I have to tell this story that was 100% driven by a response in these threads by
hawkeyetraveler.
Hawkeye said he started an agentic AI startup, he told a story about creating a jogging app WHILE Jogging. I was like...WTF?
Anyway, I am a HEAVY reader and have a spreadsheet where I track all my books/series (I am all digital through Kindle Unlimited). I got into the LitRPG genre about 10 years ago and most if not all the books are series. I had 71 series in flight, some 8, 9, 10 years running. Suffice it to say, tracking ongoing series is a nightmare...you have to flag the series as unread, then continuously go check to see if new books are coming out.
I tried to migrate to GoodReads and Storybook and other online apps that tout the ability to do this. Suffice it to say with a library with over 2000+ titles in it, this was a nightmare and just did not work. I then had AI help me "optimize" my spreadsheet by creating a "check URL" button that would extract title and book # and do a Google search..this helped, but I still had to manually update the spreadsheet.
OK, back to Hawkeye.....I pinged Copilot and asked "is this guy full of ****" and Copilot said NO. I asked if I could do this....Copilot said YES. Fast forward and I built an APP to replace my spreadsheet using AI as the coach. Built an IDE (Integrated Developer Environment) loaded all kinds of free **** on my Macbook AIR and wrote 13,000 lines of code (never coded anything in my entire life, did not know what any of the **** was that i was building) to develop my app....
ReaderPro. I am considering commercializing.
I retire in two years and I am launching a IT/AI Consultancy Company....built the website for it in 2 hours (******* amazing) and am now working on my first agentic app that I WILL commercialize.
I started this on June 19th with a BLANK slate, no experience whatsoever, but an idea. Successfully building this framework, building an app, and successfully using app (spreadsheet is GONE) was a HUGE dopamine hit. This hits a sweet spot for fun things to do that MIGHT just turn into something much bigger. Also, time invested is about 75 hours total from nothing to 2 apps and a fledgling business idea with a web page, business email, domain (harrelltechadvisory.com) and EXCITEMENT.
If you want, check out ReaderPro here:
It is view only....
ReaderPro App