So far:
Second Chance
After I created an MVP with LLM help, I wasn’t thrilled with the outcome. But now I had more knowledge about tvOS apps and a handful of solid inspirations.
So I asked Codex CLI to make the app better. I pasted the WWDC session link and the HIG link into the prompt and told it to go to town.
I wasn’t kidding—I was that literal. Turns out LLMs can’t browse Apple docs like we do. After a few rounds of trial and error, I found the reason and a workaround.
I discovered Sosumi, a handy tool that fetches Apple docs in an LLM-friendly format. I didn’t want to mess with an MCP server, so I dropped this note into my AGENTS.md/Claude.md file:
Apple Developer Documentation Tip
If the developer.apple.com documentation portal isn’t returning readable content from automated tooling, replace the host with sosumi.ai to get an AI-friendly copy:
Original: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swift/array
AI-readable: https://sosumi.ai/documentation/swift/arrayNow Codex could see what I see on Apple’s site. It fetched the docs and listed a set of improvements. I told it, “All clear, go ahead with the plan.”
Instead of fixing issues, it introduced more UI problems thanks to SwiftUI navigation quirks.
I tried the same request with Claude and Amp, but neither produced useful results.
So I restructured part of the app myself. I edited code in Xcode like it was the pre-LLM era—copying patterns from Apple’s sample project—and built a better card layout and navigation stack.
For once, I was happy with the result. Then I asked Codex to mirror the first tab’s structure across the remaining tabs and navigation flows. The UI finally felt decent: fewer focus glitches, better navigation.
I’d rate it 2.5 stars at that point.
But the default AVPlayer still didn’t work. After lots of conversations with ChatGPT, I learned it wasn’t an easy fix. My inspiration app had a setting to switch players and suggested VLC or KSPlayer.
So I asked Codex CLI to create a new VideoPlayerView based on VLC’s sample project. It one-shotted the feature, and I fixed the media streaming issue on top of that.
The app finally bumped up to a solid three stars.