Chris Wellons built a full CMake debugger with a GUI in one day. He's calling it dcmake, and by his own estimate, it would have taken him a month before this year. The difference? He describes roughing out what he wanted and watching AI models produce working Dear ImGui code in minutes. He had a prototype in 30 minutes.
The tool plugs into CMake's debugger mode, which has existed since version 3.27 dropped in July 2023. It uses the Debugger Adaptor Protocol, an HTTP-like protocol passing JSON messages, to let you step through CMake scripts, set breakpoints, and inspect variables. The interface rips off Visual Studio's layout and keybindings. F10 to step over, F11 to step in, F5 to continue. Windows tear out and dock wherever you want. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux with platform-specific rendering under the hood.
The AI didn't do everything, though. Wellons had to step in for platform-specific work that the models couldn't handle on their own. Unicode paths on Windows required avoiding C++ standard library I/O entirely. macOS needed Objective-C glue code.
These are exactly the kinds of fiddly, system-level details where current AI falls flat. AI crushes the generic UI work. Bram Cohen on Vibe Coding: You're Just Abdicating Humans still own the edge cases.
The next release of w64devkit will bundle dcmake. And honestly, CMake developers need this. The Hacker News thread filled with people admitting they'd been debugging CMake scripts with message(FATAL_ERROR) calls, basically printf debugging for a build system. A proper debugger for CMake configuration is useful on its own. That AI made it buildable in a day instead of a month is the bigger signal.