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4 min read

I built three real apps with AI — here’s the honest version

AIWeb DevProjects

I'll be straight about it: I built my three biggest projects — FrostVault, Payday Chat, and Brewhaus — with a lot of help from AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT. I don't think that's something to hide. I think it's how a lot of software is going to get built from now on.

What the AI was genuinely great for

  • Getting unstuck. Every time I hit something I didn't know — a Docker setup, a tricky database query, a security pattern — I could ask, understand it, and keep going instead of giving up.
  • The boring scaffolding. Boilerplate, file structure, first drafts. The stuff that used to eat my whole evening.
  • Explaining my own errors back to me. Every red error message turned into a mini lesson.

Where it stops helping

AI doesn't hand you understanding. If I pasted in code I couldn't actually read, I couldn't fix it when it broke — and it always breaks eventually. My QA background saved me here: I tested everything, and I refused to ship anything I couldn't explain in my own words.

What I actually take from it

Using AI well let me punch above my experience level — but only because I treated it like a tutor sitting next to me, not a magic button. The projects are real. They're deployed. They run. And the stuff I learned getting them there is mine to keep, with or without the AI.