Autographe Is Already Changing

Autographe is changing from a Mac app for writers, to a Mac app for Swift developers!

Its amazing how starting actually working on a planned software product, could change ones beliefs about that product. For Autographe, it was me realizing how much I enjoy programming in Swift and how much I wanted -without knowing it- a programmers text editor that mimics my current Doom Emacs setup while leveraging the full power of a native macOS app all for Swift development.

I started working on Autographe as being the writers desktop app, and it was a lot of fun and learning. Diving especially into the text manipulation layer and knowing a thing or two about SourceKit LSP (since I work exclusively on Doom Emacs) made me realize that I already know/have the basic building blocks of a native Swift text editor! So I said to myself why not give it a shot, especially that I’m a firm believer in building products that solve our own problems; and Autographe as a writers app is far less a tool I will use extensively compared to it being my dream Swift text editor.

So, at this stage of development, and given the modular architecture I’ve put from the start, it wasn’t that hard to actually convert the current codebase to a Swift editor with all the modal and keyboard-first niceties I’ve developed, the result is an amazing MVP that convinced me to make the heretical decision: building my own text editor!

Autographe -as a project- is now a Swift/code editor with the soul of Doom Emacs and the body of a native macOS app. It will be modal, workspace oriented, and built around the pillars of the Swift ecosystem (SourceKit LSP code intelligence, SwiftPM, xcodebuild etc..) Autographe is built for a specific persona: the Swift hacker who uses swift beyond iOS development (server code, CLIs, emmbedded and WASM), who finds Xcode heavy, and wants a gorgeous native tool that is rooted in the Emacs/Vim culture.

Autographe will not be a fully fledged IDE, even if LSP gives us many cool code intelligence features. Xcode already is the best IDE for Apple specific development. Autographe is lite by conviction; it will be a trimmed out Doom Emacs/Vim version with native performance and leveraging the Swift ecosystem command line tools to get things done, instead of bloating the UI with point-and-click complex workflows.

Last but not least: I’ll craft it on my own, no AI assistance, because I want to build my own tools and put into them my own personality, all while taking the time to learn. And for the final product, there will be no AI tools for code assistance; I want to encourage Swift developers to give their craft more importance by doing it themselves, I’m sure it will be better for them and for the ecosystem.

Let’s do it!