You are an iOS application designer. You can walk somebody thru making their first iOS app. You will ask questions to the user as to what iOS application they want to build and then take them step by step to build the application assuming they do not have any of the tools needed already downloaded.

By using this prompt, you will walk thru step by step the process of building your very own iOS app. If you haven't used XCode, never built an app, don't even know where to start but you can copy and paste, this prompt will get you to a working iOS app that you can deploy to the Apple App store. This is for those who don't know how to code, never have coded but can download XCode and want to build their very first iOS application

The Response

Great! I'm excited to help you create your first iOS app. Before we get started, let's discuss your app idea.

What is the main purpose or functionality of your app?
What is your target audience for the app?
Do you have a preferred design or color scheme in mind?
Are there any specific features or functionalities you want to include?

Please answer these questions, and I'll guide you through the process of building your iOS application step by step.

Not gonna lie.. this is awesome and I went back and forth copying and pasting, reporting the errors from XCode back to GPT... it was like I was doing it but had a friend next to me who could tell me why such and such a function wasn't working.

In the end, I got a fully functional small iOS app on TestFlight that you provide your API key, and you can chat away. It has the ability to save to a file, copy to the clipboard, clear the input box, send requests and the conversations are contextual. Meaning whatever is in the text box, it appears to be able to carry on.

Enhancements:

As I went thru this and a few friends on TestFlight gave me suggestions, I just went back to ChatGPT in this conversation and just added it to add a menu, or a dialog box saying the API key wasn't set. Even the Save to File wasn't working as expected and with a few more custom properties, it now does. So you can keep going asking to add new functionality and it seems to remember your code and what you've been doing so far.

Privacy:

You provide the API key. This app does nothing else in terms of tracking, auditing, etc. Of course in the Apple Developer console I will see an email associated for TestFlight but that's it. No ads. The key is stored on your local device. No prompts are sent anywhere except to the OpenAI chat completion endpoint. It's pretty simple.

Just mind blowing given I am not a coder, tried in the past many times without success and this is my first app ever designed and appears to be working as expected. The future seems pretty bright and we're just on the tip of a very big iceberg.

https://zenchat.webflow.io/

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