Embarrassing AI #48: Claude builds my piano app

Things built: 20 People watching: 19 Cashflow:-$152

I am speaking to you from the past.

Both inevitable, because I have to write this before sending it to you and also increasingly true as I get better at batching my newsletter.

Up to now, I’ve been raw dogging it, like some dude on a 12 hour flight who just stares at the flight map all the way. Somehow there’s been something in your inbox every day. I’m sometimes surprised that I get it out.

But it does.

Speaking of surprises, I’ve been working all weekend on what feels like the biggest lift for this week. And with working I mean telling Claude to build something and waiting to test what he comes up with.

I’ve taken the idea of building a skill that will teach me how to perform Ol’ 55 by Tom Waits in year of daily piano practice and decided to turn it into an app I can release into the wild.

Most of the work on my end was in the initial planning and product design phase, defining what I wanted, describing the UX, defining the tech stack. Sometimes this was easy because I knew what I wanted, sometimes this required some back and forth with Claude, treating it like my CTO, to ask it to explain the pros and cons of different approaches.

Much of the testing, besides verifying features was concerned with solving technical limitations of both the database and the API I decided to use for having an example piano play the daily lesson for the student.

Nothing that 5 iterations of code could not solve.

Working on complicated stuff with AI, especially when it’s doing most of the work, feels like working in a reality where I need to hold two things in my head at once. It’s a machine, be specific, get specific. Talk to it the way you would to a human, if you want to know something, ask a question, you can’t know where the conversation will go.

That’s why it often feels like magic.

The old kind, not the Disney kind.

The version I had ready while writing was v0.16. It’ll probably be newer by the time you try this out.

This is an early beta version, although it has almost all of the functionality it will ultimately have. Just saying, that if you start using it and want to keep your progress, let me know because I’ll probably purge the DB a couple of times before making a public version.

Tools I am using to fake being an expert.

1. Beehiiv (The Platform)

"I tried other platforms, but Beehiiv is the only one that makes growth feel like a game. It’s what runs this newsletter. The Deal: You get a free trial + 20% off (I get a commission to keep the lights on)."

2. Wispr Flow (The Time Saver)

"I hate typing. This tool turns my rambling voice notes into perfect text. It’s the only way I can write this much every day. The Deal: We both get a free month if you try it."

3. Emergent (The Coding Cheat)

"I am not a coder. Emergent is my 'vibe coding' partner that writes the messy parts for me. Essential if you want to build apps without a CS degree."

🧘‍♂ Last Word.

My kid when I showed him the app: “but you didn’t make any of this, it was Claude.”

Making daily progress,

P.S. Did I do something totally backwards today? Or do you have a better prompt for this? Hit reply and tell me. I’m here to learn just as much as you are. (I read every single email).