Building a macOS clipboard manager with Claude: A practical workflow case study

A developer recently shared their experience building Buffer, an open-source macOS clipboard manager, using Claude as a development partner. Instead of treating Claude as just a code generator, they used it as a planner and pair programmer.

Workflow details

The developer followed this specific workflow:

• Started by importing a basic macOS SwiftUI starter repository
• Used Claude to understand the existing structure
• Asked Claude to generate implementation plans for features
• Built features using Claude Code extension
• Iterated through chat while improving features and fixing issues

What made this effective

According to the developer:

• Planning first reduced trial-and-error coding
• Fewer failed generations compared to direct feature prompting
• Less back-and-forth debugging
• Lower token usage because they weren't repeatedly regenerating features

The developer noted that "cost effective" mainly came from reducing wasted prompts rather than reducing usage.

Result: Buffer clipboard manager

The resulting application, Buffer, has these features:

• Lightweight clipboard manager
• Fully local (privacy focused)
• OCR support
• Keyboard-first workflow
• Open source

Current stats show 100+ GitHub stars and 400+ downloads.

The main takeaway was that Claude worked best when used for planning first and then executing step-by-step instead of directly prompting for full features.