Built an encrypted iPhone vault with coding agents, writing no code

How it works

1. Rasty Turek, who worked on Gmail at Google and has sold two companies, launched his first iOS app in March 2026: an encrypted, on-device vault for photos and files
2. Codex and Claude wrote all the code and the website copy; he says he wrote none of it, and the app shipped in three weeks
3. Pricing is $1.99 a week, $19.99 a year or $39.99 for life; lifetime deals are about 60% of purchases and over 80% of revenue
4. No ads and no short videos, only search: every morning Claude writes a guide from Keyword Planner data for the website, which brings most of the traffic
5. It made $66 in its first month and $41,000 in a single month about six months later

Could we copy it?

Partly copyable A vault app is not hard to build. The hard parts are the pick and the patience: a niche with steady search demand, one guide a day, and six months before it took off. Having worked on Gmail and founded a security startup, he knew how such a product should be designed.

Sources

• This app is making $2,000 per day (Starter Story interview with Rasty Turek) October 2026
• Vaultaire homepage (Wraxle LLC) November 2026
• Photo Vault - Vaultaire (App Store) November 2026