Small wins, mostly (Singapore)

At a popular meets I run, I get people to share interesting photos they have shot and tell us about what they observed.

Why I needed to build an app

At these events, most people come just to watch, but they become interested in sharing once they’ve seen a few others talk. The easiest method was to have the newly keen participants email me their photos so I could project them on screen. I always felt uncomfortable projecting the photos this way, since it showed their email address when I opened the message. I could use some other app like Padlet but I hate getting peopel to sign up to something.

I am also a privacy fanatic. I don’t want to collect emails or media sent by participants. It always took me some time to delete the emails afterward.

I turned to Claude and quickly vibe-coded an app. Photos are uploaded via a web form, and the facilitator can move through them like a carousel. I had the basic version running within a few days. My very first tweak was to reduce the photo size (both dimensions and file size) before upload, which sped things up considerably.

The first production run

I tried the app at a meetup in DaNang earlier this month. It worked well on iPhones, Androids, and laptops. Claude took care of what would have been tedious compatibility testing in the old days. Below, a participant shows us his photo uploaded via Android.
You can see the “Clear all” button at the bottom, which deletes all the photos at the end of the meetup.

 A minor revision for better usability after the first run.

The big iteration

I was very happy with the lean app I had built. Then, at another run in Singapore, a participant posted the wrong photo and sheepishly asked me if there was a way to delete it before her photo appeared. I had no way to delete it without showing the image on the screen. I had to disconnect the projector, move to that particular photo on the carousel, and then delete it. That weekend, I tweaked the flow to let participants check their photo before uploading.

The delete option appears for the user before adding the photo to the show.

The next iteration - fuelled by necessity

Finding an affordable venue with a projector has become a hurdle.  Co-working spaces are expensive in Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong. Without a dedicated space, we often resort to sitting around a table in regular cafes, passing our phones around to share photos.

And Phnom Penh

I wondered if I can run these without needing a projector at all. Like this one at a cafe in Singapore. I rearchitected the whole app to simultaneously show the current photo on the phones (and laptops/iPads) of all the participants, so there’d be no need for a projector. It took me another couple of hours of vibe-coding.

And it worked. Now I don’t need a projector.

The appeal of vibe-coding

The appeal of AI building is that it lets you experience quick wins and solve something fast. It keeps you motivated. You solve the technical stuff, and then you keep tweaking it for a better user experience. You get people to try it, and you discover edge cases. Then you go back and fix them.

Hosting

Figuring out the logic and flow while building was easy. Claude gave me options and explained what each choice would entail. It was the choice of hosting that took some time. I vacillated between Railway and Replit a few times and finally settled on Replit. Replit is more expensive, around 20 USD per month, compared to Railway, which is half that. But Railway is also a bit more complicated, requiring me to tweak some configuration. For Replit, I just tell Claude that I’m hosting on Replit, and Claude gives me compatible files as a zip, which I upload. I republish, and the site is live.

Demoing

These days there are several AI interest groups. They welcome demos by builders. This is one I joined in Hong Kong and made and got people to try the app. People suggest improvements. And you also end up encouraging attendees who have some ideas but haven’t gotten started yet. I mentioned my struggle with cheaper hosting platform. One of the presenters showined us step-by-step how to use cheaper hosting.

Try it

BTW, if you’re in Saigon, join us on 16 August at my favourite cafe and tell us about something intriguing you came across. OR 26 August in Singapore. You will get a chance to try my vibe-coded app.