The problem

I have a lot of fleeting ideas for different kinds of creative work. The issue is that I don't have a proper way to actually manage them, work on them and to keep track with them. As I come from an engineering background, I tend to think about every problem as structured, and that they can be solved with a proper system. I don't have much experience with project management, but I have done quite a bit of software, and specifically web development. When I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, I decided to go down the route of vibe coding a custom platform for myself.

In the beginning...

I started with drafting the database layout: what kind of data I would need to store, and how it would relate to each other. I also started to think what software stack to use and how the user interface should look like. I ended up using what I've already become accustomed to: A Next.js frontend with Prisma ORM managing a PostgreSQL database. The platform is monolithic, as opposed to using microservices which I'd like to explore in the future. I think that a monolithic architecture is a good fit for my needs as I'm building a single-/few-user platform, and it's easier to manage. Because I knew that building this myself would've taken forever, I started using AI pretty heavily early on in the project. The exact tool I used was Google's Gemini-CLI (later renamed/upgraded to Antigravity-CLI).

The development process

As a bit of a surprise, using AI in the development process has been a very positive experience. I have to admit that I don't exactly enjoy writing code that much; I'd rather focus on the design and system operation. AI speeds things up dramatically, though it doesn't get everything 100 % correct. And I don't mean this in a way that "it can't read my mind, therefore it's not perfect", I mean that it might do something stupid like entirely neglecting user authentication, straight up showing private website content to anyone who has the URL. This means that a lot of experience with programming is still required to understand what the AI is actually doing, and to keep vigilant for any potential mistakes, even regarding basic stuff.

---

To be continued...
(I accidentally bundled the draft post with the deployment and I will finish writing this later)