Empower Apps

Daniel Steinberg returns to chat about Apple's Foundation Models framework and what changed in OS 27. We get into using AI only where it's appropriate, experimenting with #Playground, falling back gracefully when the model isn't there, when Private Cloud Compute is worth the trip, sessions, instructions and @Generable, tools and dynamic profiles, testing with the new Evaluations framework, and why AI should learn to say "I don't know."

Guest

• Dim Sum Thinking
• The Editor's Cut - Books by Daniel Steinberg
  • The Puzzle of the Perfectly Paved Path: An Introduction to App Intents
• Top Tracks
• Daniel Steinberg on X (@dimsumthinking)
• Daniel Steinberg on Mastodon (@[email protected])

Related Links

• What's new in the Foundation Models framework (WWDC26)
• Build agentic app experiences (WWDC26)
• Build AI-powered scripts with the fm CLI and Python SDK (WWDC26)
• Meet the Evaluations framework (WWDC26)
• Build with the new Apple Foundation Model on Private Cloud Compute (WWDC26)
• Bring an LLM provider to the Foundation Models framework (WWDC26)
• Foundation Models - Apple Developer Documentation
• Image Playground - Apple Developer Documentation
• Ship the Fallback First - Jeroen Leenarts
• Do iOS 2026 - Intro to Foundation Models workshop
• Bushel - macOS Virtual Machine App for Developers

Related Episodes

• Functional Programming with Daniel Steinberg
• Do the Wrong Thing Much Faster with Graham Lee
• We Don't Have Any Futures or Promises Anymore with Tim Condon
• Practical Agents with Donny Wals
• Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich

Chapters

• (00:00) - Stage Three: Using AI Where Appropriate

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• GitHub - @leogdion
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• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Graham Lee returns to chat about what it takes to become a software centaur: using AI to get better at the craft, not just faster. We get into why the job was never about typing code, meat proxies and Jevons paradox, his catalog of interaction patterns for AI-augmented development, why a model shouldn't mark its own homework, and Axminster, his UML-based macOS app that gives LLMs a design to follow.

Guest

• Chiron Codex
  • Chiron Codex Patreon
  • Chiron Codex Agent Skills - GitHub
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programmers podcast
• Software Craftsmanship's Consulting Detective

Related Links

• Axminster: AI-Augmented Software Design
• Axminister - Mac App Store
• Patterns in AI Augmented Software Development - iOSDevUK
• Software Centaurs white paper (PDF)
• Reasons to dislike AI coding
• Replacing MCP with Standard Filesystem Tools
• Is spec-driven development the end of agile?
• Episode 64: Using Pattern Languages for Object-Oriented Programs
• Object-Oriented Programming the Easy Way

Related Episodes

• The More You Know with Stewart Lynch
• Skynet Came and Automated Everything with Jared Sorge
• Practical Agents with Donny Wals
• Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich
• Actually Really Useful
• Objective-C Today with Graham Lee

Chapters

Watch
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Transcript
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Support the Show

Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters

Social Media

• LinkedIn - @leogdion
• GitHub - @brightdigit
• GitHub - @leogdion
• Mastodon - @[email protected]
• YouTube - @brightdigit
• X - @leogdion
• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Georg Tuparev stops by to chat about software that outlives its plans: projects scoped for a few months that are still in development 20 years later. We get into running a small team of physicists and astronomers, why WebObjects and EOF are still in production, where AI helps and where it falls short, server-side Swift with SwiftNIO, and storing exabytes of telescope data from observatories no cable can keep up with.

Guest

• Georg Tuparev - Tuparev Technologies
  • @[email protected] - Mastodon
  • Georg Tuparev - LinkedIn
  • tuparev (Georg Tuparev) - GitHub
  • Georg Tuparev (@tuparev) - X
• SkyObserver

Related Links

• Exabyte Data Storage - Georg Tuparev - ServerSide.swift
• Exabyte Data Infrastructure - Tuparev Technologies
• Astronomy & Space - Tuparev Technologies
• SwiftNIO - GitHub
• ServerSide.swift

Related Episodes

• We Don't Have Any Futures or Promises Anymore with Tim Condon
• The More You Know with Stewart Lynch
• Full Stack Things with Werner Jainek and Vojtěch Rylko
• Objective-C Today with Graham Lee

Chapters

Watch
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Transcript
Click here to view the episode transcript.

Support the Show

Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters

Social Media

• LinkedIn - @leogdion
• GitHub - @brightdigit
• GitHub - @leogdion
• Mastodon - @[email protected]
• YouTube - @brightdigit
• X - @leogdion
• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Tim Condon stops by to chat about Vapor 5, the biggest Vapor release in six and a half years. We get into dropping futures and promises for Swift concurrency all the way down the stack, Span and strict memory safety, and the new shared Swift HTTP server.

Guest

• Tim Condon
  • Tim Condon (@[email protected]) - Mastodon
  • Tim Condon (@0xtim.bsky.social) - Bluesky
  • 0xTim (Tim Condon)
• Vapor

Related Links

• Vapor 5 Beta - Vapor Blog
• What's New in Vapor 5 Beta - Vapor Blog
• Announcing the Networking Workgroup - Swift.org
• swift-http-server - GitHub
• Swift OpenAPI Generator - GitHub

Related Episodes

• Year of the Server with Tim Condon - Part 1
• Year of the Server with Tim Condon - Part 2
• Server-Side Swift with Tim Condon
• Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos
• Swift Server Workgroup with Joannis Orlandos

Chapters

• (00:00) - Server-Side Swift Today

Watch
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Transcript
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Support the Show

Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters

Social Media

• LinkedIn - @leogdion
• GitHub - @brightdigit
• GitHub - @leogdion
• Mastodon - @[email protected]
• YouTube - @brightdigit
• X - @leogdion
• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Stewart Lynch stops by to chat about using AI to learn faster instead of just letting it write your code. We get into planning in stages before you build, why Markdown is the universal language of AI, and the tiny "donkey work" tools he vibe codes for himself.

Guest

• Stewart Lynch
  • Stewart Lynch 🇨🇦 (@[email protected]) - Mastodon
  • Stewart Lynch (@stewartlynch.bsky.social) - Bluesky
  • Stewart Lynch - YouTube
  • Stewart Lynch | LinkedIn
  • Stewart Lynch - All Social Links
• Createch Solutions Blog

Related Links

• How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills - Anthropic
• Sosumi.ai - Apple docs as Markdown
• Typora - Markdown editor

Related Episodes

• How to Learn New APIs with Stewart Lynch - Part 1
• How to Learn New APIs with Stewart Lynch - Part 2
• Practical Agents with Donny Wals
• Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich

Chapters

• (00:00) - Xcode 27 & the New Device Hub

Watch
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Transcript
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Support the Show

Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters

Social Media

• LinkedIn - @leogdion
• GitHub - @brightdigit
• GitHub - @leogdion
• Mastodon - @[email protected]
• YouTube - @brightdigit
• X - @leogdion
• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Jared Sorge stops by to chat about Arborist, his native Mac command center for Git work trees. We get into running agents in parallel with work trees, when to drop from SwiftUI down to AppKit, and selling a Mac app outside the App Store with Sparkle, Stripe, and RevenueCat, and somehow end up talking about the iPhone Duo.

Guest

• Jared Sorge
  • Jared Sorge (@[email protected]) - Mastodon
  • jsorge (Jared Sorge)
  • Jared Sorge | LinkedIn
  • Jared Sorge (@jsorge) • Threads
  • Arborist - A native macOS command center for Git repositories and worktrees
  • Taphouse Software

Related Links

• Arborist
• Baseplate - Track your LEGO collection
• Tower - Git client
• Nova - Panic
• mise - dev tools, env vars, task runner
• just - a handy way to save and run project-specific commands
• swift-subprocess - GitHub
• Sparkle - Software update framework for macOS
• RevenueCat
• Managed Payments - Stripe Documentation
• SQLiteData - Point-Free - GitHub
• Sharing - Point-Free - GitHub
• Swift Navigation - Point-Free - GitHub
• Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs - Anthropic
• Mac-Assed Mac Apps - Daring Fireball
• Tuist
• XcodeGen - GitHub
• Shipaton 2026 - RevenueCat
• SwiftCon
• iOSDevUK
• Bushel - Mac virtualization for developers

Related Episodes

• Practical Agents with Donny Wals
• Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich
• The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 2 with Ben Scheirman
• The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 1 with Ben Scheirman
• macOS Indie Deep Cuts with Aaron Vegh
• Mac Dev in 2021 with Daniel Jalkut
• How to Learn New APIs with Stewart Lynch - Part 1
• Automation Fun with Jared Sorge

Chapters

• (00:00) - Why Work Trees

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Transcript

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Support the Show

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Social Media

• LinkedIn - @leogdion
• GitHub - @brightdigit
• GitHub - @leogdion
• Mastodon - @[email protected]
• YouTube - @brightdigit
• X - @leogdion
• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Saleem Abdulrasool joins us to chat about bringing Swift to Windows. We get into server-side Swift, SwiftWin32, Swift's C++ interop, and how to get started yourself.

Guest

• Saleem Abdulrasool
  • compnerd (Saleem Abdulrasool)
  • Saleem Abdulrasool (@compnerd) - Fosstodon
  • Saleem Abdulrasool (@compnerd) / X

Related Links

• Porting by a 1000 Patches: Bringing Swift to Windows (2019 LLVM Developers' Meeting) - YouTube
• Swift/Win32 - A Windows application framework for Swift - GitHub
• Swift/COM+ - GitHub
• Swift/WinMD - Windows Metadata Parser in Swift - GitHub
• Swift/WinRT - Swift Projections for WinRT - GitHub
• DXSample - Sample Program for DirectX 12 + Swift - GitHub
• vigil - A caffeinate-inspired power management tool for Windows - GitHub
• swift-winrt - Swift Language Projection for WinRT - The Browser Company
• swift-winui - Swift Language Bindings for WinUI3 - The Browser Company
• Install Swift on Windows - Swift.org

Related Episodes

• Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos
• Deconstructing Xcode with xTool with Kabir Oberai
• Full Stack Things with Werner Jainek and Vojtěch Rylko
• Swift on Android with Marc Prud'hommeaux
• Swift, Server Side, Serverless with Sébastien Stormacq
• Swift Server Workgroup with Joannis Orlandos
• Swift Package Index with Dave Verwer and Sven Schmidt
• Backend Decisions with Mikaela Caron

Chapters

• (00:00) - Why Swift on Windows

Watch
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Transcript
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Support the Show

Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters

Social Media

• LinkedIn - @leogdion
• GitHub - @brightdigit
• GitHub - @leogdion
• Mastodon - @[email protected]
• YouTube - @brightdigit
• X - @leogdion
• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Donny Wals returns to talk through a year of agentic coding. We go through how it's changed his architecture decisions, reviewing PRs he didn't write himself, managing tasks and context across parallel agents, and the gym-workout crash he fixed from his phone mid-set — plus where he still doesn't trust the agent: SwiftData migrations.

Guest

• Donny Wals
  • Donny Wals 👾 (@donnywals.bsky.social) — Bluesky
  • Donny Wals 👾 (@DonnyWals) / X
  • Donny Wals (@donnywalsdev) • Instagram photos and videos
  • donny wals - YouTube
  • Donny Wals (@[email protected]) - chaos.social
  • Donny Wals | LinkedIn

Related Links

• Cursor - https://cursor.com
• Bitrise - https://bitrise.io
• Notion - https://notion.so
• Raycast - https://raycast.com
• Grill with Docs - https://www.aihero.dev/grill-with-docs
• Maxine - One Rep Max Tracker (Donny's workout app) - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/maxine-one-rep-max-tracker/id6615073254
• GRDB.swift - https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift
• SundialKit (Leo's watch communication library) - https://github.com/brightdigit/SundialKit
• Fluent (Vapor's ORM) - https://docs.vapor.codes/fluent/overview/
• NSPersistentCloudKitContainer - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coredata/nspersistentcloudkitcontainer
• Practical Core Data - https://practicalcoredata.com
• Practical Combine - https://practicalcombine.com
• Practical Swift Concurrency - https://practicalswiftconcurrency.com

Related Episodes

• Independence Update
• Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich
• 120% Likely with Cihat Gündüz
• Platforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter Witham
• Actually Really Useful
• Practical Year - Part 2 with Donny Wals
• Practical Year - Part 1 with Donny Wals
• Practical Entrepreneur with Donny Wals
• Practical Combine with Donny Wals

Chapters

• (00:00) - The Agentic Coding Shift

Watch
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Transcript
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Support the Show

Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters

Social Media

• LinkedIn - @leogdion
• GitHub - @brightdigit
• GitHub - @leogdion
• Mastodon - @[email protected]
• YouTube - @brightdigit
• X - @leogdion
• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

After almost 250 episodes, Leo gives an update on what he's working on and what he's interested in. From passive timer apps, static site generation, to sub repos and RSS feeds.

Related Links

• WWDC 2026 & Celestra
  • Celestra
  • WWDC26: What's new in the Foundation Models framework
  • WWDC26: Meet Core AI
  • Bushel
• swift-build
  • brightdigit/swift-build
  • Introducing swift-build (blog post)
  • Swift.org Nightly Toolchains
• At Least
  • At Least
  • brightdigit/SundialKit
  • brightdigit/SundialKitStream
• brightdigit.com Website Upgrade
  • brightdigit.com repo
  • JohnSundell/Publish
  • JohnSundell/ShellOut
  • JohnSundell/Ink
  • swiftlang/swift-subprocess
  • swiftlang/swift-markdown
  • kabiroberai/node-swift (NodeSwift)
  • Tailwind CSS
• git-subrepo
  • ingydotnet/git-subrepo
  • Ben Scheirman
• Community & Outro
  • Consultation (ZCal)
  • Patreon
  • Newsletter
  • Donny Wals
  • Saleem Abdulrasool (@compnerd)
  • Swift on Windows

Related Episodes

• Actually Really Useful
• 120% Likely with Cihat Gündüz
• Platforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter Witham
• Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos
• Milk Diary with Kaya Thomas
• Deconstructing Xcode with xTool with Kabir Oberai
• The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 2 with Ben Scheirman
• The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 1 with Ben Scheirman
• Hacking with Ignite with Paul Hudson
• Now You Know What I'm Doing This Summer

Chapters

• (00:00) - WWDC 2026 and Celestra

Watch
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Transcript
Click here to view the episode transcript.

Support the Show

Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters

Social Media

• LinkedIn - @leogdion
• GitHub - @brightdigit
• GitHub - @leogdion
• Mastodon - @[email protected]
• YouTube - @brightdigit
• X - @leogdion
• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Software development has changed a lot. On today's episode, Joe Fabisevich talks about building with AI without falling into the trap of "work slop," why prompting is a communication skill, where Apple fits in, and Broadcast — his new Swift logging library for developers and AI agents.

Guest

• Build.ms
• Joe Fabisevich :verified: (@[email protected]) - Macaw-Social
• Joe Fabisevich (@mergesort.me) — Bluesky
• Github (@mergesort)
• https://www.threads.net/@mergesort
• fabisevi.ch

Related Links

• Artifacts | Fabisevi.ch
• Supporting Markdown Search For LLMs
• AI (Without the Hype)
• Workslop
• Being A 1.5-10x Developer
• mergesort/Broadcast: Simple and composable logging for Swift apps, servers, and coding agents.
• AtLeast — Passive Timer for Apple Watch
• MonthBar - Track your month's progress

Related Episodes

• 120% Likely with Cihat Gündüz
• Platforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter Witham
• Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos
• Actually Really Useful
• Practical Year - Part 1 with Donny Wals
• Plinky with Joe Fabisevich
• ChatGPTovski with Kris Slazinski

Chapters

• (00:00) - Work Slop

Watch
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Transcript
Click here to view the episode transcript.

Support the Show

Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters

Social Media

• LinkedIn - @leogdion
• GitHub - @brightdigit
• GitHub - @leogdion
• Mastodon - @[email protected]
• YouTube - @brightdigit
• X - @leogdion
• X - @brightdigit

Credits

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)