In few words you have only two options, on the one hand is to cross-compile your code or to compile the code directly on the machine.
In both situations you need to cross-compile something your code or development tools, depends on what situation fit your needs.
I prefer to build directly on my machine so i have builded my development tools under OpenPli and installed them on my machine, this way the development and testing is easier as i do not need to install the new version every few minutes
However, if you decide to create a bitbake recipe and cross compile your app you will not build an entire image but only your recipe, and probably some additional packages required during the build process, but this is only once.
Also, at the end you will need to build a recipe to provide a package to the enduser anyway...