# "See an app you like, and rebuild it as your own Mac app": BAMA, 13 days, 1,600 stars, almost all from one YouTube video · GitHub open source

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/github/gh_daveebbelaar__bama.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> The author posted a 8-minute demo video on his 307k-subscriber channel. It got 10k views in 125 days, and the star curve tracked the video. The "copy what you like" hook is easy to pitch, and it attached itself to the hottest current wave, REA and Agent Skills.

[GitHub open-source project](https://stringers.io/en/github/index.md) · written 11-6

daveebbelaar/bama · daveebbelaar

# "See an app you like, and rebuild it as your own Mac app": BAMA, 13 days, 1,600 stars, almost all from one YouTube video

**What it is** A skill pack you install into Claude Code / Codex. It has the AI take screenshots of an app you like, break it into requirements, and build a native Mac app step by step, without opening Xcode.

**Why it took off** The author posted a 8-minute demo video on a channel with 307k subscribers. It got 125k views in 10 days, and the star curve followed the video. The "see one you like, rebuild it" hook is easy to pitch, and it rode the current REA and Agent Skills wave.

**B** **How you could follow it** Don't copy it. Take the same "screenshot clone → requirements → snapshot check" workflow and aim it at another platform or audience. The most requested thing in the comments is an iOS version, and in the Chinese-speaking world, mini-programs and HarmonyOS have nobody doing this. Pair it with a video of a finished product you actually use, and get a creator who covers Claude Code to promote it.

Grade B: the format is right, and the comments list the next asks (iOS, Windows, Linux). The Chinese-speaking space is still empty. But the stars depended mainly on the author's big channel. Similar repos without a channel stall at a few hundred, and the Windows version, which the author made no video for, has only 14 stars. Followers would have to solve distribution themselves, and platforms may tighten rules on cloning apps. Chatter in small circles

Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-10-24 · 1,663 stars · 7 days +591

GitHub · stars

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one

BAMA is a set of 21 skills for Claude Code and Codex. It lets an agent screenshot an app you like, write up requirements, and build a native Mac app piece by piece, all without opening Xcode. It was created 10-24 and reached 1,595 stars and 200 forks by 11-06. The work is clearly careful, but the traction came from creator Dave Ebbelaar's YouTube channel with 307k subscribers. Below: what it is, where the stars came from, who else is doing the same thing, and which direction to take if you want a project that can earn stars the same way.

### One 8-minute video, and the most-liked comment is "I'm cloning your product"

In 2026 Oct 26, AI engineering YouTuber Dave Ebbelaar posted a 8-minute 12-second video titled "This Free Repo Lets Claude Code Build Any Mac App." The first half-minute shows several Mac apps he built with agents. Then he covers why to build native apps, how BAMA works, and how to install it, and finally adds a new feature to his own menu bar tool, Onyx, on camera. The first line of the video description is the GitHub link.

As of 11-06, the video had 125k views, 2,469 likes, and 120 comments (YouTube, 11-06). The most-liked comment (59 likes) was just one line:

> "Thanks, I'm going to go build a Glaido clone right now!"

Glaido is a paid dictation tool Dave helped found, and the same video's description carries its promo link. Another comment reads "You think Glaido can't be cloned? We're building it," and someone else wrote "I already cloned Glaido with it." Viewers took the creator's tool and the first thing they cloned was the creator's own product. The comment section shows how direct BAMA's hook is.

The second most-liked comment (19 likes) represents another kind of viewer: "Funny, I've been doing the same thing for weeks, slowly dropping other apps. Yesterday I built an email client, today a whole suite for managing VPS."

### How the stars climbed

| Date | Cumulative stars | Stars gained that day | fork |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-24 | — | Repo created |  |
| 10-26 | — | Video posted |  |
| 10-28 | 384 | — | 69 |
| 10-29 | 606 | **+222** | 91 |
| 10-30 | 739 | +133 | 111 |
| 10-31 | 897 | +158 | 129 |
| 11-01 | 1,072 | +175 | 150 |
| 11-02 | 1,264 | +192 | 164 |
| 11-03 | 1,420 | +156 | 180 |
| 11-04 | 1,505 | +85 | 186 |
| 11-05 | 1,562 | +57 | 195 |
| 11-06 | 1,595 | +33 | 200 |

(GitHub daily star counts, recorded each day starting 10-28; no day-by-day numbers between 10-24 and 10-28.)

The video went up on 10-26 and hit its daily peak on 10-29. Then it declined steadily over ten days, down to +33 by 11-06. Between 10-31 and 11-02 there was a small rebound, which lines up with secondary spread: a Chinese "new GitHub repos" roundup account on X (@GitTrend0x, 2,178 views), an Instagram reel reposting it, and aggregators like skillleaderboard indexing it. How much each one contributed can't be verified (inference).

Other channels were small: the author's X post got 12 likes and 663 views, the same topic on LinkedIn got 91 reactions, and I found no dedicated threads on Hacker News or Reddit.

The best comparison comes from the author. 10-29 He also launched BAWA (Build Any Windows App), the same person and structure, with C# and WinUI 3, linked only in the video description and README, with no dedicated video. By 11-06 it had only 14 stars. The comments had several people asking "does this work on Windows?", and one written in Hindi said "make one for Windows too." The demand was there, but with no video pushing it specifically, it didn't take off.

The fork rate is also worth noting: 200 forks to 1,595 stars, about 12.5%, well above typical bookmark-style projects. Comments show people sharing what they built: "made a Markdown viewer/editor with every feature I wanted in one lightweight app" and "built a Swift app with it and it's on the App Store now." Some people actually used it.

### What it actually is

The README's opening line: "See an app you like. Rebuild it as your own native Mac app." Three steps follow:

1. **Clone** : the agent opens the app you like, screenshots every screen, and writes a screen index;

2. **Plan** : turns the screens into user stories with acceptance criteria, grouped into milestones;

3. **Build** : one story per commit, and before each commit every page is captured in light and dark mode and the tests run.

The 21 skills fall into five stages: start, plan, write code, design, and ship. A few are unique: `design-from-app` measures dimensions, font sizes, and colors from a screenshot and matches them pixel by pixel; `layout-grid` checks alignment against a 4-point grid and throws an error if things are off; `app-icon` generates a Liquid Glass-style icon file directly; `agent-cli` adds a command line and MCP to the app you built, so an agent can drive it back.

The setup barrier is low: one line, `npx skills add`, or a one-click install from the Claude Code or Codex plugin marketplace. If you don't know what to do next, type `/bama` and it picks the right skills for your project. There are also 12 ready-made tool specs (window snapping, window switching, launcher, clipboard history, screenshots, screen recording), extracted from the author's own Onyx. Copy one into an empty folder and tell the agent "build this with BAMA."

### The name and positioning are borrowed

The README's acknowledgments are candid. The word "any" comes from morluto's REA (Reverse Engineer Anything), which now has 430k stars and has been gaining 27k over the last 7 days. The skill format follows Matt Pocock's skills repo (310k stars). In the second half of 2026, Agent Skills were among the hottest categories on GitHub, and REA was the best known of them. "REA takes an app apart, BAMA puts it back together on your Mac": readers understand what it is at a glance.

The timing is right too: macOS 26 brought the Liquid Glass design language, Swift 6.2, and Claude can now screenshot native apps via computer use. These three only came together this year, so "an agent builds a decent Mac app without opening Xcode" has only just become possible.

### Who it's competing with

There are dozens of "Swift / macOS skill" libraries, most of them **knowledge-based** skills that teach agents to write SwiftUI correctly. BAMA is one of the few **process-based** ones that runs from screenshot to launch.

| Project | stars (approx., around 11-06) | How it differs from BAMA |
|---|---|---|
| getsentry/MobileBuildMCP | 6,500 | A tool layer that lets agents compile and run iOS/macOS projects; no process opinion |
| twostraws/SwiftUI-Agent-Skill(Paul Hudson) | 6,500 | A single SwiftUI standards skill; BAMA recommends using it alongside |
| AvdLee/SwiftUI-Agent-Skill | 3,800 | Same as above: SwiftUI best practices |
| dpearson2699/swift-ios-skills | 1,300 | Mostly iOS, mostly API knowledge |
| rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills | 860 | Covers all Apple platforms, including product verification and ASO, but no "clone an app" core workflow |
| fayazara/macos-app-skills | 690 | Closest to BAMA's direction: skills for building, shipping and maintaining native macOS apps |
| Xcode 27 built-in Agent Skills | Ships with Xcode | Apple's official knowledge skills, used inside Xcode. BAMA's pitch is not opening Xcode |

The one to look at is fayazara/macos-app-skills: five months before BAMA, almost the same direction, no big-name promotion, stuck at 690. BAMA's differentiators (the clone-first workflow, pixel comparison, snapshot checks) decide whether people who watch the video star it and fork it to try. But what got people to see it was the channel.

People are already copying it: hoy2on/BAA (Build Any App, a router plus skills for each platform, 11-06 built, 0 stars), MinnThikeTunn/Phan-Tee (a Windows version with 21 skills, 1 stars), and Stijnus/dsh-rev-eng (repackages REA and BAMA as a DeepSeek Harness plugin). None of these have taken off yet.

### The demand list in the comments

A few questions keep coming up in 120 comments, more direct than any analysis:

- "Is there an iOS or iPadOS version?" This came up at least three times in different wording;

- "What about Windows?" At least three times, including one in Hindi;

- "Could you turn this into BALA, Build Any Linux App, for native KDE?";

- "Can it make a CLI tool or a web app?";

- "Anthropic and others are tightening REA, will this still work?"

The last one is a real risk. 11-02 Tom's Hardware reports that Anthropic confirmed it added limits to Claude Code to stop it from cloning existing games, and some users say ordinary reverse-engineering tasks are getting blocked too. One commenter wrote: "Claude Code told me it won't analyze any commercial product." BAMA's "clone" works from screenshots and doesn't unpack binaries, so it probably isn't in the main blocking zone (my inference). Still, "cloning someone else's app" is exactly what platforms are watching now.

### If it were you

**One-line verdict** : the format of "split the full workflow of shipping a finished product on one platform into a set of agent skills" is right, and the comments already list the next requests. But BAMA's 1,600 stars came mainly from a channel with 300k subscribers, while similar libraries without a channel are stuck at a few hundred. Worth trying, provided you've already lined up a distribution channel.

**Who it's for** : developers who really know the native development of one platform (iOS, Android, HarmonyOS, WeChat Mini Programs, Chrome extensions, Linux desktop) and can write "what a decent app looks like" as acceptance criteria. Having a few thousand followers, or being willing to record your own demo videos, helps a lot.

**Who it's not for** : people who just want to rename BAMA and copy the skills as-is. BAA's and Phan-Tee's 0 and 1 stars are the reference points; even the author's own Windows version has only 14 stars without a video.

**How to do it:**

- **Switch platforms, pick what the comments ask for most** : iOS / iPadOS is asked for most, and the existing iOS skill libraries are all knowledge-based, with no "screenshot clone → user stories → snapshot acceptance" core. Build "Build Any iOS App" and add the iOS-specific steps: device and simulator screenshots, TestFlight.

- **Switch audience** : the Chinese-speaking world has nothing equivalent yet. WeChat Mini Programs, HarmonyOS native apps and uni-app are what domestic developers write every day, and "see a Mini Program you like, have the agent clone it" is an easy pitch in Chinese (inference: no similar Chinese project found in search).

- **Copy its packaging** : a one-line positioning hooked onto a trending template (X Anything); the first screen of the README shows a three-step process; a one-line install and a single `/route` command; about a dozen ready-to-build small app specs so people who don't know what to build can start right away.

- **Avoid its risk** : lead with "start from your own idea or your own screenshots" rather than "clone someone else's commercial product", and stay away from the part platforms are tightening.

**How to get users** : first build a finished product you actually use, then record a 5 to 8 minute video whose first 30 seconds show "this is an app I built with an agent, replacing these paid tools I used to install." Without your own channel, partner with YouTube and Bilibili creators who cover Claude Code / Codex, or post short videos in Chinese on Bilibili and Xiaohongshu. BAMA never went to Hacker News, and a "Show HN" with a browsable screenshot set of the finished product is a channel it hasn't used. The Chinese version can launch on Juejin, V2EX and Jike.

**Timing: before the window closes** : the Agent Skills wave is still rising, and REA alone is still adding over 20,000 stars a week. Building now still has a chance. Once Apple or Google bake similar workflows into the agents built into Xcode or Android Studio, or the skills hype fades, the same thing will be much harder to get attention for. Inference: the window is on the order of a few months.

**Signs you're wrong** : ① a similar project without a big-name promoter (like fayazara/macos-app-skills or some new iOS version) grows past a thousand stars on its own. That means demand is big enough and distribution matters less, which makes it more worth building; ② the author releases an iOS version with a video and gets a thousand stars in a few days. That means the gap is taken, so switch platforms but avoid iOS, and go to what he won't do (Chinese, Mini Programs, HarmonyOS); ③ Anthropic and others block "cloning existing apps" outright. Then the clone angle loses its meaning, and only "build a native app from scratch" is left, which is much less appealing.

### Data and sources

GitHub repo page, README and daily star records (10-28 to 11-06); YouTube video "This Free Repo Lets Claude Code Build Any Mac App" (published 10-26; views, likes, comment counts and comment text as of 11-06); the author's X post (10-29), and the LinkedIn post with the same title; X @GitTrend0x roundup (10-31); Tom's Hardware report on Claude Code restricting game cloning (11-02); competitor and copycat star counts as of 11-06, rounded where marked "approx."

[GitHub repo ↗](https://github.com/daveebbelaar/bama)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| twostraws/SwiftUI-Agent-Skill | Open source | 2026-03 | 6,478 stars | A single SwiftUI standards knowledge skill, with no clone, planning or acceptance workflow |
| AvdLee/SwiftUI-Agent-Skill | Open source | 2026-01 | 3,829 stars | A SwiftUI best-practices knowledge skill |
| getsentry/MobileBuildMCP | Open source | 2025-03 | 6,543 stars | An MCP tool layer for build and run, not a methodology workflow |
| dpearson2699/swift-ios-skills | Open source | 2026-03 | 1,273 stars | Mostly iOS and API knowledge |
| rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills | Open source | 2025-10 | 864 stars | All-Apple-platform skills including ASO, with no "clone an app" core |
| fayazara/macos-app-skills | Open source | 2026-05 | 690 stars | Same direction (macOS native app skills), but no author traffic and no closed loop of cloning and snapshot verification |
| Xcode 27 built-in Agent Skills | Big-company features | 2026-06 | Ships with Xcode (export mirror 362 stars) | Official knowledge skills inside Xcode. BAMA's pitch is not opening the Xcode GUI, and an end-to-end workflow |
| morluto/rea | Open source | 2026-04 | 433,868 stars | Hook: reverse-engineer any app. BAMA reverse-engineers, then rebuilds on Mac |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **The author's dedicated YouTube video** : "This Free Repo Lets Claude Code Build Any Mac App", published 10-26, 124,937 views, channel with 307K subscribers, GitHub link in the first line of the description. The star peak came right after it, at 10-29

- **Verified** **LinkedIn** : the same-titled post got 91 reactions and 6 comments

- **Verified** **X** : the author's post got 12 likes and 663 views; @GitTrend0x and other alt-account roundups got under 2,178 views

- Inference **Aggregators / reposts (Instagram reels, third-party Shorts, skillleaderboard, etc.)** : multiple sites picked it up and reposted it; specific traffic not verified

- **Verified** **Riding on the name / attaching to a trend** : the README Credits section states that "any" comes from REA (430k stars), and the format follows mattpocock/skills (310k stars)

## Why BAMA (daveebbelaar/bama) took off

> Research date 2026-11-06. Channel: GitHub. Data from our github database (repo_profile / repo_day), the GitHub API, and YouTube / LinkedIn / X pages (pulled live via Jina and our x tool).

### One line

BAMA is a collection of 21 Agent Skills (a Claude Code / Codex plugin, also installable via skills.sh for Cursor and Gemini CLI). It has agents follow a workflow of "screenshot clone → user stories → implement each one → light/dark snapshots and tests before every commit" to build native Swift/SwiftUI Mac apps without opening the Xcode interface. **The main reason it took off is distribution: the author, Dave Ebbelaar, is an AI engineering YouTuber with 307k subscribers. Two days after creating the repo, he posted a dedicated video that got 10k views in 125 days, and nearly all the stars followed that video. At the product level, "see an app you like, clone it into your own native Mac version", plus 12 ready-to-build small tool specs, gave the video something to spread and got viewers to actually fork it and try.**

### Key facts

- Created 2026-10-24, MIT, Swift; as of 11-06:1,595 it has 1,622 stars (GitHub API, live) and 200 forks, forks/stars ≈ 12.5% (github repo).

- Daily star counts (github database repo_day): 10-28 384 → 10-29 606 (+222, single-day peak) → 10-30 739 (+133) → 10-31 897 (+158) → 11-01 1,072 (+175) → 11-02 1,264 (+192) → 11-03 1,420 (+156) → 11-04 1,505 (+85) → 11-05 1,562 (+57) → 11-06 1,595 (+33). Over the last 7 days it added +856, and has clearly cooled off.

- 27 commits, 11-05 released to 1.1.1; the author is still iterating (GitHub API).

- The author's other repos: ai-cookbook with 4,694 stars, python-whatsapp-bot with 1,548 stars, etc. The account's repos total about 10k stars (github database).

### Where users come from (growth levers)

1. **The author's own long-form YouTube video (main channel, confirmed)** : "This Free Repo Lets Claude Code Build Any Mac App", published 2026-10-26, with 124,937 views and 2.4K likes as of today, on a channel with 307K subscribers. The first line of the description is the GitHub link. Auto-dubbed multilingual audio tracks are enabled (YouTube page, [www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN6wl-OX8-Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN6wl-OX8-Q)). His previous Herdr tutorial got 1K views in 111 months, so this is his normal range; BAMA rode an existing audience. The timeline fits: repo created 10-24 → video 10-26 → 10-28 stars at our first observation 384 → 10-29 single-day peak.

2. **LinkedIn same-title post (confirmed)** : same title "This free repo lets Claude Code build any Mac app", 91 reactions and 6 comments (public LinkedIn page). Small numbers, supplementary only.

3. **X (weak, confirmed)** : author 10-29 posted only 12 likes and 663 views (x user daveebbelaar). After that came a batch of "new GitHub repos" roundup accounts relaying it: @GitTrend0x Chinese roundup (10-31,2,178 views), @codebubdotcom, @vintcessun, @KissonL, @51AITech (11-06, "3 new skills nobody is talking about yet"). All small accounts, a few dozen to two thousand views per post. X is not where it took off.

4. **Aggregator sites and reposts (existence confirmed, volume unverified)** : skillleaderboard.com, theailoadout.com, koinote.app, agentfilter.com, drishvada.com all list it. On Instagram someone made a reel repost ("21 free agent skills that let Claude Code rebuild a Mac app you love"); on YouTube a third-party Short "bama: Rebuild any Mac app instantly" (author unverified). The second small bumps at 10-31~11-02 (+158/+175/+192) most likely come from these secondary reposts plus the long tail of the video; not checked one by one.

5. **HN / Reddit** : no related post in the hackernews database; a Reddit search found no dedicated discussion thread.

6. **Riding a famous name (confirmed, author states it)** : the README Credits say the "any" idea comes from morluto/rea (Reverse Engineer Anything, 434k stars, still up +27k in the last ~7 days), and the skill format follows mattpocock/skills (315k stars). The positioning "BAMA = REA for Mac" plugs straight into the mindshare of the two hottest skills repos right now.

7. **Matrix expansion** : 10-29 opened a Windows version, daveebbelaar/bawa (C#/WinUI 3), which has only 14 stars so far. Without the video push it didn't take off, which in turn suggests the video is the main channel.

Where the money comes back: BAMA is free and MIT-licensed and earns nothing directly. The author's business is Datalumina (AI engineering courses / consulting) and Glaido, a developer dictation tool he co-founded (partners include YouTuber Jack Roberts and others). BAMA is the top of the funnel: content → subscribers → courses/products. The README's 12 specs were extracted from the author's own menu-bar app Onyx, which doubles as a showcase for his products.

### Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from BAMA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| twostraws/SwiftUI-Agent-Skill(Paul Hudson) | Open source | 2026-03 | 6,478 stars | A single SwiftUI code-style skill that does not clone, plan, design, or verify; the BAMA README recommends using them together |
| AvdLee/SwiftUI-Agent-Skill | Open source | 2026-01 | 3,829 stars | Same idea, SwiftUI best practices; AvdLee also has an Xcode build-optimization skill with 1,270 stars |
| getsentry/MobileBuildMCP | Open source | 2025-03 | 6,543 stars | An MCP tool layer (lets agents build and run iOS/macOS projects), not a process methodology |
| dpearson2699/swift-ios-skills | Open source | 2026-03 | 1,273 stars | An iOS 26 / Swift 6.3 skill pack, iOS-focused and API-knowledge-heavy |
| rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills | Open source | 2025-10 | 864 stars | Covers all Apple platforms, including product validation and ASO, but has no "clone an app" main line |
| fayazara/macos-app-skills | Open source | 2026-05 | 690 stars | The closest to BAMA: skills for building, shipping, and maintaining native macOS apps; no author audience, did not take off |
| ehmo/platform-design-skills / Prisma-Labs-Dev/apple-skills | Open source | 2026-02 | 638 / 354 stars | Knowledge-type skills for HIG design rules and Liquid Glass |
| Apple's built-in Agent Skills for Xcode 27 (superagents-lab/xcode27-skills is an export mirror) | Big-company features | 2026-06 | Mirror with 362 stars; officially shipped with Xcode | Official SwiftUI/testing/security skills inside Xcode. BAMA's pitch is "no Xcode GUI needed" plus an end-to-end workflow |
| morluto/rea | Open source | 2026-04 | 433,868 stars | Not a peer but the source motif: reverse-engineer any app. BAMA lands it as "reverse-engineer, then rebuild natively on the Mac" |
| Writing a Mac app directly with bare Claude Code / Codex | Big-company features | — | — | It can be done, but without the screenshot index, acceptance criteria, and snapshot verification guardrails |

Takeaway: plenty of people make Swift/macOS skills (dozens of repos), but most are **knowledge-type** (teaching agents to write SwiftUI correctly). BAMA is one of the few **process-type, end-to-end** ones, and its main pitch is "clone the app you love."

### Copycats

- hoy2on/BAA (11-06 built, "Build Any App. One router with platform-specific skills for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, Android, and Windows", 0 stars). It directly copies BAMA's naming and router structure.

- MinnThikeTunn/Phan-Tee (11-01 built, Windows version with 21 skills, 1 stars). Its structure is nearly identical to BAMA/BAWA.

- Stijnus/dsh-rev-eng (10-28 built): repackages REA + BAMA as a DeepSeek Harness plugin.

- User projects like FloridaLabel/CraftVoice state "Developed with BAMA" (users, not copycats).

The followers don't have volume yet.

### Why it took off

1. **A ready-made big-audience base** : a 307K-subscriber channel; a dedicated video got 125k views in 10 days. The star curve tracks the video closely (repo created 10-24, video 10-26, peak 10-29). The Windows sibling BAWA, which got no video push, has only 14 stars.

2. **An easy hook** : "I got sick of installing 10 apps (Magnet, Alfred, AltTab, CleanShot) to make macOS usable, so I used an agent to write a native, private replacement, then turned the process into 21 skills." It has a personal story, a visible product (Onyx), and the payoff of "see an app you like, clone it."

3. **Riding the skills wave and REA's "any" theme** : 2026 In H2, Agent Skills became GitHub's hottest category (REA 430K stars, mattpocock/skills 310K stars), and BAMA explicitly ties itself to Credits, so readers see at a glance what it is.

4. **Lower the barrier to entry** : a one-line `npx skills add`, one-click install from the Claude Code/Codex plugin marketplaces, a `/bama` router that picks the next step, and 12 ready-made specs (window snapping, clipboard history, screenshots, screen recording…) for people who don't know what to build. A fork rate of 12.5% shows people really do clone and modify it.

5. **Timing** : macOS 26 with the new Liquid Glass design language, Swift 6.2, and Claude's computer use can now drive native apps. All of it arrived in 2026, so "agents building decent Mac apps without opening Xcode" has only just become possible.

### Differentiation

- Compared with knowledge-type Swift skills, BAMA is a **process** (a closed loop: clone → story → milestones → a snapshot and tests on every commit), and it includes steps others lack: layout-grid validation, design-from-app pixel comparison, app-icon (Icon Composer), and agent-cli (letting the agent drive the app it built).

- Compared with REA: REA takes things apart; BAMA takes them apart and rebuilds them as native Mac versions.

- This differentiation is **necessary but not sufficient** : fayazara/macos-app-skills takes the same direction but has only 690 stars. BAMA's differentiation gives the video something to talk about and keeps viewers around to fork it, but the volume came from the author's YouTube.

### Visibility

Word in small circles: the author's main YouTube channel got 125k views, and a few aggregator sites and X small-account roundups wrote about it, but there was no big media coverage, no major X account, and no HN front page. No revenue involved (free, MIT).

### What others can borrow

- "Packaging the process of building a finished product as a skill pack" = a reusable content plus open-source distribution format: the finished product (Onyx) provides the video hook, the skill pack serves as the GitHub asset, and the specs act as ready-to-build templates.

- The naming attaches to a hot motif (X Anything → Build Any Mac App), giving a one-line positioning. The platform matrix (BAMA→BAWA) can be copied, but each platform needs its own piece of content to get volume.

- Switch the audience: the same play could be "Build Any iOS / Android / Chrome extension / mini-program." The Chinese-speaking community doesn't have an equivalent yet (the followers BAA and Phan-Tee have no distribution).

### Uncertain

- The source of the second small bump at 10-31~11-02 (Instagram reposts, third-party Shorts, aggregator sites, or the long tail of video recommendations) is unverified.

- We have no observations of the star trend between 10-24 and 10-28 (the repo was tracked from 10-28).

- How many people actually built an app with it is unknown; stars and forks are not usage.

- The authors and view counts of the third-party YouTube Shorts and Instagram reels are unverified.

### Sources

- github repo_profile / repo_day (2026-10-28 ~ 11-06); GitHub API (repos/daveebbelaar/bama, bawa, repository search)

- README:[github.com/daveebbelaar/bama](https://github.com/daveebbelaar/bama)

- YouTube:[www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN6wl-OX8-Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN6wl-OX8-Q)(124,937 views,Oct 26 2026,307K subscribers)

- LinkedIn: [www.linkedin.com/posts/daveebbelaar_this-free-repo-lets-clau…](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daveebbelaar_this-free-repo-lets-claude-code-build-any-activity-7520861160095543296-6oe6) (91 reactions / 6 comments)

- X:[x.com/daveebbelaar/status/2115491586310107622](https://x.com/daveebbelaar/status/2115491586310107622);[x.com/GitTrend0x/status/2116492959050854650](https://x.com/GitTrend0x/status/2116492959050854650);[x.com/51AITech/status/2118402973864972484](https://x.com/51AITech/status/2118402973864972484)

- Aggregators: skillleaderboard.com/skill/daveebbelaar-bama, theailoadout.com/repos/bama/, agentfilter.com/agents/bama

- Glaido / Datalumina: [glaido.com/about](https://glaido.com/about), [daveebbelaar.com/](https://daveebbelaar.com/)

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.