The App Vercel Never Built
I shipped my first macOS app this week.
I shipped my first macOS app this week.
First commit: December 6th. Two days later: 75 commits, 31 releases, functional app, live website, payment system, licensing. All of it.
It monitors Vercel deployments from your menu bar. Sounds simple. And honestly? With Claude Code doing the heavy lifting, it kind of was.
Here’s the thing about deploying code: there’s this mental loop that never closes.
You push. Now part of your brain is running a background process. Is it deployed yet? Did it fail? Should I check?
So you open Vercel. Just to glance. And twenty minutes later you’re reviewing analytics, checking domains, wondering why that other project failed last week.
Sound familiar?
Respira Pulse was born from that frustration.
I wanted one thing: to glance up at my menu bar, see green, and keep working. Ambient awareness without vigilance.
The information is just... there. Quietly present when I need it, invisible when I don’t.
75 commits. 31 releases. Two days.
I’m what I call a “gringo vibe coder” — I build with Claude, navigating by feel rather than formal training. 22 years of building online systems, but writing Rust? Configuring Tauri? Code signing and notarization for macOS? That was new territory.
Claude Code handled the Rust. I handled the direction.
Initialize project structure. Implement complete application. GitHub Actions for releases. Code signing. Notarization. Homebrew cask. Fix clipboard write. Improve tray icon contrast. Fix onboarding flow.
Commit after commit. Release after release. Each one is a little closer to done
.
The moment that tested me: copy logs.
One of the features I wanted most. When a deployment fails, you click one button, and the entire build log lands in your clipboard. Paste it into Claude. Get help. Move on.
For hours, it didn’t work.
The button was there. The click registered. Nothing happened. No error. No feedback. Just... silence.
The fix, when I found it, felt like finding a loose wire. Click. Logs in clipboard. I said “yes” out loud, alone in my office at 11pm.
That’s the thing about building. The wins are small and private. Nobody sees them. But they’re real.
This is the second Respira tool to ship this month.
Last week, Respira Press got its first paying customer — a WordPress plugin that lets AI coding assistants safely edit your site. Now Pulse joins the ecosystem.
Small tools. Clear purposes. Fair exchanges.
Respira Pulse is live now.
Seven-day free trial. No credit card. One-time purchase if you want to keep it for 1, 10, or unlimited Vercel projects.
Not a subscription. I don’t want your recurring revenue. I want a fair exchange.
Two days from zero to shipped.
Not because I’m fast. Because the tools are finally good enough that someone who thinks in systems can build without being blocked by syntax.
The menu bar app Vercel never built. Now it exists.
Building in public from Brașov. More tools coming. If you want to follow along, you’re in the right place.