Growing up, I loved building tree forts. My dad would bring home pallets from work and I’d tear them apart and use them to build the craziest forts. I had so many forts in various states of progress. I’d experiment, I’d tear them down, I’d go crazy and build the most ridiculous combination of wood and tree my imagination could put together.
When I was introduced to software I felt a similar appeal. With code I could build whatever I wanted to and it was amazing! I loved it.
Now, with AI, I’m using Claude Code to prototype idea after idea. It’s giving me back that feeling I had when I had free time before our five kids came along. I can come up with an idea and quickly prototype a solution, testing out ideas.
Why This Matters
I think this could be a real game changer for personal productivity and internal tools for companies. The ability to test out an idea in days vs months is huge. These quick prototypes allow me to test out ideas and concepts to help me know where to invest my efforts.
Now I can just build it and see if it works. Bad idea? No big deal, I only spent a few hours. Good idea? Now I know it’s worth investing more time in.
The Fun Part
What I really love is that it brought back the fun of building stuff. Just like those tree forts where I’d try the most ridiculous structural experiments, I can now test crazy software ideas without it being this massive undertaking.
Want to see if turning something into a game might help? Build it in an afternoon. Curious about automating some annoying process? Code it up and find out. The cost of trying something is so low now that you can just experiment.
What’s Next
We’re still early in this whole AI coding thing. The tools keep getting better. What gets me excited is thinking about what this means for everyone who wants to build stuff but doesn’t want to spend years learning to code.
Those pallets Dad brought home taught me that with the right materials, you can build anything your mind comes up with. AI tools are kind of like having an unlimited supply of really good pallets, plus someone to help you figure out how to put them together.
What Worries Me
One thing that also reminds me of my tree forts is that sometimes my tree forts would fail. Sometimes they were so chaotic I had to strip them down and rebuild from scratch.
These prototypes that I’ve been building are not production ready - they are ideas. Experiments. I fear that many out there are not thinking about security, privacy or scalability as much as they should be and applications are going to leak information, or just provide bad experiences, souring people on this amazing leap in AI for productivity.
Like all things, we need to be responsible and I’m hoping I can help teach people to trust but verify. Make sure Cursor isn’t putting three different ways to format time in one file… and make sure that you’re securing your apps - use the LLMs to help secure them. Challenge them! They are extremely powerful but the more powerful tool is still between your ears.
As for me,
Time to build some more forts.