Side projects
To learn what AI can really do, I built with it instead of reading about it. Each project answered a new question.
My very first build with AI, and my first automation. Half awake with my coffee, I kept playing the same 20 of my 500 records, so I had Claude tag every album with a sub-genre and vibe, then wrote an Apps Script that emails me 3 picks each morning to match the day’s mood. No record repeats for 90 days, and I still use it every morning.
Next, I designed, built, and launched my own app, with an AI assistant that has a role and a personality. The Usher shows a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score and where to stream it, and “Ask the Usher” is a movie expert that only talks about the film you’re viewing. Keeping it to what it knows sharpened its answers, though it doesn’t know about new releases.
Teller Stories turns up to 8 photos into a short story in the genre you choose, with your photos woven through it. Asking Claude to write like famous authors in each genre was the difference between a keepsake and “AI slop.” It was also my first end-to-end app with accounts and monetization.
Teller Family turns family photos into illustrated bedtime stories. fal.ai redraws each photo as an illustration, Claude writes the story around the scenes, and the originals are deleted. I learned AI often takes the safest path to its goal, which sometimes meant it wouldn’t redraw a photo at all.
Leading Intro to AI workshops at work showed me how intimidating AI still is, so I turned what I teach into plain-language guides. I built the store in Cursor and wrote the guides with Claude in 2 weeks.
Stridable helps parents of children with dyslexia make sense of federal and state laws and find support. It’s my first true agent and my first SEO-driven website, and it taught me why AI hallucinates and how to make its answers more trustworthy.
Shuttered
I learned that marketing a consumer app is extremely hard. A useful product doesn’t guarantee anyone will find it. And everything I learned, I brought back to work and shared with my team.