The Lab
Not an AI expert. A very keen power user.
AI didn't make me a developer. It made me able to build the things I've spent years wishing existed. I see a problem or get an idea, and now there's nothing stopping me having a crack at it.
This is where I play and cook. The builds, the failures, and exactly how each one got made.
What this actually is
I don't rock at AI. I'm not an expert, I've got no intention of pretending to be one, and there are people who'd run rings around me. I'm dangerous enough to be useful, and it turns out that's plenty.
That's the Do move: get AI to carry the weight, and know enough to not get played. The Lab is me doing both in public so you can see what it actually looks like.
I build with Claudio and Chatty G.
I don't drag the Learn Awesome team into this. They'd lose their minds, and they've got real client work on. The Lab is me and the robots.How a build happens
What if there was something that could… or I was at a cafe and wished… or I've always wondered why nobody…
And often enough: I hate what that company charges for this, so I'm building my own version of their tool. Those ones tend to be the most fun.
Research it, poke holes in it, work out whether it's daft or whether someone's already done it better. A lot die here, which is the point.
An actual working thing, not a mockup or a Figma file. If it can't be used, it hasn't been built.
Into the world to see if anybody actually wants it. Most won't get traction and I'll say so. That's more useful than another success story.
I can get something working. Making it bulletproof is someone else's rock. That's when the real developers come in and we take it to production, in public.
Who's in it
Research, arguing with me about whether an idea is any good, and doing the parts I can't. Tools, not colleagues. But they're the reason any of this is possible at all.
If an MVP gets traction it needs people who properly rock at this. These are mine.
On the bench
A few of these already exist. I just hadn't been filming them. That starts now, so this list will fill up fast.
How a cafe adds a hundred reviews this month with a sticker and a tap. Costs almost nothing. Nobody's selling this properly.
Swap this for one you've already made. Problem, what the big players charge, what it took you.
Same again. These are the ones sitting on your drive that nobody's seen yet.
Something you've wondered about but haven't started. Ideas count. Half the fun is watching one die.
Another one for the bench.
If you've got a gripe that sounds like "why does nobody just…", send it. Some of the best ones weren't mine.
Why I bother
I grew up before the internet and learnt it as it arrived, so I remember what finding anything used to take. I've also spent years around real developers, so I know what software used to cost to build.
Big companies charged a fortune for things that weren't special, because they could and because you had no way of knowing. Now you do. You can build the thing you actually want, without the feature bloat, for close to nothing.
To be fair to them, some of what you're paying for is reliability, and that's worth real money. You just deserve to know which one you're buying.
Know enough to not get played.
One of the five Do moves, and the whole point of this page. I can't stand watching people get taken advantage of because nobody told them there was another way. I wrote a whole talk about it called Every Town Needs a Batman.Where it lands
Thirty seconds of the thing working. Start here.
02 / TikTokSame again, for the people who live over there.
03 / YouTubeStart to finish, mistakes left in, nothing skipped.
04 / SubstackThe problem, the thinking, and how it got vibed into being.
Want one of these for your team?
A room, a real problem of yours, and something actually working by the end of it. No slides about the future of AI, no capability matrix. Your people build a thing and leave knowing they can do it again on Monday.
The whole point is that you can do this too. Every build gets documented so you can copy it, improve it, or tell me where I went wrong.
See what's cooking