In 2025 I went off the deep end with AI-assisted programming, specifically Claude Code. I’m not looking back. My productivity has changed in ways I couldn’t have imagined two years ago, and I’ve shipped projects that would have taken months in a matter of days.

But I’m concerned about some aspects of where this is heading.

AI slop has already hit inboxes, search results, and social feeds. It hasn’t hit the App Store yet. I think that’s about to change.

The slop progression⌗

AI-generated content has been creeping up the complexity ladder. First came one-off articles, then sales emails and support responses, then entire websites, then static images (remember the Ghibli wave?), and now short videos via Sora and its competitors.

Each step requires coordinating more components. Articles are single-output. Websites need pages, images, and structure. Videos need frames, motion, and audio. The progression follows the frontier of what AI can reliably orchestrate.

Mobile apps are next.

Why apps?⌗

Apps sit at an interesting intersection of complexity and accessibility. Building one requires real coordination: UI, logic, assets, testing, packaging. But the infrastructure has become remarkably standardized. React Native and Flutter provide templates. App stores handle distribution and payments. The “shape” of a mobile app is well-defined. An AI doesn’t need to invent architecture, just fill in the slots.

Three factors make apps attractive for the slop economy. First, easy monetization: app stores have built-in payment rails, unlike websites where ad setup is a separate problem. Second, low infrastructure: many categories (calculators, soundboards, meditation timers) need no backend at all. Third, shallow review: Apple and Google check for malware and policy violations, not originality or quality.

The technical stack already exists⌗

A slop app factory would wire together Claude Code for orchestration, Midjourney or Flux for assets, Fastlane for deployment, and another AI pass for listing optimization. The pieces exist. Someone just needs to connect them. Maybe someone already has.

Low-effort apps are not new. The App Store has been flooded with template-based clones for over a decade. What AI changes is the economics. A human might produce a few junk apps per week. An automated pipeline could produce dozens per day.

What happens next?⌗

Maybe app stores get overwhelmed and quality signal degrades further. Maybe Apple and Google implement AI detection, though where the line falls seems philosophically fraught. Maybe certain categories collapse entirely when ten thousand AI meditation apps make the space unviable for everyone. Or maybe nothing much changes because the stores are already full of junk and a bit more doesn’t matter.

The broader pattern is clear: AI collapses the cost of “good enough” content in every medium. A new content type becomes accessible, speculators flood it, quality signal degrades, discovery shifts to winner-take-all dynamics. Articles, images, videos. Apps are next.