Apple ships five different command-line tools for iOS development. They don’t talk to each other.
xcodebuild handles compilation. simctl manages simulators. devicectl talks to physical devices (but only iOS 17+). xcrun finds and runs Xcode tools. xcode-select switches between Xcode versions. Each has its own flag syntax, its own output format, its own failure modes.
Building an app and running it on a simulator requires orchestrating three separate tools:
xcodebuild -workspace MyApp.xcworkspace \
-scheme MyApp \
-destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 16,OS=18.1' \
-derivedDataPath ./build build
xcrun simctl boot "iPhone 16"
xcrun simctl install "iPhone 16" ./build/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/MyApp.app
xcrun simctl launch "iPhone 16" com.example.MyApp
Four commands. Hardcoded paths. A destination string that breaks if you don’t have exactly that simulator version. And this is the happy path.
Now imagine an AI agent trying to do this.
AI coding assistants learn from training data full of xcodebuild invocations. So when you ask Claude to build your iOS app, it generates xcodebuild commands. Sometimes correct. Often wrong. It doesn’t know which simulator runtimes you have installed, which devices are connected, or where your derived data lives.
So it hallucinates. It generates commands that look right but fail. You paste the error back. It tries something different. Still fails. Twenty minutes debugging a build command instead of building your app.
The fragmentation exists because Apple built these tools over fifteen years for different purposes. CI systems adapted by wrapping everything in Ruby. Fastlane became the standard because it hid the complexity. But Fastlane is seven years old and wasn’t designed for AI agents.
AI agents need something different. Stable commands with predictable inputs and structured outputs. Tools that compose. Error messages that explain what went wrong.
Compare the above to this:
flowdeck run -S "iPhone 16"
Same result. One command. Figures out your workspace, boots the simulator, builds, installs, launches. If something fails, it tells you why with a structured error code the AI can parse.
Eight verbs instead of eighty-four flags. build, run, test, clean, logs, stop, context, init. Each does one thing. Each works the same whether a human types it, a CI script runs it, or an AI agent invokes it.
The consolidation matters because the interface shapes what’s possible. A fragmented interface means fragmented AI capabilities. A unified interface means you can build iOS apps with AI assistance the same way you’d work on a web project.
The toolchain fragmentation is Apple’s problem. The solution is yours to choose.