ABOUT ME

From Construction Sites to the App Store

I'm Coleton, an AI-native iOS engineer. I build my own apps and write about the work.

MY STORY

The Path Less Traveled

The Construction Site

Before I wrote my first line of code, I was swinging hammers on construction sites in Arkansas. Physical work taught me something that stuck: you build things one piece at a time, and shortcuts always come back to haunt you.

Teaching Myself to Code

I started on Udemy and YouTube. No CS degree, no bootcamp. Just relentless curiosity and a refusal to quit. Flutter was the gateway: I could build for iOS and Android from day one.

The best engineers I know are the ones who never stopped being students.

Going Pro

Freelanced on Upwork, then landed an iOS apprenticeship in 2021. Within months I was leading features, building internal frameworks, and shipping to the App Store. The self-taught reps translated directly into professional velocity.

The AI Shift

When LLMs arrived I started building with them. ProAct was the first app I shipped that way. Most of the code is generated now. The decisions are still mine, and those are the part worth writing about.

Ship it, learn from it, ship it better.

Writing It Down

I write High Agency for engineers like me: people who like building, use the models every day, and want more control over their work, their income, and their time. One essay a week, from the apps I am actually shipping.

NOW

What I'm Working On

ActiveBuilding

ProAct

AI-powered migraine prediction for iOS. Live on the App Store with subscription pricing.

ActiveWriting

High Agency

One essay a week for engineers who want more control over their work, their income, and their time.

ActiveBuilding

FamilyQuest

Gamified family task management. 42k lines of Swift, 602 tests, 22 packages. Unreleased.

HOW I GOT HERE

Seven Years in Fast Forward

2019

Construction Sites, Late Nights, and a Laptop

Working a physical job during the day. A five-year-old at home. Teaching myself to code in the evenings. No CS degree, no bootcamp, no safety net. Just Udemy, YouTube, and the stubborn belief that if other people could build apps, I could figure it out too.

Self-taughtEvenings & weekendsFirst lines of code

2019 -- 2021

Building Free Apps

Shipped indie apps to learn by doing. Flutter was the gateway: build once, run on iOS and Android. Every app was free, every app was a lesson. The goal wasn't revenue, it was reps.

FlutterDartIndie appsCross-platform

2021

Freelancing on Upwork

Turned the indie reps into paid work. Built Flutter MVPs against real deadlines, real users, real constraints. Learned what it means to ship for someone other than yourself.

UpworkFlutter MVPsShipping for others

2021 -- 2024

The Apprenticeship

An iOS apprenticeship turned into leading features, building internal frameworks, and shipping to the App Store. The self-taught reps translated directly into professional velocity.

SwiftSwiftUIApp StoreCI/CD

2024

Eighty Percent of the Department Disappeared

Most of the people around me were gone inside a year. I kept going. Founded ColetonCodes, LLC, started shipping indie apps under my own name, and stopped assuming any single source of income was permanent.

ColetonCodes, LLCIndie appsOptions

2025 -- 2026

ProAct: Zero to App Store

Nine months from first commit to the App Store. AI-powered migraine prediction, on-device Apple Intelligence with a Claude fallback, shipped February 2026, then eight releases in the next six months. The first indie app with real paying users.

SwiftUITCAHealthKitAI predictionShipped Feb 2026

2026

The AI-Native Stack Goes Live

Agent orchestration, shared memory, and content ops running every day. Infrastructure I depend on rather than a demo I show. The systems exist to make what the models produce good enough to ship.

AgentsAuroraTrueSourceAutomation

MID-2026

Intent: Rebuilding a 4.62-Star App Server-First

PrioriPlanner earned 4.62 stars across 21 US ratings over 3 years. Intent is its successor on the same bundle ID and the same users, rebuilt from scratch server-first: zero backend SDKs in the binary, generated API clients, 15 numbered ADRs, and CI that fails on schema drift. In hardening for public launch.

Swift 6TCANext.jsServer-firstTestFlight

NOW

Keeping the Judgment

Two apps live, Intent in TestFlight, and the decisions documented as they happen: the architecture, the agent workflows, and the parts that break. This site and High Agency are where it gets written up.

Indie appsAI-nativeHigh AgencyWriting

High Agency

Forengineerswhowantmorecontrolovertheirwork,theirincome,andtheirtime.

One essay a week from the apps I am actually shipping: the decision, the code, and the part that did not work.