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

A full-stack developer with 15 years of experience reports that using AI coding tools like Cursor and Claude Code increased his project output tenfold, leading to over 40 side projects in six months. To manage the resulting chaos, he built Dev WorkDir, a macOS menu bar app that organizes projects, auto-detects 29 frameworks, supports 26 editors, and allows one-click opening or running of any project. The app is free on the App Store, fully local, with no cloud or tracking.

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.