A few years ago I was confronted with a problem by someone I know. They were trying to manage all these soccer teams, their schedules, and field availability but it was getting to be too much for excel and .csv files. I watched as she showed me her workflow. Open this file, cross reference against this one, make a change and check it everywhere else. It just looked like a messy web of tasks to be able to do, what felt like at the time, a relative simple task. In all honesty, I was pretty impressed on her ability to keep these things straight.
Me being a relatively “tech competent” person with a little too much confidence, felt like I could tackle this problem and create an elegant solution. So I tried, using Notion. Because I fell for the trap at the time that Notion can do ANYTHING, which in theory is sort of true, specially working with databases. So anyway, I set out and put together a database and an instruction page. It made sense to me: Import your .csv files (which had to be in a very rigid structure), pick your desired filter, and look for repeats or conflicts… simple, right? Obvious to everybody but me, this was anything but simple and elegant. So my option was side-barred. After a few months of excel formulas from an MBA and Python scripts from a programmer she was left with her original way of organizing.
Fast forward a few years to last week. I am at dinner and she mentions again how organizing these .csv files is just a nightmare and she wishes there was someone who develop a tool for this niche, because in her mind there is a market for it. A lot has changed in the last few years. AI is everywhere and now we can just vibe code any app we want. So when I heard this I did what I always do when I have a crazy idea and want to make something. I texted Diyanko. Who needs to spin up their own AI agent when you can just call the guy that lives in breathes this stuff?
My text was obviously met with excitement and a flurry of ideas and 30 minutes later he sends me a screenshot. No message, just a theoretical mic drop:
A few texts later and a 45 minute phone call in the airport and the idea of creating this thing that she has been looking for suddenly became feasible.
Diyanko rode the wave and continued to work on this for the next few hours and when I arrived back in New York he had an almost complete app running locally on his computer. I was honestly shocked, impressed, and a little nervous for the job security of programmers (mostly joking).
So here we are. Diyanko and I decided to pursue this further. We want to create this app from a basic prototype to something that real people can use. But we don’t want to just create this for the sake of being able to do it. We want to see how far we can take. How robust can this tool become? Can we actually market it? How far can we take these tools? We want to figure out these things while documenting along the way!
Hopefully this sounds interesting to you. If so, stay tuned as we provide more updates on how our little ‘program’ is growing and how we are doing it.
Happy prompting!
– Lawrence and Diyanko
AI Usage Note: No AI used to write this post.