After 15 Years of Coding, AI Made Me Start More Projects in 6 Months Than My Entire Career Combined

TL;DR:I'm a full-stack developer with 15 years of experience, mostly building mobile apps, then web, backend, and desktop. After I started using Cursor and Claude Code, my productivity exploded — one idea quickly becomes a full-stack project with frontend, backend, and infrastructure. My project count grew 10x, but my memory didn't. So I built Dev WorkDir, a macOS menu bar app that organizes all your projects, auto-detects 29 frameworks, supports 26 editors, and lets you open or run any project in one click. Free on the App Store. 100% local, no cloud, no tracking.

I've been coding for 15 years.

Started out building iOS apps back when the App Store was new. Then expanded to Android, then React Native for cross-platform. Then web with React and Next.js. Then backend with AWS Serverless. Then desktop with macOS native and Electron.

You get the picture — I'm a full-stack dev who likes to build end-to-end. When I have an idea, I don't just prototype the UI. I build the whole thing: client app, web frontend, backend API, serverless functions, the whole stack.

It's how I've always worked. One person, full product. Slow, but thorough.

Six months ago, I started using Cursor as my daily driver. Then Claude Code for terminal work.

And everything... sped up.

Not by 20%. Not by 2x. By like... 10x.

Here's what used to happen when I had an idea:

Here's what happens now:

It's incredible. It's also a problem.

I used to have 3-5 active side projects at any given time. That was manageable. I knew each one inside and out.

Six months into AI-assisted coding, I counted:

More than 40 projects in various states of completion.

Some are full-stack apps with frontend + backend + mobile.

Some are just experiments I wanted to try.

Some are half-built tools that worked but I moved on to the next idea.

Some I genuinely can't remember building.

And it's not just the count. It's the complexity per project.

When every idea becomes a full-stack project with multiple repos — one for the web app, one for the mobile app, one for the backend API, maybe a shared package — you don't just have more projects. You have more projects, each with more parts.

Finding a project isn't just "which folder is it in?" anymore. It's:

Does this sound familiar?

This was happening to me multiple times a week.

The bottleneck shifted from "building" to "finding." And the worst part is ideas get lost. A project you can't find might as well not exist. I've had multiple moments where I started building something, only to realize I built essentially the same thing two months ago and forgot.

I tried everything. None of it stuck:

Here's the core issue: all these tools were designed for a world where you have a small number of long-term, serious projects. But in the AI era, we're producing a large number of short-term, experimental, full-stack projects.

It's like trying to organize 3000 digital photos with a film-era photo album. The tool doesn't match the workflow.

I built Dev WorkDir — a macOS menu bar app that lives in your menu bar and does one thing really well: it shows you all your projects and lets you jump to them instantly.

I built it for Mac because that's where I code. It lives in the menu bar because that's where I need it — always available, never in the way.

Here's what it does:

Drop a folder in, and it figures out what's inside. Next.js? FastAPI? Rust? SvelteKit? iOS project? Android? It knows.

Currently detects 29 frameworks and languages across the full stack — iOS, Android, React Native, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, Ruby, and more. The icon tells you at a glance what you're looking at — no need to open package.json

or Podfile

just to remember.

Since I build full-stack, one "project" often has multiple repos inside — web app, mobile app, backend, shared libs.

Dev WorkDir handles this naturally. Drop in a folder with 5 sub-projects, and you see all 5, each with its own tech stack detected, each independently openable and runnable.

Open in your editor of choice? One click.

Run the project without opening a terminal? Double click.

It auto-detects your start script and runs it. No more cd

-ing around through nested folders, no more forgetting whether it's npm run dev

or pnpm start

or cargo run

or pod install && xed .

.

Supports 26 editors and IDEs — Cursor, Windsurf, Trae, VS Code, all the JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, Android Studio, and more. Plus CLI tools like Claude Code.

The thing I kept forgetting most was "what was I doing on this one?"

Now every project has its own todo list right in the menu bar. Next time I open it, I don't have to reconstruct context from git history and scattered notes.

Branch name, dirty state, ahead/behind count — all visible without typing git status

.

Since I'm starting projects all the time now, I built in templates for the stacks I use most. Next.js, Astro, SvelteKit, Hono, Tauri, VitePress, and more.

Vibe coding starter pack: idea → choose template → 5 seconds later you're coding.

This was non-negotiable for me as a 15-year dev. No cloud, no account, no tracking, no telemetry.

Your code stays on your Mac. Always. Dev WorkDir runs entirely on your machine. It uses App Sandbox and Security-scoped Bookmarks for maximum security.

package.json

, Cargo.toml

, go.mod

, Podfile

, build.gradle

, etc. to detect frameworks and start commandsThe whole thing took about a month of side-project time to build the core. Most of that was spent on the auto-detection logic — getting 29 framework recognitions right across mobile, web, backend, and desktop is trickier than it sounds.

✅ The menu bar format — This is the right home for a project manager. You need it constantly but briefly. No app switching, no dock clutter.

✅ Double-click to run — Everyone who tries it says this is their favorite feature. It seems small until you use it for a week, then you can't go back.

✅ Full-stack monorepo support — I almost cut this feature to ship faster. Glad I didn't — it's the thing that makes it actually useful for people like me who build end-to-end.

✅ 100% local pitch — Developers care about privacy. This resonates way more than I expected.

✅ AI-era positioning — Most project management tools are from the pre-AI era. "Built for the vibe coding era" immediately tells people what's different and why they need it.

❌ I overbuilt the onboarding — Turns out developers don't need a tutorial. They figure it out in 10 seconds. I simplified it.

❌ Too many features at launch — I almost shipped with environment variable management, config file browsing, and a whole dashboard view all in v1.0. Cut it down to the core 4 features and shipped faster. Good call.

❌ Name was hard — Went through like 20 names. "Project Dock" was a contender. "Code Hub" was another. Ended up with Dev WorkDir because it describes what it is without being cute.

❌ I almost built for iOS too — That would have been a massive distraction. Mac only, done right. The right call.

If I started over, I'd:

If you're also a developer whose project list exploded after AI coding tools, **Dev WorkDir might help.**

It's free on the App Store right now. No subscriptions, no accounts, no nonsense.

👉 [Download Dev WorkDir on the App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dev-workdir/id6790132435)

Or check out the website: [9souls.com/DevWorkDir](https://9souls.com/DevWorkDir)

I'm genuinely curious:

Drop a comment below — I read every single one. And if you try Dev WorkDir, I'd love to hear what you think.

15 years of coding. Still building things. Now with AI, and with a menu bar app to keep track of it all.