u/jonnothebonno

Hey all,

I have a tool you might be interested in, it's something I've been working on for a while and it's almost ready for prime time.

Tiny backstory as to why this tool exists which some of you might relate to...

So, I got tired of trying to remember the exact order to start my local development environment.

Some projects needed the API first, then Redis, then workers, then a frontend, then a tunnel. When something failed, I ended up jumping between half a dozen terminal tabs trying to figure out what had actually gone wrong.

So I built Stacksmith.

Instead of just launching processes, Stacksmith acts as a control panel for your local development stack. You describe your services in a simple .stacksmith.yml file, and it manages them from a native macOS app.

Current features include:

• Start and stop your entire stack together
• Live logs for individual services or the whole stack
• Health checks with overall stack status
• Service dependencies and startup ordering
• Port conflict detection
• Diagnosis of common startup problems using Apple’s on-device Foundation Models
• Built-in MCP server, allowing AI assistants to inspect and control your local development stack
• Uses Apple's Foundation framework (local ai) to help diagnose issues, this is all private, and everything stays on your machine. _You must have the fairly modern machine to use this feature though_.

I’m not trying to replace terminal first tools like Foreman or Overmind they’re great. Stacksmith is aimed at developers who want better visibility into what’s happening after the processes start, especially when something goes wrong.

It’s currently macOS only, although I’d love to support Linux if there’s enough interest (maybe even windows) the core is built using Swift and is platform agnostic so portability shouldn't be a problem.

Website: https://getstacksmith.app

I’m looking for feedback on:

• Does the YAML model make sense?
• What information do you wish you had when your local stack breaks?
• Does the UI make it obvious what’s happening?
• What’s missing from your workflow?

The app will eventually be paid, but beta testers get free access.

If you’d like to try it, send me a DM and I’ll send over a code.

So every time I spun up my local dev environment it was the same ritual: a terminal tab for the API, one for the worker, one for the migration, one for an ngrok tunnel, oh and one for Stripe testing, all started by hand in the right order. Then something would fail and I'd go digging through scrolled-off logs to work out which thing broke and why.

So I built Stacksmith, a native macOS app that runs your whole local stack from a single .stacksmith.yml file.

You describe your stack once:

• apps (long-running services with ports and health checks)
• workers (background processes)
• jobs (one-shot commands like migrations)
• tunnels (ngrok and friends)

Then hit Start All, and it brings everything up in dependency order, waits for health checks, and keeps live logs, readiness, and status tied to each component.

A few things I'm proud of:

• Dependency-aware startup. "Start the worker once the API is healthy" just works.
• Role-aware diagnosis. When something fails it tells you what broke, what it's blocking, and the next action (e.g. "port 8080 already in use, release it and restart API"), instead of leaving you to read logs.
• On-device AI incident briefs. It can explain a failure in plain language using Apple's on-device model. No cloud, no API keys, nothing leaves your Mac.
• MCP server, so you can drive it from Claude/Codex if you're into that.

What I'm looking for: beta testers who run a multi-process local stack (Rust, Node, Go, Postgres, whatever) and would tell me honestly where it's confusing or where it breaks. It'll be a paid app eventually, but it's completely free for anyone who helps test.

It's macOS only and currently needs macOS 26 + Apple silicon (the on-device AI piece leans on the newest APIs).

For more info check out https://getstacksmith.app

Thanks 🙏

Hey all,

I’ve been building a macOS app called **Stacksmith**, and I’m looking for a handful of beta users to help me test it.

The idea is simple: instead of keeping a bunch of terminal tabs open for your API, frontend, workers, background jobs, tunnels, etc, you define your local stack in a `.stacksmith.yml` file and run it from one place.

It can currently:

* Start/stop multiple local processes together
* Show logs per component or across the whole stack
* Handle apps, workers, jobs, and tunnels separately
* Track basic health checks
* Show dependency state between components
* Help diagnose common local dev issues like ports being occupied, failed processes, unhealthy dependencies, etc. This uses Apple’s Foundation Models framework.

I built it because I kept ending up with messy terminal sessions and half remembered startup orders for one of my other apps (not rails 🙈🙊). I wanted something that felt closer to a small local “control plane” for development, but without needing Docker or a cloud service.

I’m fully aware there’s TUIs to solve this problem but I just wanted something a little more visual and native to Mac.

As mentioned it’s macOS-only for now, although I do plan on releasing a Linux version in the future if there’s demand.

Website: [https://getstacksmith.app\](https://getstacksmith.app/)

I’m mainly looking for feedback on:

* Whether the YAML model makes sense
* Whether it fits your actual local dev workflow
* What failure states / diagnosis would be most useful
* Whether the UI explains what’s happening clearly enough
* Anything that feels confusing, missing, or overbuilt

The app will eventually be paid, but I’m giving out 100% off codes for beta users.

Drop me a DM if you want to try it and I’ll send you a code.

And no it’s not ai slop, I have well over a decade and half of iOS/MacOS dev experience. (Website is though 🙊)

I’m looking for a few TestFlight testers for Word Sphere, my iOS word puzzle game.

The game is built around a rotating 3D sphere of letters. You swipe across the board to find words, but because the letters wrap around a sphere, it feels a bit different to a normal flat word grid.

I’ve added a new levelling system with up to 150 levels, and I’m trying to tune the progression properly.

The main things I’d love feedback on are:

• Does levelling up feel satisfying?
• Does it happen too quickly or too slowly?
• Does the level system make sense in the context of the game?
• Does it give you a reason to play another round?

I’m not looking for polished marketing feedback, more does this actually feel good to play?

Happy to test other people's apps/games in return.

It’s built natively in SwiftUI using Canvas, which has been fun/painful in equal measure. The whole game is ~5mb

Hello everyone 👋

I've been building a SwiftUI word game recently and one part of it uses the Canvas to render a pseudo 3D sphere of letters.

Each frame projects letter positions from 3D to 2D, sorts them by depth, then scales/fades them depending on their depth and front facing angle.

Honestly the rendering itself wasn't the hard bit 😅 The bigger challenge was keeping frame times low enough that dragging and inertial spinning still felt smooth on ProMotion displays.

I ended up:

• caching pre resolved letter glyphs so Canvas wasn't rebuilding text for every tile on every frame
• reusing the same array for per frame projected tile data instead of allocating a fresh one every frame.
• keeping it as a single Canvas instead of hundreds of SwiftUI views

Pretty happy with how smooth it feels now, hence why I wanted to share.

If anyone's experimenting with Canvas heavy stuff in SwiftUI I'm happy to share more details.

https://reddit.com/link/1tq10qz/video/wxyd2umr7v3h1/player