Crafting the first native Valheim mod manager on macOS for a gaming community left behind

The first native macOS mod manager for Valheim, engineered to eliminate the technical debt of manual file management. Leveraging the Thunderstore API and an agentic workflow, the app automates the fragile dependencies of installs, updates, and compatibility checks. It transforms a friction-heavy file system hack into a seamless GUI, letting users focus on the game rather than the directory.

Valheim hit Mac in 2025, but the mod scene remained stuck in the dark ages. Existing workarounds were fragile and broke with every OS update. This project became a high-stakes playground for agentic development—the impulse: see if a "vibe coding" workflow could turn a late-night spark into a functional tool that finally bridges the gap for the Mac user base.

Learning a niche software category on the fly required an experimental approach. Skipping traditional groundwork, the process jumped into "vibe coding" sessions to ensure the technical "brain" actually worked. Once functional, the focus shifted to Figma to give the tool the right feel. A component-first, auto-layout-heavy approach keeps the UI as modular as the mods it manages. Despite several "what-the-face" moments, adopting familiar manager patterns kept the experience anchored in a "simplicity first" philosophy.

This project was a complete departure from the "Standard UX Process." As an origin impulse experiment, the conscious trade-off was made to skip deep market research in favor of rapid prototyping to see if the agentic dev stack could handle native app complexity. While this led to some "build-measure-learn" moments that felt like a rollercoaster, it proved that for solo MVPs, momentum is often more valuable than a 40-page discovery document.

It’s just the beginning. The next steps involve getting first footsteps into AI-driven user testing to catch friction points I'm too close to see and an open-source launch via GitHub for a community-driven update model for all mac vikings to help maintain the ecosystem they play in and to show the community that Mac gaming is outgrowing a second-class experience.