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  Gramps2 Your family's story, in a one living tree

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  Doing research about your family history

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  Show the family on AppleTV and navigate by the iPhone

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  Gramps2 on an iPad

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  The family tree on an iPad

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  Details on an iPhone

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  My tree back to 1827

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  App Icon

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  For Grandparents Day we got some more attention in the AppStore

Inspiration

When my mother still was alive she often told me that we were family of some people. And when I asked how we were related she tried to explain me how but it was hard for me to visualize that. Now that I am a father I tried to explain the same things to my children and I noticed that they have issues that I had.

So I needed a way to visualize the family trees so they can understand how the family connections are.

But the idea never stopped mattering: families want a simple, private place to record who they are and where they come from — and to be reminded of the moments that matter, from birthdays to remembrance days. Shipaton felt like the perfect create an app for this and see how far one developer with AI tooling could take it in 2026.

What it does

Gramps2 lets you build rich family trees with profile pictures for every relative, so your family history has faces, not just names. You can share a tree with your whole family through iCloud — everyone can view and contribute, with no accounts to create and no data leaving Apple's ecosystem. And because a family tree is about the living as much as the past, Gramps2 sends reminders for birthdays and remembrance days, so you never miss a chance to call your grandmother or honor someone you've lost.

How we built it

I built Gramps2 with Claude Code — and a lot of it not even at a desk. Using Claude Code's remote sessions from my iPhone, I could review changes, fix bugs, and ship features from the couch, the train, wherever. The workflow was: describe the feature, review the generated Swift code, test on device, iterate. Monetization runs on RevenueCat, with the paywall built in RevenueCat's Paywall editor — no custom paywall code to write or maintain. The paywall offers a monthly subscription, a yearly subscription with a one-week free trial, and a lifetime purchase for families who want to unlock Gramps2 once and pass it down. AI didn't just write code; it helped with app icons, screenshots, and marketing copy too.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was family sharing without a backend. I didn't want to run servers, manage accounts, or hold anyone's family data — a family tree is deeply personal. The answer was building collaborative sharing on top of iCloud, which meant wrestling with CloudKit sharing, sync conflicts, and permissions until sharing a tree felt as easy as sharing a note. Getting that right — private by design, zero infrastructure — was the hardest and most rewarding part of the build.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The original Gramps took me many months to build. Gramps2 — with far more functionality: photos, iCloud family sharing, reminders, and full monetization through RevenueCat Paywalls — took one week. That's the accomplishment I'm proudest of: not just shipping an app, but experiencing firsthand how AI collapses the distance between "I have an idea" and "it's on the App Store." A solo developer in 2026 can ship what would have taken a small team a decade ago.

What we learned

I learned that AI changes the entire lifecycle of shipping an app, not just the coding. Claude helped me write Swift, debug CloudKit, generate app icons, produce App Store screenshots, and write marketing copy. I also learned to work in a new way — reviewing and steering development from my phone — which turned dead time into shipping time. But the most important thing is that the Shipaton helped me to focus on marketing.

What's next for Gramps2

I'm already building the next big feature: an Apple TV app that puts the family tree diagram on the biggest screen in the house. A family tree can be really big — far too big for an iPhone screen — but on a TV the whole tree fits, making it perfect for family gatherings where you want to walk everyone through the relations, generation by generation. Beyond that, I plan to localize Gramps2 into multiple languages so families everywhere can preserve their history in their own words. Long term, I want Gramps2 to be the app families pass down along with their stories.

I also want to make the Gramps2 app available for Apple Inteligence and for the iPhone Duo.

Built With

• claude
• cloudkit
• swiftui
• watchkit