Traditional software is built for thousands of people. That means it fits no one perfectly. AI enables software with an audience as small as one.

I had grown tired of bending my workflow to tools that were almost right. So I took advantage of AI and started building my own.

Kyle and BriStacks are in the App Store, for fun and sharing. They're pretty opinionated, so they won’t fit everyone, but they will a few.

Kyle is a text editor that connects to your AI. When your AI creates a file, it can push it to your iPhone or Mac via MCP for you to edit. Or the reverse.

BriStacks is an organizer where the phone's on-device AI generates the data structure and UI for organizing almost anything, then makes it searchable via Spotlight.

The others are more particular, built for exactly how I think, for an audience of one.

What tools have you built for yourself, or wish existed?

Part 2: On-demand Apps and Tools

Friction shows up at two levels: organizational and personal. The organizational stuff gets attention because the benefit is obvious and measurable. Personal friction is quieter. You just work around it, or you build something. These are the things I built.

Two apps I previously discussed, Kyle and BriStacks, have a slightly broader focus solving my issues and they may also help others. These next two are more focused to my own personal frictions.

BriKey

This app is a secure API key handler that works across iOS and Mac. It stores data in the Apple Keychain for syncing across devices, does automatic key validation and formatting, and puts the key into whatever tool needs it. A big benefit is that it segments my keys from client keys and tracks usage of each.

GSD

This is my kitchen sink app. It is made up of a bunch of tabs that all act as individual apps. It has a barcode holder for barcodes I need like library and gym cards. It has a playlist creator based on a photo that builds a custom playlist for the mood from a photo, great for music discovery. It has a social URL builder that builds custom search URLs across popular social media sites and links out or exports. I also have auto-login webviews for admin sites I need to access.

Being able to quickly spin up a solution to a simple problem or annoyance lets you get more done. These tools become compounding efficiencies.

The same instinct scales to large organizations. Remove enough little frictions and you speed the entire organization. What slows your team down that nobody has gotten around to fixing?