AI tools, built in public
Real AI product notes for solo builders.
Hands-on build logs, tool comparisons, and workflow breakdowns about what actually works, what breaks, and what stays cheap.
The pressure is to put AI everywhere. We did the opposite — AI in exactly two spots, manual everywhere else. Here's how we decided, and why restraint made the product better and cheaper.
Everyone chases AI chat. We got more value from a boring use: letting users speak one messy sentence and turning it into a validated structured record. Here's why it works and where it breaks.
We built an AI itinerary generator and learned the text was never the hard part. The real work is the constraint layer — kids, elderly, multiple families, pacing. Here's what made it usable.
Part 3 of our build log: how we run quotas, rate-limiting, and audit logs on one SQLite file with Flask and gunicorn — and why we skipped Redis and a managed database entirely.
Part 2 of our build log. The model was the easy part. Here's the prompt structure, refusal rules, red-flag handling, and output discipline that took 10x longer — and why.
Four popular AI meeting note-takers compared on what matters to a one-person business: free tier, where notes end up, integrations, and the catch nobody mentions.
A first-hand build log: how we shipped a working AI triage assistant on DeepSeek + Flask + a cheap VPS, what each part really costs, and the lessons that cost us the most.
We dug through dozens of public reviews and creator walkthroughs from people who run their solo business in Notion. Where the all-in-one AI workspace holds up — and where it doesn't.