I Open-Sourced the Skills I Use to Ship iOS Apps at Lightning Speed

I shipped 6 apps in 3 months. A macOS app with a backend, a marketing site, a blog, and 5 iOS apps. Solo. While working a full-time job.

People ask how. The answer isn't talent or hustle — it's tooling. Specifically, Claude Code skills that automate the repetitive parts of iOS development so I can focus on the product decisions that actually matter.

Today I'm open-sourcing all of them: ios-claude-skills

What are Claude Code skills?

Skills are markdown files that teach Claude Code how to handle specific tasks. Instead of explaining your patterns every time ("use async/await, not completion handlers", "check for retain cycles", "follow our naming convention"), you encode them once in a skill file and Claude follows them automatically.

Think of them as reusable prompts, but structured and context-aware. They live in your project's .claude/skills/ directory and activate based on what you're doing.

The 12 skills

Skill	What it does
swiftui-from-figma	Converts Figma designs to production SwiftUI that matches your design system
ios-code-review	Full review: retain cycles, threading, SwiftUI pitfalls, security
unit-tests	Generates tests with proper mocking, naming, and edge cases
app-store-metadata	ASO-optimized title, subtitle, description, keywords
accessibility-audit	VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, contrast — finds issues before users do
localization	String extraction, coverage audit, best practices
networking-layer	Clean async/await networking with proper error handling
xcode-build-fix	Diagnoses SPM, signing, linking, and derived data issues
performance-audit	Main thread violations, retain cycles, missing caching
privacy-manifest	Generates and validates PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy
crash-log-analysis	Analyzes crash logs, symbolicates traces, finds root causes
push-notifications	Full push setup: registration, handling, testing

Why I built these

When I started building indie apps, I noticed I was repeating the same instructions to Claude Code over and over. "Check for retain cycles." "Use the project's color system, don't hardcode hex values." "Follow the naming convention." "Don't forget the privacy manifest."

Each instruction is small. But across a full development cycle — building features, reviewing code, writing tests, preparing for the App Store — they add up to hours of repeated context-setting.

Skills eliminate that. I set the pattern once, and every future interaction follows it. The compound effect is massive: I stopped explaining how I work and started just working.

How I use them in practice

Here's a real example from last week. I was building a new feature for Mac Wisper and needed to:

1. Implement a design from Figma → swiftui-from-figma generated the view using my existing design system components
2. Add API calls → networking-layer followed my async/await patterns
3. Write tests → unit-tests created meaningful tests, not coverage-padding
4. Review before merging → ios-code-review caught a retain cycle I missed
5. Prepare for release → privacy-manifest flagged a missing API declaration

That's an entire feature cycle — design to release — with AI following my exact patterns at every step. The speed isn't from cutting corners. It's from never having to explain the same thing twice.

Installation

Drop them into your project:

1. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/alexissan/ios-claude-skills
2. Copy skills to your project: cp -r ios-claude-skills/skills/* .claude/skills/
3. Start using Claude Code — it picks them up automatically

Or copy them to ~/.claude/skills/ for global access across all projects.

These skills reflect how I build iOS apps. They're opinionated. Fork them, edit them, make them yours. The point isn't to follow my patterns — it's to encode yours.

Repo: github.com/alexissan/ios-claude-skills