Something is under construction

I think I am building a business.

That is an unexpected thing for me to say, because while I’ve always been in the process of building something ever since I was a teenager with a Commodore 64 (and often taking things apart to see what was inside them and how they worked, including that C64, but that’s another blog post), I’ve known all along that I’m not a businessperson and have no business building a, err, business.

It’s not a company, at least not yet, and it may never be. It may never even launch. But there’s no denying something is taking shape.

Over the last 3+ years, I have been building new things with Artificial Intelligence. I’ve launched some things (my 16-years and counting Hamster Soup project that I rewrite every few years, most recently with AI as a partner), published some things (Aurora Toolkit, my open-source Swift package for integrating AI/ML workflows into apps), and left plenty in various states of completion because I used them to learn.

I’ve asked questions about code, debugged functions, gotten help with tricky logic, used whole functions written entirely by AI. I’ve got code from AI, modified and improved it, then pasted it back in for feedback. I’ve used entire views written by AI with my guidance. I’ve given pointed feedback about concepts I have lots of experience in and received much better code in return, and I’ve given requirements for things I’ve little or no experience, and relied on AI’s understanding to see it come to life. I’ve continued to iterate and iterate with AI, and seen the things we end up with become significantly more robust than how they started.

I’ve gone from simple AI queries/responses, to long term projects in ChatGPT where I pasted in code, asked questions of it, and copied out its responses, to experimenting with Claude Code, and then codex, Gemini-CLI, and pitted them against each other and myself. With my current project, AI and I have become a really powerful team of rivals working towards a common goal.

I’m not trying to build that first “One man + AI unicorn” that everyone is on the lookout for to emerge, but I am interested in building something to provide an additional source of revenue. Being laid off unexpectedly from BigCommerce in 2023 when I was doing everything they asked of me and then some, and seeing our financial future come crashing to the ground just when it was finally starting to lift off was an experience I never want to live through again.

What I am building though is not just some idea I think will make money, but rather something very near and dear to me – always the right motivation to build. It’s just happenstance that I haven’t seen anything exactly like this yet.

I may have already hinted at it.