We are entering the era of personal software. A time and place where anyone can build their own apps. With enough knowledge, you can build almost any app you want. Scaling these apps and taking them to production is a different story… but prototypes can get you pretty far. Instead of waiting for developers to build out your innovative ideas at your company, go do it yourself!
How I Built This Goals App FAST
Set the vision for your app first. Write out the user story/journey.
My vision here is to create a simple goals app that allows for the creation of 5 goals: 1 long-term and 4 short term, with AI functionality for generating and editing milestones.
Critique the vision with AI. Leverage AI to help guide you and be your creative teammate, but you should always have the final say on what you end up creating. Don’t let it kill a great idea or let it sway you in a particular direction just because it sounds persuasive.
After you’re done critiquing the vision, ask the AI to create a very simple frontend skeleton without databases or backends to make things complicated.
When the frontend is ready, adjust as necessary. Remember, working with AI is an iterative process. It’s usually not going to get it perfect on the first try.
The best next step is to create a plan for the sequence in which you will create each feature. The reason I have this step later in the sequence is because building out the first ‘skeleton UI’ sparks multiple ideas.
Then, ask the AI to create one feature at a time. This step is key. If you ask AI to code everything at once it will get confused and will be overwhelmed by the amount of tokens it has to use.
Think about how you might traditionally code this and think about what pieces of it you are accelerating with AI. What parts of it are you leaving up to randomness? How would you have benefitted from clearly defining your data model/schema or drawing out the user interface on a piece of paper? The more you know about what you’re trying to create, the easier it is going to be to create it. The best Directors and CEOs know their fields very well. Use your knowledge to your advantage.
When your vision is unclear and you want to move quickly, ask AI for suggestions on how to move forward. Here’s an example:
Be patient while the AI works.
If you’re just prototyping, enjoy the process. Be creative. Paint on the canvas recklessly; explore your ideas to their full extent. Leave the real architecture for later. Enjoy the process of not having to write production-ready code.
Ask AI to create a markdown (.md) file explaining how to start up the app and to talk you through what it’s built so far. If you want to continue building on this app in the future, it’s absolutely key that you understand what the AI created.
Edit the code. Add new features. Here, I added the ability for the AI to generate steps/milestones to achieve, but it misinterpreted me. It just created default steps and didn’t customize the steps to the actual goal.
After reprompting, the model made the app started to come to life. You should know the fundamental programming concepts. But don’t let that stop you. If you don’t know about something, ask AI to explain it. Be a critical thinker, not a lazy pilot.
The better you know a programming language the faster your builds will be. Here’s the app working:
Added a short-term goals section and allowed the AI to create milestones for that:
I did this in about two hours. Keep building, keep iterating, and learn to use these AI-powered tools. You won’t regret it.
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