Originally appeared on PeterWitham.com

Originally I was going to wait until SwiftUI arrived, but I have decided to start work on a macOS application that I need right now. When iPadOS and macOS Catalina arrive then sure I might refactor to make it cross-platform, I have a need for that as well.

I think I’m also going to develop this app in public and share the journey, partly as a record for me and partly as fun for you.

So what is the application you ask?

Well anytime I do something with repetition I look to either automate or speed up the workflow. I have such a problem, every time I start a new blog post for my Gatsby based site, I need to add the same frontmatter to the markdown files and change the same fields…every time, I know how tedious right?

That’s where the app idea comes in. If I can create an app to solve the problem and learn something at the same time then it’s a win.

So the minimal viable product is simple, just needs to do a few things to be immediately usable by me at least.

1. Provide entry fields for me to fill in the metadata.

2. Give me a list of my templated post formats, I have several for different post types like Podcasts, Swift, etc.

3. Format the data into the specification I need for the markdown file to be usable by Gatsby.

4. Give me the option to copy it all to the clipboard after checking it is correct.

5. Give me the option to save it all to a new file ready for me to fill in the content.

Show us what you made already

OK, so after around 5 hours of work, I have achieved the list above without much fanfare right now. Which is fine, from here I can iterate the app and may even make it usable for others if there is interest.

The interface is dead simple.

So that’s the start, let’s see where it goes from here. Next up is the configuration for things like the template so that others can use it possibly.