Building for the Big Screen: My Journey Vibecoding for Apple TV

Over the past few months, I’ve been exploring something that’s been on my mind for a long time — how to bring free and open-source apps to TV platforms. What started as a small experiment turned into a personal challenge to see what I could create for a platform that very few indie developers are building for.

I go by Tkay on Nostr. My background is in engineering, and I’ve always had a strong passion for programming — though I never really had the time to dive deep and master it. I’d say my understanding of code is still pretty basic, but vibecoding changed that for me. It gave me a way to turn ideas into working software faster than I thought possible.

🎬 Why Apple TV?

I chose TV platforms mainly because it’s a blue ocean. TV App Store are nowhere near as crowded as the smartphones, and that means more room to experiment and stand out.

Beyond that, the Apple TV is actually a fantastic piece of hardware — great performance, amazing display quality, and a growing ecosystem. Apple is clearly investing in it, with Apple Arcade and other interactive content pushing it beyond just streaming shows. It’s a device built for consumption, but there aren’t many apps that bring Bitcoin or Nostr into that experience.

That’s where I saw an opportunity. If you can explore the mempool or watch a decentralized livestream on your phone — why not on your TV?

📺 The Apps: nostrTV and mempoolTV 

The first app I built is nostrTV — a Nostr livestream explorer and player. It’s a full Nostr client for Apple TV that discovers livestreams and lets you watch them directly on the big screen. Because Nostr is such a simple and flexible protocol, I’ve been able to iterate quickly and start adding features like zaps, comments, and more ways to interact with creators. 

The second one is mempoolTV, a Bitcoin blockchain and mempool explorer. It shows a live view of the Bitcoin mempool — pending blocks, fee distributions, and transaction stats — all beautifully displayed for a TV screen. It’s like having a window into Bitcoin’s heartbeat, right in your living room.

💡 What I’m Trying to Build

The goal with these apps isn’t just to show data — it’s to make Bitcoin and Nostr visible and interactive in a new way. I’d love for nostrTV to become a platform for musicians, artists, and creators to host concerts or events where viewers can zap them directly and chat in real time.

Last week, Ainsley Costello and Joe Martin had an open mic at Nashville - NostrVille 3.0. They were zapped over half a million sats during their 30 minutes performance. An incredible feat for Value for Value. And that’s the hope for nostrTV, to be able to facilitate this type of interaction. 

The early feedback has been small but meaningful. A few people have started downloading the apps and sharing ideas. It’s still early days, but I see each comment as a nudge toward something bigger and more community-driven.

A huge thanks of course to LZP for his continuous support and contribution to both apps. He influenced all phases of development from ideation, direction, and marketing. Both apps won’t have reached this level without his contribution.

🧰 Open Source and Community

Both apps are open source, because I deeply believe that software should be transparent, learnable, and remixable. Anyone can build them, read the code, or fork them to create something new.

So far, a few people have helped indirectly — by testing, sending feedback, or showing interest in contributing. I hope more developers (and non-developers) will dive in and join the effort. The best way to support these projects is to learn how to vibecode, fork the repos, and start experimenting yourself.

That’s actually what I’ll cover in the next newsletter — the tools and process behind vibecoding, and how you can get started building your own apps too.

🔗 Where to Find the Apps

Both nostrTV and mempoolTV are available as open-source projects. If you’re curious about what the decentralized web can look like on the biggest screen in your house, check them out, fork them, and build something of your own.

These projects are small steps toward a much larger goal: bringing the freedom and creativity of open-source development to platforms that have been largely overlooked.

-Tkay