Axiom Alternatives

Axiom reviews and mentions

• Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode
  18 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 13 Jul 2026

  If it's okay to mention my own open source project, Axiom¹ does a good job of helping coding harnesses know how to do this effectively for Apple OS development.

  In addition to a deep roster of skills and agencts, Axiom includes several for-LLM tools². xclog, xcprof, xcsym, and xcui are designed to be used by LLMs, and expose capabilities in a token-efficient way.

  ¹Axiom: https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ ²Axiom CLI tools: https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/tools/

• Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI
  239 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Jun 2026

  https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ – Suite of skills, agents, and tools that make general SOTA models actually good at building and/or auditing iOS/macOS apps. Built for myself initially, FOSS'd it soon after.

  https://charleswiltgen.github.io/TagLib-Wasm/ – Also built for myself initially, FOSS'd it because there was nothing like Mutagen for TypeScript/JavaScript runtimes. (I don't hate Python, just think it's a bit of a mess.)

  https://pwascore.com/ – Built because I was tired of hearing how Safari was so bad at PWAs. Shows that, objectively, Safari is as bad as PWAs as Firefox (which is to say, not terrible).

• Ask HN: What Is the State of App Development in 2026?
  11 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 May 2026

  My perspective/bias: I've been supporting and working with Mac and iOS developers since the late 90s, when Apple moved me from Chicago to be an evangelist at Apple HQ in Cupertino. I also know as much as anyone about AI-assisted development, as the creator/maintainer of the free/open source Axiom (https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/) for iOS/macOS devs.

  It's not as dire as you might think. To software developers, the "AI revolution" is largely what the "desktop publishing revolution" was to designers. Yes, it meant the "riff raff" could theoretically play with the pros. Some percentage of the riff raff became pros. Most of the pros eventually adopted the tools and techniques used by the riff raff. Some of the pros didn't survive the transition and happily retired, their rubylith, Letraset type, and rubber cement retiring with them.

  The silver lining is that most of a software engineer's job isn't coding, it's thinking. LLMs can't do that, and we're not getting to AGI with current AI architectures. LLMs can amplify thinking, and an LLM in the hands of a software engineer or architect is at least two orders of magnitude more effective than it can be in the hands of a vibe coder. As LLMs get better for vibe coders, they also get better for pros.

  One can argue that, by the end of the decade, hand-coded Swift may be considered as unnecessary as hand-coded assembly has been for decades. But coding in modern languages is already 7-8 levels of abstraction above the metal. One more level of abstraction is not the death of software engineering, IMO.

• Use Boring Languages with LLMs
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 26 May 2026

  > I have noticed that the LLM delivers much better PHP, than Swift.

  If you ever have time to try Axiom¹ (FOSS), I'm very interested in whether you feel it quantitatively changes the Swift experience with your LLM/coding harness of choice, especially in regards to Swift concurrency. (¹https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/)

• Claude Code skills for modern xOS (iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS) development
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Mar 2026
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