I'm Using AI To Build Apps. Here's What I'm Building & How

My first AI development project was a JavaScript project.

Then, I built a fully functional Joomla plugin using Google Gemini that allows you to share an article for review before it goes live. I've sold it twice.

That was all pretty cool, but I still didn't grasp the extent of how much this AI development was a game-changer until I started preparing to build an app for Movie Shapes.

As I was working on the Movie Shapes app, I discovered the importance of structured data, particularly in a JSON file. In my journey to find a JSON file viewer that also allowed for easy editing and collaboration, I discovered Replit, an AI development tool. It was incredible, but it was starting to get pricey, so I looked around and found Google AI Studio. After building a Movie Shapes app in Replit, I built it two more times in AI Studio.

The Movie Shapes matching engine is pretty complicated, so it's going to take some time to get it ready to roll. But I'm setting it up to solve two problems for me.

1. Prioritizing what I should watch next.
2. And finding out what a group (or couple) should watch together. It's a very simple task, but to get the engine created and effective, it's a lot of front-loaded work.

Two key lessons here for building a solution (as an app).

1. Solve real problems.
2. It takes a lot of work to make solving problems simple.

Amplify OS: Supercharge Your Work

That project opened my eyes and brought me to my next app. Amplify OS. I'm building an app for myself (and for others to use) that will enable me to achieve at a high level and do things with technology and AI that I (as an entrepreneur, content creator, and marketer) am unable to do (or do easily). I'm using Google AI Studio. The app is live, and there is a free version if you want to jump in and take it for a spin.

Amplify OS will be a collection of apps that allows entrepreneurs and marketers to supercharge their work. If they want to take advantage of the AI transformations but don't want to build things themselves, they can leverage my AI tools to get the advantages and avoid being left behind.

One of the ways to thrive in an AI world is to become a power user of AI. This system helps you do that. There are multiple apps inside Amplify OS, but I'll share about two that are done and working (and that I use every day now).

Habits

Ever since Irunurun shut down, I've not been able to find a habit app quite like it. I used Toodledo for a bit. Habitica was a fun one for a time. The main idea of Irunurun was that there are 3-7 things you can do every week that transform your life and work. Track them, do them (with others), and watch things (in your life and business) change for the better.

I wanted that type of power back. So, a replica of Irunurun was my first app in Amplify OS. It's called Habits. I took what I loved about Irunurun and made some tweaks and additions. It's live and working. Amplify OS will have a free version and a premium paid version. Habits will be part of the free version (with some premium functions available).

The Most Effective SEO Task

Next, in the Amplify OS, I looked at my mini course. I've got the Most Effective SEO task mini-course as a mini-training people can buy. It walks you through how to use search data to create title tags that will get you more traffic from Google. Clients pay me thousands of dollars to do this task. In the training, I teach you how. It's a one-time fee to learn how to drive a lot of Google traffic.

But, if you'd rather the task be done for you (or you'd like it done in a more streamlined way), and are willing to pay a monthly fee for Amplify OS, I've made the title tag generation from data a one-click process. You simply add your URL to the tool, and it'll pull the search data from your Google Search Console and generate a data-based page title tag based on my process from the training program.

If it's a new article, where you don't have data, simply paste your text and generate a title that way. A few months later, you can come back and update the page title with a data-based title. For content publishers and marketers who know they need to do a title tag but never get around to it when they publish, this one-click tool will do the one task that generates the most Google traffic (when the content is good).

I've been doing this SEO process for years, and this tool is so easy and frictionless, I can't imagine doing it for my clients the old-fashioned way. 

The Joomla Version (The Most Effective SEO Task)

What would make the Most Effective SEO task even better? If it could be installed and used on a website content management system (Joomla, in my case). In my and many of my clients' cases, that means another Joomla plugin. So, I used Google Gemini and built a version of the Most Effective SEO task as a Joomla plugin. Now I can click one button, and the tool generates title tags for the article (based on data [if old] or the content [if new]). The plugin is amazing, and I'm already using it for client SEO optimization projects.

Because of some technical hurdles, I don't yet have this plugin available for others to buy and use, but if you're interested, let me know, and we can work something out. I'm also interested in building a WordPress version, so if you're interested, contact me.

NOTE: One advantage of AI Studio (which I'm using for Amplify OS) is that the app it builds can be launched and live simply through chat prompts. But with a Joomla plugin, the files have to be created and packaged into an installer for Joomla. So I learned a new hack for streamlining the process. Ask AI to make you a Python script that will create all the folders, files and then zip it all up for you into an installer file. This was a huge time saver and workflow enhancer compared to when I built my first Joomla plugin.

Space Base

I'm a hardcore player of the board and dice game, Space Base. I've probably played over one thousand games of it, and have every possible expansion and promo card available. The game is incredible.

One of the things I did to get really good at the game was coming up with a way to rank cards based on how valuable they are. I made a database using Airtable, and it worked pretty well, but Airtable has some limitations for making the card ranker easy to use and share.

This past week, I decided to start building an app using Google AI Studio. And a version of it is live. You can see it here. I'll update it as I am able.

The goal is to "Moneyball" the game by figuring out what cards are best to station and which cards are best to deploy based on the number of rounds left and the number of players. And, by sharing the tool, it allows everyone to get really good at the game.

If you've not heard of Space Base, I originally got interested in the game years ago when I heard it was like Settlers of Catan. It's a more complex space version of that game. It's an incredible dice game, and I love every expansion they've added. My wife and I, along with some neighbors, play multiple times per week. Members of my family do as well. You can buy the base game on Amazon here. And you can use my Space Base app to figure out which cards are the best.

Note: This app is something that helps me get better at Space Base, but it's not an app I will charge to use and it's practically free for me to host it, so what's the advantage of me sharing it? This Space Base app is a tool that people may link to, so if they do, I get backlink and attention. That authority and attention can be something I leverage to grow me business. For example, I've been wanting to so a Space Base video series on youtube and I could use this app to help promote those videos (and vice versa).

Any Other Apps?

Part of why I wanted to create Amplify OS as a collection of apps is so that I can put any new micro-services in the app. Some will be free, but most will be premium or have premium elements. Some of the future apps I have in mind include.

• Business Brain
• Path of the Freelancer
• Publish & Promote Your Content With AI (prototyping now)
• Content Planning
• Content Library Architect

As I have other ideas that relate to business, freelancing, and content creation, I'll be loading them up in Amplify OS as my app collector. Movie Shapes and Space Base don't belong in Amplify OS, so they're on their own, so they've gotten spun off. 

All of these apps are solving real-world problems that I have. So as more problems arise, I'll probably be making more!