Building in Public: How I Use AI as a Creative Partner
I’m not a developer. But I’ve shipped more working software in the last 6 months than in the previous 10 years.
Not because I learned to code. Because I learned to think alongside a machine that can.
This is what “vibecoding” actually looks like in practice — not magic, not outsourcing your brain, but a new kind of collaboration where you bring the idea, the taste, and the judgment, and the AI brings execution speed.
What I’ve Built
A personal dashboard that pulls health data, email, and a morning digest. A tourism AR experience for a cultural site in Bouctouche, NB. A podcast summary app. A personal website. Tools I use every day that didn’t exist six months ago.
None of it perfect. All of it functional. All of it mine.
The Shift That Made It Possible
The shift wasn’t technical. It was about knowing what to ask for — and knowing when what you got was wrong.
Creative direction and AI pair well because the skill is the same: you have to know what good looks like before you can ask for it. You have to have taste. You have to be willing to iterate.
What I Learned
- Start with the thing, not the plan. Get something running fast, even if it’s ugly. Real feedback beats imagined perfection.
- Specificity is everything. Vague prompts get vague results. The more precisely you can describe the problem, the better the output.
- You’re still the editor. The machine is fast and broad. You’re slow and deep. That’s the division of labour that works.
This isn’t the future. It’s already what’s happening. The question is whether you’re building fluency now, or waiting until it’s obvious.
I’m not waiting.