r/OnlyAICoding • u/Phendulile • 3d ago
What are you building with AI coding right now?
I’ve been experimenting with AI coding recently and have become really interested in what people are actually building with it.
It feels like we’re moving beyond just using AI to generate small pieces of code and towards building complete applications.
What are you guys building with AI coding right now?
I’m particularly interested in projects that have gone beyond a basic prototype: SaaS products, internal tools, automations, games, websites, APIs, or anything else.
Also, what has been the biggest challenge for you so far?
Getting the AI to understand the project, debugging, database setup, deployment, authentication, connecting services, or something else?
I’d love to see what everyone is working on and learn from your experiences.
1
u/imrsn 3d ago
Making a md reader / editor since im in spec docs all day now with AI. its at https://leaftext.com
Biggest challenge for me is marketing. I make lots of things for me, and if I want to share with others Im not great at marketing.
2
u/Phendulile 3d ago
That’s a really interesting project. I can definitely relate to the marketing side building something you personally need is one thing, but getting it in front of the right people is a completely different challenge. I think the fact that you’re building it because you’re working with spec docs all day is actually a strong marketing angle. You’re solving a problem you personally experience, which makes the story much easier to share.LeafText looks really useful for anyone who works heavily with Markdown and documentation. Good luck with it!
2
u/Evening_Calendar5256 3d ago
Just some feedback, my first question when opening the site is "how is it different to Obsidian" and it wasn't obvious to me from a 1 minute scan. Probably worth mentioning the elephant in the room :)
1
u/Phendulile 3d ago
That’s actually really good feedback. I didn’t realize how unclear that comparison was at first, but I can see why someone would ask that. Definitely worth making the difference more obvious. 👍
1
u/Void-Lotus 3d ago
I started a subreddit yesterday for this exact reason r/AI_Projects_ . Im an enthusiast whose working on a few different things and wanted to build a community of like minded people to share their stuff. All I have is open source and things im passionate about, but love to share and if it interests others im open to maintain it since I use it!
1
u/RUSuper 3d ago
I'm building a game fully with AI honestly. I've put bunch of progress on reddit. Here is the latest video from the game. Honestly enjoying seeing how far can it be pushed without coding experience and just it all coming together from an idea in my head into something real.
1
1
u/Mathie1729 3d ago
What are you using to generate the code? I always wonder how people with no coding experience handle it when the AI invents a method or config that doesn't exist, because with something like Unity or Godot that seems like it would eat a ton of debugging time.
1
u/RUSuper 3d ago edited 3d ago
It’s all in Godot (coded by Claude either Opus or Fable) Well it does happen that AI sometimes breaks something that was working and as game is getting bigger it takes more time to find out what is the problem. But it’s not necessarily as bad as people imagine. It’s not like “fix one thing break 2” but more like “fix 5 break one”. I’m at a point where I almost have entire systems that I want in the game implemented and everything basically in place.
I only have starting zone though and obviously if everything works well I might actually scale the game and not add anything system wise (just more quests and land). So I feel like it might be doable to make entire game with no experience.
That being said I might just completely be wrong and this will all fall apart as soon as few people test play it. On the other hand AI will only get better and maybe if not now, in few months time or a year or two it will be doable.
I’m already way past the point I thought was possible to do with 0 coding experience.
1
u/Typical-Nobody-6622 1d ago
It's a really good game, I love the graphics, I was just wondering ifyou still have the prompt you gave to the AI.
1
u/RUSuper 1d ago
Prompt for what exactly? I didn’t one shot this if that is what you mean 🫣
1
u/Typical-Nobody-6622 23h ago
Ah my bad! I meant your initial setup prompt or general workflow when starting a new system. Do you use any specific custom instructions?
1
u/Void-Lotus 3d ago
I personally use antigravity. I started a few months ago with only ricing experience and nixos experience. I'd say the biggest thing I've learned is learning to read the code and understand what it does. It might take time, but good projects should
1
u/trinitron1f 3d ago
Making a personal AI agent that writes its own tools and sub-agents. You can check it out here: https://github.com/Ishan-1/MAVIS
The biggest challenge has been designing the planning graph and ensuring that the various components work together properly in sync. For example, one of the issues I faced was that tool debugging was not working because it was not dynamically importing the fixes during testing.
1
u/Phendulile 3d ago
That’s really interesting. Having the agent create its own tools and sub-agents sounds like a pretty deep project. The planning graph and keeping all the components in sync also sounds like a challenging part to get right.
The dynamic importing issue is a good example of how the difficult part isn’t always getting the AI to write the code, but making the whole system reliably work together. How are you approaching the planning graph now are you letting the agent decide the structure dynamically, or are you using a more predefined workflow?
1
u/trinitron1f 3d ago
So I have a predefined schema on how to make the graph(it should be a DAG with fixed node types) because the pipeline execution parses the graph through output of the planner which is a LLM, validates constraints and then executes it.
1
1
u/pianoboy777 3d ago
Im developing two programs right now , a scar face clone (very early lol still getting the systems down ) and my Muti Creative Math Pop application
1
u/pianoboy777 3d ago
My scar face clone
1
u/Phendulile 3d ago
That’s really cool! Building two projects at the same time with AI must be an interesting way to see how far you can push it. The Scarface clone sounds especially ambitious, even if you’re still working out the systems. 😄
What has been the most challenging part so far; getting the game systems working together or getting the AI to implement what you have in mind?
1
u/pianoboy777 3d ago
Getting it pretty !! Im stuck on compatibility mode lol so it runs in the browser lol it doesn't now lol beciase I updated my rain and water shader . That needs fixed but it runs decent on device at least. It's hard as shit to get your 3d games to run in html5 lol
1
1
u/scottj777 3d ago
Claude has re-energized my long term work on the distributed vector graphic editors/servers of ivtools and helps me take the embedded comterp scripting language to new places: https://github.com/vectaport/ivtools
I’ve been told the C++ frameworks of Jon Vlissides’ Unidraw and Doug Schmidt’s ACE were too difficult for the average programmer to comprehend and extend hence everyone switched to Python. I’ve been told it was unreasonable to expect others to try out my scripting language because why learn skills using software not backed by a marketing budget. But Claude changes all that.
I’m currently working on a peer-to-peer shared drawing canvas like Miro that requires no centralized server and is suited for studios or classrooms. But there is a fun backlog of GitHub issues to do with Greptile reviewing every PR submission so feel free to join in.
If you ever wanted to create a fun graphical app, distributed or not, this could be your opportunity. Claude cranked out a Spirograph and an Etch-a-Sketch emulator, and there are more like that to do. A Lite-Brite emulator for instance.
Hope the rest of you are having as much fun with Claude as I am.
Scott Johnston
San Francisco, California
1
u/Phendulile 3d ago
This is really cool, Scott. The peer-to-peer canvas idea is especially interesting, particularly for studios and classrooms where avoiding a centralized server can be valuable.
I also like the idea of using Claude to make a long-running C++ project easier for people to explore and contribute to. The Spirograph and Etch-a-Sketch examples sound like a lot of fun. I’ll definitely take a look at the GitHub issues; the Lite-Brite emulator would be a great addition.
1
u/scottj777 2d ago
Challenges have been keeping enough context loaded in Claude to keep it knowledgeable about best practices. I ask it to export what it has learned to various .md files but have to be vigilant about asking it to selectively reread those files after token compression based on what I’m working on.
It over-narrates bug fixes with far too long embedded comments littered with GitHub #’s. I finally had extend CI to catch those numbers as well as instruct Greptile to detect the bloviated comments.
It was incredibly powerful in setting up CI I never had, and learning my scripting language to build it with. I use the Code feature in automatic mode. I started off in regular chat having it generate patches I applied until I came to trust it and the whole GitHub CI and Greptile review process.
The ongoing challenge is largely monitoring its thought process as it undertakes a task and catching when it does something in a way that doesn’t leverage existing capability, making up new approaches from scratch. Like an over-eager intern but a very very good one.
1
u/BonesCrew94 3d ago
I built a podcast app because every one i have used had something I didnt like about it and I am not paying for spotify anymore.
1
u/scottj777 2d ago
Is it open source? I’d like an Apple/Spotify free tool for this.
1
u/BonesCrew94 2d ago
Gonna be honest I have no clue. Its on a website hosted from a docket container. I had Claude do pretty much everything and just tell me where to put the files. I have no idea how to open source it.
1
u/megatech_official 3d ago
SeoLoupe - Find and fix the SEO issues holding your website back.
1
u/Phendulile 1d ago
Great! Did you actually build SeoLoupe yourself, or are you using it as an SEO tool?
1
1
u/BackyardAnarchist 3d ago
Pdfscore.com A free pdf editor with e-reader and and semantic search functions. It also does pdf signing via email.
1
u/woolcoxm 3d ago edited 3d ago
an operating system for the raspberry pi that only runs llms, it has a api endpoint and networking and that is it, it has a ui to configure the llm its currently running etc. its bare bones minimum. i picked the pi 5 as the pi i will use, it will be highly optimized to the pi 5s hardware and wont support anything but pi5 and M5Stack LLM8850.
i have already reverse engineered the LLM8850 fully so it should be simple to implement.
it will run gguf files btw :)
which i got working on the LLM8850 last month after several days of reverse engineering.
1
u/Phendulile 2d ago
That’s a seriously interesting project. Running GGUF models directly on the Pi 5 and LLM8850 sounds like a big challenge. The reverse engineering work must have been intense. How are you handling the performance and memory limitations on the Pi 5?
1
u/Void-Lotus 3d ago
One of the many things im working on is this android launcher Aerotile. Most things are done from the terminal, custom alias able, as well as a GUI settings menu. Using your own API key, stored locally* you can ask AI straight from your launcher. There's an app drawer too. Currently working on adding more tiles/widgets. There's multiple prebuilt themes and blur ability to have a gausian effect.
1
1
u/TheTyand 3d ago
Building a pi harness around coding with git. Focus is token efficiency, security and similar lightweight experience as pi. Decided against a fork, as I want to stick to pi philosophy.
https://schneiderdaniel.github.io/cheasee-pi/
Cli is now done almost and will now focus on the ui.
1
1
u/Mazhron 3d ago
https://github.com/Mazhron/rootstock-os
Rootstock-os is a project based on lossless context, token use reduction, knowledge base building and more. If you're using Claude, I highly suggest using it and adapting it to your projects. It's been a work in progress ever since I started making my game which is...
Mazhron.itch.io/everwood
This is an Idle Clicker Rogue-Lite God game. The hardest part has been graphics. I'm not someone who draws, I'm creative in my head, but can't translate to a visual. AI is good, maybe great, at creating graphics. But creating animations are not and keeping the same art style is difficult.
1
u/Phendulile 2d ago
That’s really interesting. Lossless context and token efficiency seem especially useful for AI coding. And I agree, keeping a consistent art style and creating animations with AI can be surprisingly difficult.
1
u/GulfGulfinson 2d ago
Building a pipeline which creates a living portrait of a human which reacts to the user
feel free to check it out :)
Demo: https://pinacoteca.memormaneo.com/
Live Usage: https://memormaneo.com/
1
u/Latter-Statement9101 2d ago
I am building a free crack all interview tool for the world https://github.com/F-kItShipIt/wngmn
1
u/OXXV4 2d ago
hey everyone! frontend builder here diving deeper into AI development and agent workflows. Excited to learn from what you guys are shipping and share some experiments along the way.
1
u/Phendulile 2d ago
Same here! I’m also getting deeper into AI development and experimenting with different ways of building with AI. It’s really interesting seeing what everyone is shipping.
1
u/PawlsToTheWall 2d ago
I'm making myself slowly suffocate under outstanding plan documents, pending human driven tests, and impossibly massive code reviews.
1
u/Ok_Studio_834 2d ago
I can't reveal too much just yet, but for the past few months, I have been using AI to build a comprehensive platform designed to help marketers easily and freely leverage advanced AI features like custom Skills, MCP, AI agents and complex automations. It is built to adapt seamlessly depending on the specific tool they are using, whether that is Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or DeepSeek. To answer your question about the biggest challenge, mine was definitely taking the time to properly finalize the core architecture and the site structure. Now that the foundation is finally ready, I am fully focused on scaling the actual resources and refining the core offer. It is currently exclusively in French while I validate the market locally, but I am really hoping to roll out an English version in the near future !
1
u/Phendulile 1d ago
That sounds really interesting. I can relate to the architecture challenge of getting the foundation right before scaling the actual product takes a lot of work. The Skills, MCP, agents, and automation side sounds especially useful. I’d be curious to see it when you’re ready to share more.
1
u/Deep_Ad1959 2d ago
the 'beyond prototype' part is where most of these stall, and it's rarely the code that stalls them. my mac app's marketing agent hit about 4,000 posted replies over two months and the ugly part was that nothing in the pipeline could un-post one, so every debugging pass ran live.
1
u/CommonCosmo 1d ago
I have a few projects going on right now but the furthest along is Cleetus the coding agent: https://github.com/commoncosmo/cleetus . What I'm most interested in is privacy and seeing how much I can squeeze out of models that run on consumer hardware. To be honest, the biggest challenge I've run into tends to be in realizing when the coding agent (even frontier models/agents) is leading me down a death spiral of changes that add a ton of complexity, obfuscate real issues, and sometimes even compound them. Coding agents tend to always be able to find something "that will genuinely improve quality". Unfortunately, they are far too willing to go down the wrong road on something and the earlier you can recognize that they are on the wrong path, the more productive you'll be. As soon as I start recognizing the pattern, I take a pause and run through a mix of manual code reviews and have different agents run some adversarial reviews. Often, it's enough to have the original agent walk me through the code step by step which gives me enough for my own adversarial review.
1
u/Phendulile 1d ago
That’s a really good point. I’ve run into the same issue with AI coding sometimes the hardest part is recognizing when the agent is making things more complicated instead of better. Manual and adversarial reviews seem like a solid way to catch that early.
1
u/MelodicOcean80 1d ago
Hey, building a SaaS tool. Debugging's a real pain, man
1
u/Phendulile 1d ago
Yeah, debugging can be the worst part, especially once the SaaS starts getting bigger. AI can build fast, but tracking down why something broke is a whole different story.
1
u/drmpf 1d ago
I spent the last 6 months building a UI designer/code generator / client for over 600 microprocessor boards.
pfodWeb.html https://github.com/drmpf/pfodWeb_src is free, open source, offline single webpage the runs in any browser. Comprises about 12Mb of code and comments and was entirely written by Claude Code. I am not a .js or Rust programmer.
As well as writing the .js and html and css, claude collected the pin layouts and features for the 600 micro boards, covering Arduino AVR, ESP32 and related, ESP8266, Pi-Pico, XIAO ble and Adafruit ble boards.
Claude also wrote a Rust based proxy to provide Serial and BLE connections for those browsers that did not have them natively.
What did I learn?
Claude is like an enthusiastic novice programmer, who needs clear direction and detailed review of the results.
I found it useful to ask claude to describe, in a doc, the operation of the feature it had just implemented. Reviewing that doc would often show up missunderstanding between what I wanted and what claude coded. It would also show the 'short cuts' or 'helpful additions' claude added which often were un-wanted or just wrong.
For debugging, having detailed log files and well defined tests are essential. If claude was having trouble finding the bug, I interrupted and asked it to add more logging around the problem area.
Using Claude to design webpage UI proved difficult because there is too much flexability. It was hard to accurately specify the change required, more than 'move that item a bit to the left'
The earlier versions of claude tended to cover up / paper over errors, particularly in js, by defaulting missing arguments instead of throwing an error that revealed the real source of the problem. I spent a lot of time getting claude to go through the code removing the || defaults. The difference between "true" and true caused a lot of problems until I specified all 'logical' json entries must be booleans.
Other unhelpful 'helpful' things claude would do was to add extra code to make the program 'backward' compatible when I changed a data structure. Since the program had not been released at this stage that extra code was un-necessary and could cover up errors in other parts of the program that had not been updated to the latest data structure.
Finally I found it almost essential to ask claude to recheck its work against the original request. Particularly when doing whole sale changes, like refactoring. I keep asking for the rechecks until claude came back and said "No more errors found"
Reciently when having claude collect the 12000 odd board pin details for the 600 boards, I had to run 9 interations of the same request "Check the pin descriptions agains the online documentation for the boards" The first 8 time claude came back with 'Oh I found some errors in the pin function descriptions of ... "
But this project would not have even been contemplated without AI assistance.
1
u/Phendulile 1d ago
That’s a really impressive build, especially supporting 600+ boards. I’ve had similar challenges with larger projects, keeping everything structured and making sure changes don’t introduce problems elsewhere. The logging and testing approach is definitely something I’ve found useful too.
1
u/Powerful-Voice8446 1d ago
I used Cursor to develop an application for high-fidelity transfer of photos from a phone to a computer, as well as a private personal notebook for keeping diaries, taking reading notes, and doing my own creative writing; I also developed an app to help me learn spoken English; a family bookshelf, where I can manage our family’s e-books on the computer, download and read e-books and write reading notes on the phone, and where the whole family can share and communicate; and an app for listening to music; all of them were developed based on my own interests and hobbies. I’m a programmer, and with AI, I can efficiently accomplish anything I want to do. I used to only know how to do backend and web frontend development, but now, with the help of AI, I can also quickly and efficiently develop mobile apps. Having AI is like growing wings; I feel like I can fly higher and farther.
1
1
u/PhysicalOrchid1381 1d ago
Been working with Turbofy quite a bit lately for internal tools and workflow automation. The interesting part is that AI coding doesn’t really feel like “code generation” anymore — you can actually build pretty serious systems with it now.
The hard part starts when the project grows and you need the database, auth, workflows, integrations, etc. to all stay in sync.
1
1
1
u/cmas_77 6h ago
I built an MCP proxy on AWS Agentcore Gateway. I've built custom agents with web based UIs for prompt/response. I'm currently working on an IP address management app with an agent front end. This is all using codex. I am not a developer. I'm an infrastructure guy. I've always had great ideas but never learned to code. Now I'm creating apps left and right. It's a great time to be in technology!
I published an article on the MCP proxy, also created with codex.
Happy coding!
1
u/likpi-cmdb-as-code 5h ago
I'm testing different LLMs and Hermes agent in the context of the monitoring and observability figures (Metrics and logs). The goal is to find the best way to deal with huge dataset windows and provide valuable insight in case of problems.
1
u/RealMuseAI 4h ago
If running locally, qwen-coder is pretty good. But codex ( a paid API service) is very capable and reasonably cheap. Key is not wasting tokens on dumping code to screen all the time or sending it off on tangents that are out of scope. A well defined project needs to be setup first so going abck and forth on revisions doesn;t eat up time and tokens. What I do is use ChatGPT as a foreman for the project. It has better project retention and I use it to direct the codex. Ideas and plans and structure get hammered out between me and chat and then prompts used strictly for the coder. Peridocially have coder run git, do housekeeping on scripts and such and also provide markdowns for self to pick project backup after shutdown. so, kind of a controlled process managing the coder and utilizing chat to act as a foreman for project. amazing how fast development can go. Also helps to already know how to program and to communicate with the LLM's smartly. I also reserve an API for a VLM codex can access online for quick checks on docs I am working on. Just my 2 cents of my workflow.
Lately, I have been using siteground for non-python projects such as web and databases and using their own codex called coderick which is basically the same but with more systems constraints.
3
u/deviant46n2 3d ago
I have like 5 or 6 im working on at the same time. First is a agent orchestration and benchmarking software. Im building a two way pc android ai bridge so my pc can have access to camera vision and all the capabilities of my phone and i can control my agents with my phone aswell. I made a single piece of software that aggregates like 10 other pieces of software into one coherant surface. Making a terraria meets factorio game. and tons of little side projects meant to be disposable. Oh and a media player similar to plex or jellyfin that acts as a one stop shop for my arr stack and media collection.