"Independent Development Journal 7: The Biggest Change in this Update of PromptPlan is Its Ability to Be Called by Other AIs"

Personal Life

This week's update is a bit late, mainly due to the release of a new version of PromptPlan. For those unfamiliar with iOS, it took a lot of time to deal with the pitfalls of iOS development. Even though AI can write code, the code generated by AI still cannot run. After a lot of struggles, I finally launched it yesterday. However, today I found that the originally good features were changed to a demo by AI, so I spent a long time fixing it and released an iterative version today.

This week, life has been pretty much the same, and I haven't gone anywhere. I've been at home adjusting the new version, and I ended up having no time to update social content. After noticing my inactivity, the subsequent content stopped getting traffic, and my views have dropped from hundreds to dozens. Moving forward, I should carve out more time to manage my social media, as having an audience is essential for feedback.

The product iteration experience this month has been much worse than before. I also want to complain about the current vibe of coding. I see developers around me who are genuinely iterating on products. The current situation is that they are using Claude Code, but Claude Code is getting worse and worse. It has reached a point where generating code repeatedly is like drawing cards, and it often fails to complete tasks or makes random changes.

The issue of AI coding monopolies is becoming increasingly serious. After Cursor lost users to Claude Code, it was forced to adjust its payment plan and reduce token costs (a significant phenomenon is that the same prompts that used to output documents according to specifications now modify the code themselves, indicating that Cursor's backend has compressed the content we upload, leading to distorted demands).

After Claude Code snatched users through a direct interface without intermediaries, it also began to cut back on subsidized computing power. Nowadays, Sonnet-4 can no longer effectively complete many routine iterative development tasks. Aside from coding tasks that can be completed in one context, its performance in other areas is quite poor.

I originally had a very stable AI development workflow in Cursor, but after the backend cost-cutting, tasks that could be completed before are now unachievable. After switching to Claude Code, I spent around $200 in a month (at that time, Cursor only cost $20 a month) and still couldn't get Claude Code to complete the task list I provided. Instead, it created a long to-do list on its own, resulting in a bunch of errors after development.

The biggest problem with foreign products is monopoly. Once a monopoly is established, it begins to use its advantages to squeeze out competitors. The recent supply cut is a good example; users are forced to pay the same price for increasingly inferior products.

I sincerely hope that domestic large models can perform better, but currently, the issue of computing power limits the development of AI in China. This is indeed not an easy problem to solve. Once domestic computing power improves, we can have affordable AI services.

StickerAI

This week, no iterations were made, mainly focusing on thinking about the future product form and considering some adjustments. I started learning SEO because there is almost no traffic now. Personally, I think the product is quite good, but the lack of users is indeed a big problem. Currently, I can see some traffic from Japan and the United States, so I plan to learn SEO to optimize it.

PromptPlan

Currently, there is a relatively large version update. I initially wanted to support MCP calls, which would allow calling other services in PromptPlan, such as retrieving questions from your documents, opening web pages, and organizing tasks afterward. However, the implementation is challenging because our AI planning process is linear. Therefore, if we want to insert it, it may need to become a pluggable format. I haven't figured this part out yet, so I hid the MCP settings for now.

AI Planning Process Optimization

The main adjustment was to the prompts, and before intent analysis, there will be a prompt enhancement to increase the user input content for better understanding by the AI later on.

I also optimized the overall planning logic. For example, it now supports clearer tasks for adding, updating, deleting, and adjusting priorities. The content of the tasks has also been expanded, and now there can be steps like 1, 2, 3, 4 in the details (of course, this depends on the model's capabilities). Personally, I don't have high requirements for this part, as I only need a brief description in the details, so GPT-4o-mini is already very good for me.

MCP Server

This is currently a significant update. We can now call PromptPlan in other AI applications, such as Claude, Cursor, and Cherry Studio. One scenario is that you communicate your thoughts with the AI, and then you may have specific tasks to do. Traditionally, you would discuss and then find a to-do software to record it, but the problem is that you can't carry the context over.

Now you can let the AI application call PromptPlan and write in tasks, making it very convenient for you to review later.

Built-in Models and Multi-Vendor

Since configuring API keys and other settings is too hardcore for most people, I opened a basic model for paid users with unlimited usage, including Gemini, DeepSeek, and GPT-4o-mini. Other advanced models will be considered for subscription later, as I need to pay extra for each AI call and can't provide it for free.

Sometimes we may need to test which model is more suitable for our planning, so there may be issues with concurrent usage. I specifically made adaptations for multiple vendors, allowing you to test which model is more suitable for your current tasks.

Others:

Additionally, I fixed some bugs, and I'll share some product images.

I also welcome everyone to communicate with me about independent development and encourage everyone to download and use my product. 😄