Car Codex
A garage manager app for people who care about their cars. Parts, repairs, maintenance, paperwork, tickets and every dollar put into each build, in one app on iPhone and Apple Watch.
It started as a notebook for my own project car and grew into a full app with iCloud sharing and an optional AI mechanic. It launches in December 2026.
- Role
- Solo developer: design, code, testing, release
- Timeline
- 2023 to now
- Platforms
- iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch
- Stack
- SwiftUI, CloudKit sharing, PDFKit, Vision, EventKit, WatchConnectivity
- Status
- Coming December 2026
The problem
Anyone building or maintaining a car ends up with the records scattered everywhere: receipts in a glovebox, part numbers in a notes app, registration dates in an email, and no idea what the car has actually cost. When it's time to sell it, insure it or hand it to a mechanic, the history is hard to find and harder to share safely.
What I built
Car Codex is about 80,000 lines of SwiftUI with an Apple Watch companion and around 436 automated tests. Each car gets its own record of specs, installed and wanted parts, issues, service history, documents and tickets, and the app adds up every dollar into a running investment timeline.
- A detailed data model, about 2,700 lines, covering parts, maintenance, documents and tickets, saved on the device and synced through the owner's own iCloud.
- Reminders before registration, insurance, smog and warranty dates come due, and for ticket and court dates.
- Search across every car, part, issue and document.
Hard parts
Sharing a car without sharing your private records
Owners want to share a car with family, a buyer or a mechanic, but a car's records include identifying and insurance details. I built sharing on CloudKit with a fail-closed allowlist: only fields that are explicitly marked safe can leave the device, so anything new or unexpected stays private by default. Shares can expire on a date the owner picks, can be revoked, and media received from others is kept separate from the owner's own.
An AI mechanic that writes real records
The optional AI mechanic uses the owner's own API key. It can read a photo of a receipt or a registration card and turn it into a proper record, but nothing is saved until the owner approves it. A switch lets the owner choose between a fast answer and a slower, more careful one for harder diagnosis questions.
Where it stands
- In TestFlight testing ahead of a December 2026 launch.
- No account and no servers of mine: the garage stays on the device and in the owner's iCloud.
- Around 436 automated tests and about 500 commits.
See the Car Codex page on Bang Bang Studios for features and support.
Where it stands today: in testing ahead of its December 2026 App Store launch.
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