#Recapping my 2025

2025 was a fantastic year, the new era of software engineering is here and I am ALL IN (ahem: Claude Code)! This year I completed my 1 year at Snap, released the long awaited SplitMyExpenses mobile apps (first Android app in my life, iOS app), recorded & published 22 podcast episodes for the Breakeven Brothers, traveled the world with 3 international trips to Asia, and a whole lot more!

But don't get me wrong, 2024 was an incredible year as well. 2025 was full of long awaited achievements, AI advancements, and continuous learnings... there were even some significant changes at the end of 2025 that I'll share about soon. Pumped to head into 2026 with renewed energy and focus! Here's a month-by-month breakdown of my time in 2025:

• January – March: Focused on doing great work at Snap (minimal side project work)
• April: Attended Deep Dish Swift in Chicago for the first time, lovely conference with indie roots
• May: Honeymoon to Japan & Korea, stayed at some bougie hotels which was a life experience. Picked up Claude Code and got the first taste of the future, started grinding out the SplitMyExpenses mobile app
• June - July: Fun summer travels with friends & family: Vancouver, Ohio, Disneyland, and more
• August - October: More travel: Arizona, New York, and Korea (again). Ramped up mobile app work, with impending release looming
• November: Mobile apps released!!! on iOS and Android app stores, a monumental effort and powered by AI tooling at large, I wrote about it in detail here
• December: Traveled to Hong Kong for first time, won some blackjack hands in Macao!

This year brought an unusual amount of international travel, although looking back on it, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Experience add up in all different flavors and aspects of life, and time with friends is precious these days.

Claude Code came out, and I rightfully claim to be one of the first believers (check my Claude payment history for the Max plan @ $200/mo and my praise on my podcast episode). Oddly enough, I haven't "looked back" on the old way of opening an IDE, I've been grooving with the new way and love it just as much, although it's different, I am a builder at heart, and it enables me to be more productive and ship more stuff, so why not?! Adapting is a key skill of the modern day workforce and AI presents itself as a tool that is here to stay and empower.

#Productivity

The start of my year was relatively sparse, but when AI tooling came out, I really picked it up and ran with it, here are my GitHub wrapped stats for my account: @bradleybernard:

Before you comment on it, yes I do write PHP in 2025 (or at least my AI minions do at my beckoning). If you haven't yet, give Laravel a try, it's great since it's very opinionated, batteries included, rich open source ecosystem, and more importantly has existed for a long time, so you don't have to chuck docs via context7 like you need to with the latest and greatest JS libraries.

Most active month: November, yup, I felt that, almost too much... I was putting in 4-5 hours after work each day in November, as well as full days on weekends to get the mobile apps out. To be honest, I was slightly burnt out at that time, but I saw the finish line and I'm so glad I finally shipped it. My "it's ready" bar kept shifting and I really spent way more time than anyone would ever expect or think possible, but I'm super proud of what I shipped. Perfection paralysis.

#VuxByte Stats

VuxByte is my umbrella for various projects, and 2025 was a significant year for building, shipping, refining, and sunsetting.

#SplitMyExpenses

SplitMyExpenses accomplishments are easy: mobile apps are LIVE. Outside of this, I am proud to say I've shipped 10 of the top requested features on my user feedback forum. It's a dopamine hit to sort by top voted, go down the list and implement what people ask for directly. Having a product roadmap shaped by users is a blessing.

Current stats:

• 19,858 users
• 8,752 groups
• 554,954 expenses

AI has committed a lot for me and I'm totaling 2,871 commits now, and actually dealing with my decisions I had made in 2021, so the codebase is going through the test of time now! And now I have a new contender: mobile repo!

At 730 commits, it comprises of converting Vue --> React, designing mobile first experiences (notifications, camera, etc.), as well as polishing and adopting the latest Expo React Native packages to build a first class experience.

#Socials (Twitter, LinkedIn, Podcasting)

#Twitter (X)

I had told myself multiple times this year to post more about my AI building journey on my X: (@bradleybernard), but the algorithm doesn't love me and I struggle to find the value at times, so I posted way less than I'd like, although I do love interacting with tech folks on X, so I do reply quite a bit and mostly in spurts.

• Followers:

  • Jan 1, 2025: 1,180
  • Jan 1, 2026: 1,313 (+133)

• Posts:

  • Jan 1, 2025: 3,634
  • Jan 1, 2026: 4,183 (+549)

Since I’m now premium on X, I have access to extra analytics:

#LinkedIn

On the theme of socials, I posted on LinkedIn less than I liked, but I did have a few announcements that were important to me that I posted about.

• 2025 Content: 4 posts
• Impressions: 8,463 views
• Average views per post: ~2,115 views

My most viewed post reached 5.7k impressions:

#Podcasting

My brother Bennett and I recorded and published 22 episodes of our Breakeven Brothers podcast and wrapped up our 2nd year podcasting. We have hit a nice groove where we don't even need notes anymore to talk about topics, although it's a constant struggle to have articulate thoughts in realtime while not having the rampant "uh"s and "um"s.

What I'm most proud of, is that we've had a somewhat consistent schedule of publishing, given how busy Ben and I both were, with full time jobs, other obligations, travel, and life. We squeezed in podcast episodes here and there to make it happen, since it's important to both of us and we enjoy it!

#AI Costs

#API costs

I switched from OpenAI models to Google Gemini models, since Gemini Flash is so darn cost effective, to power AI workflows on SplitMyExpenses. Surprisingly, my AI usage is relatively cheap, only spending $62 the entire year on AI workflows for SME. I could probably use a higher intelligence model, but I didn't find it vastly different in terms of output for my tasks I use it for.

Compared to 2025, I didn't switch models that much during the year. I originally used OpenAI models up until March 2025, then switched over to Google for good. TPUs go brrr!

#AI Tools

What a year for AI tooling, powered by the AI CLI tools! (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Amp, ... the list goes on). I have been going overboard on AI subscriptions and tools, to give them all a fair chance and learn what works best with my preferred workflow. I still have yet to settle, I did love Claude Code so much, but the tides are turning...

Anyways, here's my current AI subscriptions:

• Claude Code: $200/m (Max plan, 20x usage)
• ChatGPT Plus $20/m (my go to chat AI app on iOS/mac)
• Cursor: $20/m (I use Gemini models here)
• Wispr Flow: $15/m (voice to text macOS app)

Do I need Cursor? Ehhh not really right now. I even have switched to liking Codex CLI more from OpenAI, due to their recent model upgrades and harness upgrades, that makes it one shot things more often and works relentlessly with less compactions than Claude Code. So I get a good usage chunk out of that $20/m where I probably will downgrade my Claude Max soon, to the $100/mo to see if I hit limits.

#2026 outlook

If there is anything I know about my life in the past few years, it's be ready for change, even if it's unplanned! 2026 brings an enormous amount of unanswered questions about how AI will shake out and it's both exhilarating, exhausting, and energizing, all at the same time. We get "used" to these large model improvements and expect so much from AI models now, but if we truly look back a whole 365 days ago from now, we'd be shocked about what we use and expect these days. Truthfully, even if AI didn't advance anymore (which I believe it won't), I still think it's a foundational shift that is here to change things for the better and we have so much more to explore and learn with current model capabilities. It's a great time to love learning and shipping products! Onto bigger and better things in 2026!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out or follow along on social media if you’re curious about my journey.