Tools I use every day—that I made

I’m in the ‘we’ll see’ camp about LLMs in general. But for coding—especially bite-size projects—I’m bullish on the idea that there’s never been a better or easier time to explore and build.

Two months ago, I decided to try Claude Pro and put it through its paces against my backlog of ideas. I’ve made projects tailored to my tastes; local-first tools that improve my workflow; simple prototypes to share ideas; I’ve launched long-simmering ideas that felt beyond my reach. In that time, I’ve learned that I wouldn’t reach for an LLM to create something that serves a large audience. But tools just for me or a small audience have been a sweet spot.

Here are a few of the just-for-me projects I’ve built:

• A web app for capturing transitory notes. My original idea (seven years ago) was to build this as an iOS app. But after creating a few of these projects, I realized that a web app would do everything I needed. So on a lazy Sunday I created it and started using it the same day.
• A daily RSS to email digest. Each morning, I wake up to an email with posts from blogs I follow. It’s powered by a Python script in GitHub that populates the email with any feeds updated in the past 24 hours. I can read at my pace and know I’m not missing anything.
• Book cover search. Inspired by Gina Trapani’s just for me’ Cover Search project, this tool (a single, local HTML file) allows me to search for high-res book covers that I use to populate my bookshelf.
• An ‘on this day’ email digest. I converted 12+ years of DayOne journal entries to a single markdown file (file over app!). But I missed DayOne’s ‘on this day’ feature, so I recreated it with Python. Now, each morning I get an email with journal entries from past years. A daily stroll down memory lane.

I’m still figuring out what ‘making’ means when Claude writes most of the code, but when I open my RSS digest each morning or take a quick note when I’m out on a walk, it feels good to use tools that fit me perfectly.