Why I Built GiftBoxd: A Dad's Solution to Gift Chaos
GiftBoxd is less than a week old. Yet somehow, I've got a marketing website live, a fully functional iOS app, and it's all been built in the evenings between family life, kids' bedtime stories, and the general chaos of being a dad in Cornwall.
Here's the thing: I'm not some startup founder with VC funding and a team of developers. I'm just a guy with an idea, a full-time job, and two young boys whose birthdays collide with Christmas. The difference? We're living in the age of AI.
The Problem That Started It All
My boys Zac and Noah have birthdays that fall right around Christmas. Every year, I'd find myself drowning in "who's got what" lists, broken spreadsheets, and the constant fear of buying duplicate gifts or forgetting someone entirely. I'm not a spreadsheet person. I'm an app developer with 20+ years' experience.
So naturally, I thought: I'll just build something.
But here's the catch: I didn't have time. Between work and family, side projects usually die on the vine. The difference now? AI has become my co-founder, senior developer, and creative sounding board.
What GiftBoxd Actually Does
The app isn't just a simple list. It's a complete gift management system that helps you:
Track Your Gifts: Keep a list of gifts you've bought, mark them as ordered, received, wrapped, or given. Add costs, dates, and where you bought them.
Save Gift Ideas: Write down ideas before you buy them, set priorities, guess the cost, add photos. Turn ideas into purchases when you're ready.
Manage Recipients: Connect to your iPhone contacts, set budgets for each person, add notes about their preferences, see their gift history.
See Your Spending: Look at how much you've spent over time, break it down by person and occasion, compare what you planned to spend versus what you actually spent.
Works Everywhere: iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Your data syncs across all devices automatically.
Smart Features: Add links to online stores, connect to Apple Maps for physical locations, take photos with your camera, and everything stays organized automatically.
No Backend, No Accounts, No Nonsense
Here's something that might surprise you: I hate subscriptions. We don't have anything apart from Amazon Prime, and even that's only for the free delivery. CDs, Blu-rays, vinyl all the way. I hate having to sign into stuff.
So when I built GiftBoxd, I did not want it to have a backend. No accounts, no data collection, no servers to maintain. It's not worth my time. Suddenly you need a help desk, GDPR compliance, data governance, security audits. Sod that. I have to deal with enough of that in my day job, I don't need it creeping into my side projects.
Everything in GiftBoxd stays on your device. If you want cloud sync, that's handled by Apple's infrastructure, not mine. I don't see your data, I don't want your data, and I don't have the time or inclination to build systems to collect it.
I couldn't care less about your shopping habits. There aren't even any affiliate links because I couldn't be bothered to try to understand the rules from the likes of Amazon, eBay, and the rest of them.
The only things I see are installation numbers (so I know if anyone's actually using this) and crash reports (so I can fix bugs when they happen). That's it.
This isn't some privacy-first marketing angle. It's just practical. I'm a dad with limited time, building something to solve my own problem. I don't need the complexity of user accounts, password resets, or data breaches.
How AI Helped Me Build It
AI hasn't replaced the need for understanding what I'm building. It's amplified my ability to execute ideas quickly. Instead of spending hours writing code or debugging errors, I can focus on the user experience and the problems I'm trying to solve.
Cursor manages my website and handles parts of the app build. It's like having a pair programming partner who never gets tired.
Claude Code does the heavy lifting on development tasks. Need complex features? Claude writes them. It's like having a senior developer who works at the speed of thought.
Xcode's AI tooling handles the day-to-day coding tasks. Code completion and bug fixes happen in real-time as I type.
ChatGPT is my creative sounding board. When I hit a wall or need to think through decisions, ChatGPT helps me work through the problem. It's like having a co-founder who's always available for a brainstorming session.
Even this blog post is AI-assisted. I'm writing it, but I'm using AI to help structure my thoughts and polish the copy.
Want to know more about the technical details? Read the full development story here.
What's Next
GiftBoxd is in TestFlight now. I'm getting feedback from early users and iterating based on what they actually need, not what I think they need.
The goal isn't to build the next unicorn startup. It's to solve a real problem I have, and if it helps other people too, that's a bonus.
GiftBoxd. No ads. No data grabs. No nonsense. Ever.
Just a dad who built something useful in his spare time, with a little help from AI.
Want to try GiftBoxd? Join the TestFlight beta and help shape the app.