---
title: 'How I Made Money Automating iOS Apps With AI In 3 Days'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=fdBT0OAtzLo'
video_id: 'fdBT0OAtzLo'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 1074
---

# How I Made Money Automating iOS Apps With AI In 3 Days

> Source: [How I Made Money Automating iOS Apps With AI In 3 Days](https://youtube.com/watch?v=fdBT0OAtzLo)

## Summary

The creator demonstrates a fully automated pipeline for generating iOS app ideas, building them using AI tools like Cloud Code and Surf Agent, and submitting to the App Store. The video shows real earnings from one app ($33 in 3 days) and walks through creating a new app from scratch in a few hours, culminating in a successful App Store submission.

### Key Points

- **App earnings shown** [00:01] — Two apps created: Needle Collector and Poke Machine. Needle Collector earned $33 in 3 days (16 downloads).
- **Automation pipeline overview** [02:25] — Pipeline includes research phase (Surf Agent), build phase (Cloud Code), testing phase (Xcode simulator), and upload phase (Surf Agent). Manual step: review before submission.
- **Scaffolding repo** [03:32] — Private repo with scaffolding for automation. Clone repo, open in Cloud Code, run research skill.
- **Research phase results** [04:57] — Found top candidates including UPF Scanner, Hidden Camera Detector, etc. Chose 'Leather Vault' idea modified to 'Sealed Notes'.
- **Automated build phase** [07:55] — Cloud Code sets up Xcode project, writes Swift code, runs build. Simulator opens and automated testing begins.
- **Testing and screenshots** [10:00] — Mock data added, tests performed, screenshots captured. App called 'Sealed Notes' with minimalistic brown/cream design.
- **Voice message test** [11:05] — Recorded voice message, set future unlock time, played back successfully. App working as intended.
- **App Store upload via Surf Agent** [13:44] — Surf Agent navigates App Store Connect, fills out app info, uploads build, and submits for review.
- **Submission complete** [15:11] — App submitted for review in a couple of hours. Total developer cost $70, already partially recouped.

### Conclusion

The automated pipeline successfully created and submitted a functional iOS app to the App Store within a few hours, demonstrating a repeatable process for generating passive income streams.

## Transcript

just wanted to show you that this actually works because the yeah, the title and the thumbnail is a bit of a click bait, right? But you can see here, here is the apps I have created so far. We have the Needle Collector and the
Poke Machine. These are the two I created this week. Basically in just a few hours. So if you go into this now, the Needle Collector app, we can go to the Needle Collector app, we can go to analytics and you can see the first time
we only have one data point, April 17th. And we got two sales and we got $3, right? 262 impressions, 69 product page views. So this is looking pretty good. So while I was recording this video, we got a new data points for April 18th and
this looks pretty better, right? Now we have 16 downloads. So we made $27, right? So if you go to trends now, I think you can kind of see the total think you can kind of see the total amount we have sold for, $33 in just 3
days. And down here you can see our app, it's 100% of the Needle Collector, it's 100% of the Needle Collector, right? 16 units sold and we made $33. So you can see this is working. So let me just show you history and you can see
that we only have had this up app for a couple of days now up on the App Store. you can see uh version 1.0 was April uh April 16th, right? So you can basically see that this um
and the latest version was yesterday. So I've made this in just one day, a few hours with my automated setup. And this shows that this can work, right? We have already made some money and if you go to the apps list, we go to top charts for
the apps list, we go to top charts for paid and lifestyle, you can see our app is on 12th place here on the top list for paid in the lifestyle category. So I'm really looking forward to seeing the stats from April 18th when we get access
to that. That was yesterday. So basically I just wanted to start off this video by showing you that this can actually work. Uh but now I think we're going to head over and I'm going to show you how I set up this automation using
something from it. Okay, so I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but basically this is the Cloud Code automation for the iOS apps I set up. to spend too much time because you will
thing I set up is like a research phase, so we can try to find new app ideas using our browser automation agent Surf Agent that I did last video. Uh and so yeah, Cloud Code research tools. We can do move into the build phase, that is
using Cloud Code in my case. Uh could be anything, Codex, Open Code, whatever. And Xcode automation to build the actual app. And while we are building it, we're also doing the testing phase with Xcode and the simulator.
Finally, uh not finally, but then we're going to move into the Apple Dev browser automation using Surf Agent again because we need to go into the Pilates forms and upload the build, right? And finally, there is a bit of a manual
thing at the end end here because before we click like add to review, uh just a everything looks good. That is only the kind of the manual thing you have to do, right? So that is it. Let's just head straight into the research phase and I'm
going to show you how I set this up and how this works. Okay, so what I went ahead and did, this is a private repo, but basically this is the scaffolding for this automation setup. So every time I want to do a new app, I just clone
this repo here and I should have basically everything I need to do like a full run of automation. So I went ahead and did that. I created like an app six and I cloned this repo, right? And I opened this in Cloud Code. You can
see we are in the app six directory. I am going to pick Opus 4.7 now. I set it to high, I think, because I haven't really I'm not quite sure about Opus 4.7 yet. It's very slow and it uses a lot of
more time. But basically now we should have something called skill. That is the research part. So I'm just going to say read skill.md, right? This is the research part of the project that kind
of looks at um uh looks for new ideas, right? So we're going to start by using an npm install my Surf Agent. This is the
the browser tool I talked about for AI agents. I did a video on it, so this is npm install Surf Agent. And this should help us control this browser here, So yeah, that is installed and that
research phase now. So I'm just going to prompt this now to start a research phase just to find an app ID. So I'm just going to say start a new research phase to find a new app ID. Look for at least five ideas. Okay, so that was the
loop finished. You can see we ended up with top candidates, but these were not so interesting. It's like a UPF UPF Scanner, Head Tunnel for Beats, uh
strange. Uh Doom Scroll Daily Report. That's Hidden Camera Detector. That's a bit interesting, but this was not the best, I would say. So I wouldn't say this
research loops works all the time, uh but I want to probe it one more time and just to see if we can find anything that is interesting. If not, I have an idea I want to test out anyways. Okay, so now we found a few more ideas I thought was
Bedtime Stories read in your cloned voice from a parent. Okay. Uh Leather Vault schedule letters voice video for descendants. Okay, that was a bit here it says uh leave a message for your future self.
Uh but I'm going to alter it maybe and go for this. Packlytics House Routines for this Leather Vault idea, but I'm going to to be like a a future
a future notice. So we can set it up like in 6 notification for this something something. Let's just make it simple for this um for this video. I'm just going to do
like a simple thing. And let's go with this Leather Vault idea, but I'm going to modify it a bit. So let me do that. So we're just going to do Let's go for the let Leather Vault idea with a modification.
Let's the user record a voice message or a text message and lock it for a future time date. Market it like a message to your future self. That is going to be it. So this is going to be the idea we're going to build out now.
I'm going to give it a bit more instructions on the detail, but detail design, but this could be automated if you wanted to. Just put that in your Cloud Code skill and everything gets kind of automated if you wanted to. But
for this video, I just wanted to kind of take this step by step. So let me just not a detail, but an instruction on how just going to build it. So I just made some quick addition here. I want the
message design to be like a classic minimalistic brown cream color look, very simple to use, smooth, no login, user ID base, stored locally, no data collection, locked message disappear when app is
it. And I'm going to say now And I'm going to say now uh let's start the automated uh let's start the automated phase for building the app
and testing, uh simulator uh simulator screenshots, etc. etc. Good luck. So that's what I'm going to say and hopefully now all the systems
that I have will understand that now we're going to build the app, right? Maybe create a plan for it and all of this will be automated. So let's just see what happens now. So now you can see Cloud Corp setup. We have verified that
we have Xcode simulator and everything installed. We're going to pick a name, check bundle availability. We're going to scaffold the Xcode and project. Basically we have like a big to-do list here to actually write the app. And this
from now on should be automated. You can see we have the simulator here. That's probably going to pop up. So I'm just going to let this run now and I'm going to take you back when we are at some interesting points, maybe in the testing
phase because you can see now we are starting to write Swift code here and you can see we're actually trying to do our first build here. You can see we're running the generate build and hopefully now we're going to pop up the simulator
because from there we can actually see if the app works. And I did set up a pipeline, so it should do screenshots and it should do some more automated testing of the app inside using the simulator. And yeah, I think it did.
It's behind here. Okay, so here we have it. So this is the first look at it. Send you push messages. Yes, I'm going to say and we can see seal a message, compose your first. That looks pretty good. But now I don't want to mess with
good. But now I don't want to mess with this now because I want to see if the testing here. You can see it did a screenshot. That looks pretty good. And I want to see if it tries now to go into different modes of this app. And I kind
looks pretty neat. This was kind of the look I was look looking for and it's called Sealed Notes to your future self. Not bad. I Uh but let's see if we do any more testing now on this and if we can go to
testing now on this and if we can go to the launch sequence after a while here. Okay, good. So you can see we added some mock data here. We have a sealed message here, 30 days from now. letter to 1 year older me, okay?
Ready to open. We have a pep talk and an after the move message. So, yeah, this is looking pretty good. And here we're going to try to seal the message. So, this is what I wanted to see that we're actually testing the app
using Xcode, using Cloud Code. Now we are actually validating that the build and start uploading this. So, this is good and we are doing screenshots. Hopefully screenshots, yeah. So, we can
use in the app now and you can see this is still sealed. This is ready to open. We can break the seal and yeah, this is a pretty neat app. I might actually just launch this app because I think it looks pretty
good. I can see all eight screenshots captured, closing out the build phase, what shipped. And have you have a big list of everything. Demo controls, what we did here, next steps when you're ready,
steps when you're ready, real device test, and app icon. Privacy policy page. And yeah, we have some the ship pipeline. So, this is a bit important because we need an app icon, right? And
a real device test. So, I'm going to try it out now, right? Let's see if we can actually do a voice input here and see if the app works from test. So, we're going to do compose your first message. I'm going to do speak.
Hello, this is a test for the future me. You will hear this in about 1 minute. Okay, so we did that. Let's change the date. Let's just do it
date. Let's just do it 19th and let's do it in 1 minute. Something like that. Let's click seal. Now we have it. Opens in 1 minute. Let's see what happens.
Okay, and now you can see we have voice message unlocked 59 seconds ago and we can click on this and we can do break the seal. and we can do break the seal. Yes, and let's try to play it.
Hello, this is a test for the future me. You will hear this in about 1 Yeah, so I guess that's all we needed, right? Now I guess we are done. So, let's just clear the test data
thing I did, I created like a logo for the app. So, I just put this down here and have the app logo at sealed, right?
at sealed, right? Now create the privacy page and start the loop with the 13 pipelines with Surf Agent.
pipeline because there's a lot of work here on the app developer's side to everything. But I think I have that pretty much this a bit. And I want to see how this works now.
So, I'm just going to let this run. We have the logo. We need to create the privacy page. So, we're just going to use GitHub pages for that. That works fine. And then we're going to get into the upload part using the developer
store here on App Connect, I think it's called. So, yeah, let's see how it goes. here, right? Install the app icon, create a page, Surf Agent will start and we're going to go through all the steps we need to actually upload the page.
long as it's automated, it doesn't really matter too much. So, we're just happens. I'm probably going to speed this up for you. start here because it is pretty interesting to kind of watch the Surf
Agent do its work here. So, this is what I built. I did a video on this last time, but you can see it navigated to this page. We were already logged in, right? And now it's probably going to do like a plus on the apps here. It's going
to select a new app. It's going to start to fill out all the information about the sealed app we just created. So, you can see we have a bundle registered. It's going to do that via the API to actually do the things we need to do in
the API, upload the build and everything. So, all of that is automated and then it's going to start to use the Surf Agent to navigate the browser as we And yeah, that is what you're going to see now when I speed everything up.
see we have uploaded the build. It's just going to be processed on Apple's side and we should be able to fetch the build from the distribution page here. And that is basically it. I saw we had to change the name to Sealed Notes, but
that is fine. Don't see the logo yet. I might have to ask about the logo, but other than that it looks pretty good. But I'm just going to wait for the build to complete here now and we should be pretty much ready
to actually add this for review. Just click add for review and let's see if there are any issues here. No, that looks pretty good. So, you can see we are ready to submit this for review and I think we're just going to
do it because we probably get some response back that we have to correct anyway. So, yeah, let's just submit this for review and that is the whole So, that was super smooth in like a couple of hours we created a new iOS App
couple of hours we created a new iOS App Store app from scratch using Cloud Code, some research tools, some Surf Agent tools. And basically this is what I've been doing. So, if you do a quick recap, remember we used Surf Agent to do all
the manual browsing. We used like a skill and D file to set up all the tools we wanted to automate using the API and stuff like that. And we used my my Apple
Apple developer account to do this. That's like $70, I think, or something like that. And you will get the API keys and stuff you can use to actually automate parts of this. And I write an experience.markdown
file from all my learnings. And basically I just put all of this into I don't know if I showed this, but yeah, this framework here or this scaffolding this framework here or this scaffolding here. And when we have this, we can just
could basically do anything from scratch. Of course you need to install like the simulators and Xcode and stuff like that. But when you have everything set up, you can fire up the research loop. We got the ID from that now. You
can see we have the everything from there. So, it's pretty motivating. If we go to kind of Yeah, you can see making Yeah, like 20, 30 bucks. And this has already started to pay back the $70 we
already started to pay back the $70 we used on the developer. So, when we kind of pass the $70 for the developer cost, we can start actually being in profit. and if this is something you find
interesting and you think you can maybe learn some something because I've been automating a lot of stuff lately. And of course with the Surf Agent, go check the description. This gets much easier. So, now I have built many like these
small income streams, passive incomes that just runs in the background, right? And creates It's not like a huge amount of money, but if you add everything up, it can be something over time, right? So,
this is just one of them and I'm going to keep automating, trying out new different things. So, if you like this, give this video a like and subscribe. wanted to share today. Hope this gave you some inspiration. You picked
something up. And yeah, I will be back with more like content like this. So, have a great day and hopefully I'll see you again, yeah, and hopefully I'll see you again, yeah, very soon.