# After 15 Years of Coding, AI Made Me Start More Projects in 6 Months Than My Entire Career Combined > Source: > Published: 2026-08-21 11:27:43+00:00 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: | Tool | The Problem | |---|---| GitHub/GitLab | Great for code, terrible for project management. Half my experiments never get pushed — they're just ideas I'm playing with. And even the ones that are pushed, finding the right repo is its own adventure. | Notion / Linear / Project management apps | Too heavy. I'm not creating a whole workspace for a weekend experiment. By the time I set it up, the vibe is gone. | VS Code recent files | Only shows what I opened recently. And if I use Cursor for one project, VS Code for another, and Xcode for a third? Nothing is in the same place. | Finder folders | Fine for 5 projects. Chaos for 40+ — especially when each project has multiple sub-folders for different parts of the stack. | 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. | Metric | Count | |---|---| | Years of coding experience | 15 | | Projects I had before AI (typical) | 3-5 | | Projects after 6 months of AI coding | 40+ | | Project growth rate | ~10x | | Frameworks detected | 29 | | Editors / IDEs supported | 26 | | Built-in templates | 21 | | Time to build v1.0 | ~1 month (side project pace) | | Tech stack | Swift / SwiftUI / App Sandbox | | Price | Free (for now) | | Cloud dependencies | Zero | | Times I've forgotten my own projects | 🫠 too many | 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.*