AI can build an app. It takes people to make a good one.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: AI has generated a lot of the code Nifty needs. It would be daft not to use it in 2026. It produces good code, puts together components and drafts documentation faster than any of us could.
But AI gives you what you ask for, and the first answer is rarely good enough. There’s almost always a way to make it clearer, simpler or easier to use. Without someone pushing for that, you get an app that works but never quite feels right.
AI will happily build anything. The job is deciding what’s worth building.
Good products still need people. Someone has to decide what goes in and, more often, what doesn’t. Someone has to put designs side by side and throw most of them away, push back when something is clever but annoying, and keep asking until it feels right. Someone has to use it every day and notice what isn’t working. Here’s what every change to Nifty goes through.
- Plan and designWhat it’s for, how it should work and what to leave out. New screens are mocked up a few ways side by side.
- Plan and design approvalA person approves the plan and picks a design before anything is built. If it isn’t right, it goes back to the start.
- BuildAI generates the code, following Nifty’s own guides and patterns.
- TestThousands of automated tests check the server, the app and the desktop app, many of them in a real browser.
- Try it outNew flows are clicked through step by step, the way you’d use them, in light and dark.
- ReviewIndependent reviewers, using different AI models, read every change for bugs, security and design.
- Human reviewA person tries it and decides whether it’s good enough. Often it isn’t, and it goes back to be built again.
- BetaNew versions go to the beta channel first, for anyone who wants them early.
- ReleaseThen it goes out to everyone on the stable channel, with notes on what’s new.
You could definitely knock up a task manager in an afternoon. You’d get a list with tick boxes. Nifty is built around staying on top of what matters: people, notes, documents and dates, all linked together. Then there’s the part nobody sees, like safe sign-in, backups and updates that don’t lose your data. That’s where the hours go.
The tools have changed, and they’ve made building better: less time on the typing, more on how something feels to use. If building is the fun part for you, go for it. If you just want something that works, it’s already done.
