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David wanted a clean, native Mac client for running local models that talks to Foundry Local directly — so he built one. The result is Foundry Forge, a real net11.0 .NET MAUI app with a Blazor Hybrid UI running on the macOS AppKit head. This post, part of MAUI UI July 2026, is about how he built it, and the workflow is the interesting part.

What you’ll learn

Plan before you build — using spec-kit (constitution, specify, plan, tasks) and why a written constitution (“be honest,” “preserve data”) stops an agent from faking a progress bar or shipping a one-click delete
Give the agent a team, not a genie — splitting work across specialists with Squad so the agent that writes the code can’t approve it (a reviewer caught a real javascript: XSS hole and a .Result deadlock trap)
Give it a feedback loop it can see — wiring MAUI DevFlow so the agent can build, run, screenshot, theme-switch, and read logs on the live app instead of guessing
Package expertise as skills — reusable UX and process skills (ux-first-principles, design-review, reviewer-protocol, and more) the agent loads on demand
Prove the hard part first (M0) — refusing to build any UI until the risky native dylib loading chain was proven on Apple Silicon
The UI decisions they changed their minds on — organizing around jobs instead of features, plain-language verbs over cute forge metaphors, honest read-only states, and guarded destructive actions

The honest through-line: this wasn’t push-button. The value was a workflow — specs up front, independent review, tests on the invariants that matter, and a feedback loop the agent can see — that caught mistakes before they became damage. Read the full post for the concrete tips and the resources, including the open-source Foundry Forge repo and his published MAUI UX skills.