u/rash3rr

81% of apps never cross $1,000/month within two years. I'm solidly in that 81%. Here's the breakdown of a year of shipping.

App 1 was a tip calculator for the US market, 50 downloads, $0 revenue. Thought utility apps sell themselves, they don't, there's 400 of these in the store already and zero reason to pick mine.

App 2 was a freelancer time tracker, 78 downloads, $0. Spent 3 months building custom UI that confused people. Users trust standard iOS patterns more than creative experiments, learned that the hard way.

App 3 was a habit tracker with a freemium model, 340 downloads, $47 from IAP. Better but the free tier was too generous, nobody needed to upgrade. Revenue per install on iOS averages $2.28, mine was $0.14.

App 4 was a recipe saver, 120 downloads, $0. Didn't do any ASO, didn't have proper screenshots, basically invisible. The App Store has 1.8 million apps, discoverability without marketing is zero.

App 5 was a workout log, 890 downloads, $265 from a $2.99 unlock. Best performer because I spent time on screenshots and ASO keywords. Still pathetic compared to the 4 months I spent building it.

App 6 was a mood journal, launched, got 40 downloads, $0. Gave up marketing it after a week.

What I got wrong was obvious in hindsight. Spent 90% of time coding and 10% on everything else. Design was always an afterthought, slapped together in the last week. Marketing was basically nonexistent. By app 5 I started using sleek.design for the UI before writing any code with claude.ai and that's when the screenshots and store presence finally looked professional, which directly led to it being the only one that made any money.

The guy who shipped 8 apps and made $1,464 in 2025 said the same thing: marketing beats code every time. A great app nobody knows about is invisible. The top 1% of publishers capture 90% of all store revenue. The other 99% of us are fighting over scraps with bad screenshots and no distribution.

If I did it again I'd spend 40% of my time on marketing and design before writing a single line of Swift. The code was never the problem.

Split this into two categories because they solve different problems, the general AI design tools give you visuals you rebuild by hand, and there's a smaller set that goes design straight to SwiftUI.

Design to SwiftUI directly: SwiftUI Inspector (swiftui.ai) is a free Figma plugin that exports shapes, colors, text labels and layout stacks as SwiftUI, handles rotation, opacity, shadows, blend modes, wraps selections in HStack/VStack/ZStack, Pro tier for more control. Compot is on the App Store, free with IAP, 100+ prebuilt SwiftUI components plus generates Swift from an image or text description. iSwift.dev generates buildable SwiftUI projects from plain English, free for the screen generator. These are the closest to skipping the rebuild step.

General AI design tools, all of which mean manual SwiftUI work after:

Google Stitch is free with no paid tier, 400 daily credits, rebuilt March 2026 with infinite canvas and Gemini 2.5 Pro on experimental mode. Exports Figma with layers intact plus HTML/CSS. Material Design native so nav and spacing come out Android-shaped. Still a Labs experiment, no production SLA, single user.

Uizard Pro is $12/mo annual for 500 generations, Business $39/mo. Free tier is 3 generations a month. No production code export and output repeats across projects.

Figma Professional is $16/seat annual, $20 monthly, Dev seat $12, Collab $3. AI credits meter separately at $0.03 each with no rollover. Best iOS UI kits, most control, longest ramp.

SleekDesign around $20/mo does full mobile screens from a description and runs the same prompt through different models to compare, exports Figma and code. Cons: not iOS-native so HIG patterns need explicit prompting, weak on complex custom components, better for early screens than production specs.

If you want the least hand-rebuilding, pair a general tool for exploration with SwiftUI Inspector on the Figma export. Anyone using iSwift or Compot on a real shipped app? Curious how the generated code holds up past prototype stage.

Went through most of the options seriously over the last few months, here's where each one actually fits for app UI work:

Google Stitch is free, Material Design native, generates multiple interconnected screens since the 2026 rework, good starting point for Android-focused work. Consistency across screens can be hit or miss, better for fast exploration than polished final output

Uizard runs $12/month Pro, multi-screen wireframes from text prompts, sketch-to-screen feature is genuinely useful, now part of Miro so collaboration is solid. Outputs feel templated across different projects, harder to get something that feels unique to your specific app

Figma with UX Pilot is the most control you'll get, AI generation inside your existing Figma workflow, credit-metered even on free plan, full access needs a paid seat. Still the go-to if your team already lives in Figma daily

Sleek Design around $20/month generates complete mobile app screens from descriptions, full flows not just components, iteration is fast enough that you're not losing momentum, output quality holds up for stakeholder presentations and engineering handoffs. Less pixel control than Figma, hits limits on complex custom components, better for early stage exploration than final production specs

For solo product designers or small teams the choice is basically Stitch if budget is zero, sleek if you need complete app flows quickly without the Figma learning curve, Figma plus UX Pilot if design precision matters more than speed

What's everyone landing on for app UI work, feels like the AI design toolstack is still evolving fast enough that what worked 6 months ago isn't necessarily the best option now

Tested most of the AI design tools seriously over the last few months, here's an honest breakdown of where they genuinely replace Figma and where they fall short:

Where AI tools win:

Early stage mockups and exploration, getting from idea to designed screens in hours instead of weeks, investor decks, engineering reference designs, solo founders and developers who need professional looking UI without spending months learning Figma. SleekDesign at $20/month handles full mobile app flows from text descriptions well enough that most people can't tell it wasn't hand-designed, Google Stitch is free and Material Design native which makes it solid for Android work, Uizard at $12/month Pro is good for sketch-to-screen and collaborative wireframing

Where Figma still wins:

Pixel-precise production handoffs, complex design systems with shared components, team collaboration at scale, final polish on anything shipping to a large user base, anything requiring granular control over spacing and component behavior. AI tools hit their limits fast on custom components and brand-specific design systems

The honest middle ground:

AI tools are genuinely good enough for 80% of what early stage founders and solo builders need, they're not replacing senior designers on complex products, the workflow that makes sense is AI for exploration and early mockups then Figma when precision actually matters

Cost comparison is stark, Figma free plan plus weeks of learning versus sleek at $20/month and usable screens in an afternoon, for non-designers the math is obvious

Spent the last few weeks using all three for different projects, here's where each one actually fits and where it falls short:

V0 is the strongest for web component generation, buttons, cards, nav bars, individual UI pieces in React, fast and the code quality is solid. Falls apart when you need full app flows designed cohesively, it's a component tool not a screen designer, and it's web-first so mobile patterns don't come out right

Claude is incredible for building logic and functionality but UI without a mockup reference comes out generic and bland, works way better as a build tool when you already have screens to reference, not as a design tool from scratch

SleekDesign around $20/month does complete mobile app screens from a description, full flows not components, iteration is fast, output quality is good enough for investor decks and engineering handoffs. Less control than Figma for pixel-precise work, hits limits on complex custom components, better for early stage than final production polish

The workflow that makes sense is design full screens in sleek first, then bring Claude in to build against the mockup, use V0 for specific web components if needed. Each tool does a different job and trying to make any one of them do all three is where people waste time

Cost across the stack is sleek at $20/month plus Claude Pro at $20/month, compare that to hiring a designer at $2-3k for a few screens and the math is pretty obvious for solo builders

Went through most of the options after spending weeks stuck in Figma getting nowhere, here's what the landscape looks like for non-designer founders right now:

Figma is the industry standard but the learning curve is brutal if you're not designing daily, free plan exists but realistically takes weeks to produce anything investor-ready without prior design experience

V0 is great for web components and code generation, not built for full mobile app flows, better for developers who need UI components than founders who need complete mockups

Uizard runs $12/month on Pro, does multi-screen wireframes from text prompts, sketch-to-screen feature is useful, outputs can feel templated across different projects

SleekDesign runs around $20/month, describe your app and get complete mobile screens back fast, good enough for investor decks and engineering handoffs without touching Figma, iterates quickly from descriptions. Cons: less pixel control than Figma, hits limits on complex custom components, better for early stage exploration than final production handoff

Claude handles copy and content direction well alongside any of these if you need placeholder text or flow logic thought through before building

For pre-seed founders who need something investor-ready fast without a design team, the choice is basically Uizard if budget is tight, sleek if you need full mobile flows quickly, Figma if you have weeks to learn it properly

Designing Android UI has always been the part that slows me down, either spending weeks in Figma or just winging it in XML and regretting it when the app looks rough

Went through most of the options people recommend to figure out what's worth the time:

Google Stitch is free, Material Design native which is perfect for Android, generates interconnected screens since the 2026 rework, good starting point but consistency across screens can be hit or miss, better for fast exploration than polished final output

Uizard runs $12/month on Pro, does full multi-screen wireframes from text prompts, sketch-to-UI feature is genuinely useful, acquired by Miro so it's more collaboration-focused now, outputs feel a bit templated across different projects though

Figma with UX Pilot is the most control you'll get, AI generates screens inside your existing Figma workflow, credit-metered even on free plan, full access needs a paid seat, still the best option if you're already living in Figma daily

Sleek runs around $20/month, describe the screen and get complete mockups back fast, good enough to use as build reference for Jetpack Compose, iteration is quick. Not Android-specific so Material You guidelines need manual direction, complex custom components hit its limits

Galileo AI no longer exists as standalone, Google acquired it mid-2025 and folded it into Stitch, older articles still pointing to it are outdated

For solo Android devs the choice is basically Stitch if you want free and Material-native, sleek if you want faster full-screen mockups without learning Figma, Figma plus UX Pilot if design precision matters more than speed

Spent too long either waiting on designers for mockups or fumbling through Figma for something that should take an hour, neither works when you need to move fast on stakeholder presentations or engineering handoffs

Tried a few options, Balsamiq is good for low-fi wireframes but the output looks rough for anything beyond internal use, Figma is the obvious answer but the learning curve is brutal if you're not designing every day, Miro works for flows but not actual screen mockups

For higher fidelity mockups SleekDesign, sleek fills the gap, around $20/month, describe the screen and get complete UI back in minutes, good enough for stakeholder presentations and engineering reference without needing design skills. Claude handles copy and content direction well alongside it if you need placeholder text or flow logic thought through

Cons worth knowing, less control than Figma for pixel-precise work, and anything requiring a complex custom component hits its limits pretty quick, better for early stage product exploration than final handoff specs

What's everyone using for this, feels like the PM toolstack for rapid mockups is still pretty fragmented compared to how good the engineering and analytics tools have gotten

Spent months obsessing over gym sessions and calories while basically being sedentary the rest of the day, wondered why progress was slower than expected

Turns out the movement between workouts matters a lot, started doing 10 minutes of stretching and light mobility work daily and my overall energy went up, which meant I was naturally moving more throughout the day, walking more, fidgeting more, just generally less glued to the couch

The scale started moving more consistently once I added the daily movement habit than when I was just grinding harder at the gym, NEAT is apparently a real thing and I was leaving a lot of it on the table

For the daily mobility stuff thwre are tons of apps that are free or run about $5/month, sends reminders and has short routines so theres no friction, just follow along for 10 minutes. Free option is YouTube but you're searching while already unmotivated which usually means skipping it, so pick any!

The gym sessions matter but treating the other 23 hours as recovery time was the gap in my approach

What's everyone's experience with NEAT, does intentional daily movement outside workouts make a difference for you or is it mostly gym plus diet?

Been vibecoding for a while and the design phase is still my weakest link, every time I open Figma I lose a week and the momentum dies completely

Spent some time actually going through the options people recommend because I was tired of shipping things that work but look rough, here's where I landed after testing most of them

Claude is incredible for the coding side but the UI it spits out without direction looks pretty bland, functional but not something you'd be proud to show anyone, same story with Cursor, they solve the build problem not the design problem

V0 comes up constantly and it's genuinely good for components, buttons, cards, individual pieces, but if you need a full app flow designed cohesively from onboarding through to the main screens it's not really built for that, it's a component generator not a screen designer

Uizard does full screens which is closer to what I need but everything coming out of it looks kind of templated, hard to get something that feels unique to what you're building

Been testing sleek design and it's the closest I've found to actually solving this, you describe the app and it generates complete screens not components, iteration is fast, you describe a change and get a new version quickly without manually tweaking anything, output quality is decent enough that I'd show it to people without being embarrassed

Not saying it's perfect, less control than Figma for pixel level stuff and probably not the move for final production polish on something complex, but for getting from idea to solid looking mockups before building it's the best option I've found so far

Curious if anyone has found something better or if sleek is just the answer here, feels like this part of the vibecoding stack is still underserved compared to how good the coding tools have gotten

Spent the first part of the year trying to overhaul everything at once, new routines, big goals, the usual stuff that burns out in a month, none of it stuck

The thing that actually built real discipline was almost embarrassingly small, I committed to 5-10 minutes of stretching every single day, that's it, no big workout plan, no transformation goal, just daily movement I couldn't talk myself out of

What surprised me was how much it bled into everything else, keeping one streak alive taught me more about discipline than any massive routine did, the daily act of showing up even when I didn't feel like it carried over into other areas

I think the lesson is that discipline is built by reps, not by intensity, everyone tries to white-knuckle a huge change and burns out, but one tiny habit you keep every single day trains the muscle that makes everything else easier

The smallest commitment ended up being the highest leverage thing I did all year for actual discipline, kind of annoyed it took me this long to figure out

Tried claude design but damn it burns hell a lot of tokens AND damn it is slow...

This is my recurring problem, I get motivated, stretch hard for a week or two, then life gets busy and I fall off completely, then I start over from scratch a month later having lost all my progress

The actual stretching isn't the hard part, it's showing up every day when I don't feel like it, motivation works for a bit then disappears and I'm back to being stiff and starting over

For people who've actually stayed consistent long term, whats the trick, is it discipline, scheduling, accountability, something else, feels like I'm missing whatever makes it stick for other people

Spent years optimizing my productivity system, tried every app, every method, every framework, and the thing that moved the needle most had nothing to do with task management

Started taking short stretching breaks every couple hours instead of scrolling my phone or pushing through, and my focus in the back half of the day completely changed, no more 3pm crash where I'm staring at the screen getting nothing done

Turns out sitting frozen for 8 hours straight wrecks your concentration way more than a messy to-do list does, your brain needs the physical reset, not just another break staring at a different screen

The weird part is taking more breaks made me get more done, I used to think powering through was the move but those 5 minute movement breaks pay for themselves in focus afterward

Not a revolutionary system, just moving your body during the day, but it beat every productivity app I've bought

Building a no-code project but the design phase is killing my velocity, learning Figma feels like overkill when I just need working mockups to start building

Been looking at design tools and most either do components only or feel too complicated for what I need, trying to find the fastest path from idea to actual designed screens

Tried a few options but claude seems to generate full app UIs from descriptions, wondering if that's actually the move or if there's something faster I'm missing

What do no-code builders use when they need to design but don't want to learn design software, is there a tool that just handles this part for you

Been thinking about why some people stick to habits and others quit after a week, and the answer is way simpler than motivational speakers make it sound

The people who build 100+ day streaks aren't more motivated or disciplined, they just removed the friction of deciding whether to do it, they have a system that makes showing up automatic instead of relying on willpower

I tried building a stretching habit for years with just motivation, lasted maybe 2 weeks every time, switched to using Mochi app with daily reminders and automatic streak tracking and suddenly I'm at 200+ days without even thinking about it

The difference isn't willpower, it's whether you've automated the decision to show up, motivation comes and goes but a reminder at the same time every day doesn't care about your feelings, Mochi handles both parts - the reminder and the streak tracking

Your streaks aren't built by being more motivated than other people, they're built by removing the decision entirely and making it stupid easy to just do the thing

Trying to design my own app UI and realized I have no design skills, looked at Figma tutorials and it's overwhelming for just needing mockups

Need to find a tool that can generate professional looking app screens from descriptions without me needing to learn design software first

Been testing a few options like V0 and Uizard but they either do components only or feel generic, sleek design and claude design seems to generate full app screens but wondering if there's something better out there?

Does something like that exist or am I forced to either hire a designer or spend months learning Figma, what do you all use when you need app designs but don't have design experience??

Been practicing yoga for years but only going once a week, felt like my flexibility wasn't improving much despite being consistent with classes

Started doing 5-10 minutes of stretching on the days I wasn't in class, targeting the areas that felt most restricted, thought it wouldn't make much difference

Within a few weeks my yoga practice completely changed, poses that were tight finally opened up, my range of motion improved more in those weeks than the previous months of just weekly classes

Realized consistency matters way more than intensity, one 60-minute yoga class a week gets you nothing if you spend 6 days completely stiff, but daily movement in between actually compounds

My yoga instructor even noticed the difference in my alignment and flexibility, seemed surprised how much it changed just from adding daily stretches at home