I stopped coding for 6 years. Claude Code brought me back, and I shipped a Mac app

Six years ago I put my career on hold to raise my family, and assumed the door back into programming had quietly closed behind me. Languages had moved on, toolchains had moved on, and the entire Mac SDK felt like a different country.

I shipped my first Mac app anyway. What made it possible, and what I actually want to talk about here, is that I didn't come back to code alone.

The itch never went away

I didn't stop being a programmer because I stopped liking it. Life happened: kids, school runs, the beautiful chaos. But the itch stayed. I'd see a clunky UI and mentally refactor it. I'd read about SwiftUI and feel that old pull.

The problem was the gap. Six years of API churn is a canyon, and standing at the edge of it, the sensible voice in my head said: stay where you are, it's too late to cross.

The problem sitting across the dinner table

My husband works eight to ten hours a day at a screen, and it shows: stiff neck, burning eyes, the classic desk-worker decay progressing one sprint at a time.

He'd tried break-reminder apps. They didn't stick, for two reasons that will sound familiar to anyone who's used one: either he'd dismiss the reminder mid-flow and feel guilty about it, or, worse, the timer would fire in the middle of a client call. A fullscreen "TIME TO STRETCH" overlay while you're screen-sharing with a customer is a special kind of embarrassment. So the apps got deleted, one by one.

That was the product insight, and it came free with marriage: a break app that can't tell you're on a call is just a nuisance.

Coming back with an AI pair programmer

The hardest part wasn't the code. It was the fear of the toolchain.

What surprised me about building with Claude Code was how much of the work turned out to be judgment, not typing. I'd describe what the app needed to do, and it would write code I could read, review, and reason about, even after six years away. It was like pairing with someone who never gets tired and never judges you for asking the same question twice.

Writing the code was the easy part. It doesn't replace knowing what to build; it replaced the fear of starting.

What BlinkAway actually does

BlinkAway lives in the Mac menubar. You set your break rhythm, and it handles the rest:

• It pauses itself during meetings: it can tell when you're on a call, so no break reminder pops up mid-presentation. This is the whole reason the app exists.
• Five break types: guided breathing, posture stretches, calming nature scenes, short wellness tips, or a simple timer if you just want quiet.
• 20-20-20 micro reminders for eye strain.
• Streak stats, because gamifying your own health turns out to work.

One rule I set for myself early on: the app would never track my husband. Break apps know your screen habits. That's intimate. So BlinkAway collects nothing at all. If a feature required spying on you, it didn't ship.

The launch that flopped

Product Hunt gave us one upvote. One.

I'm not going to dress that up. Launching is a skill, and I clearly don't have it yet. But the product feedback I'm getting is real, one user at a time, starting with my husband's neck. The distribution is the part I haven't figured out. So this is what I'm doing instead: writing this, and talking to people who've actually used break apps.

What I'd genuinely love to hear

BlinkAway is free on the Mac App Store until October 15 while I gather feedback: download it here.

But more than downloads, I want criticism, especially from people who've tried Time Out, Stretchly, or any other break app and bounced off it. What made you quit? What would a break app have to do to earn a permanent spot in your menubar?

I'd rather hear that than get another download.

— Sara