There's a new AI tool or framework every 18 hours. Your X feed is full of people shipping complex harnesses, multi-agent orchestrators, and dev infra you've never heard of. It's easy to feel like you're falling behind.
Sometimes I'm in that boat, but instead of chasing the latest thing that may or may not be relevant the next day, I spent an afternoon building a web app that brought my family together for a Sunday.
And honestly, it did more for my confidence and curiosity than watching a youtube tutorial or reading a framework deep-dive would have. It reminded me that building something real, even something small, is what makes you want to build the next thing.
So if you're stuck deciding what to build, or feeling anxious watching everyone else post their repos, just start somewhere. Solve a problem you actually have. You don't need to be a frontend expert (I'm certainly not one). You don't need weeks. You just need curiosity and a problem worth solving. The rest follows.
The Tradition
Every Super Bowl Sunday, my family does a box pool. A 10x10 grid, numbers drawn randomly for rows and columns, and payouts based on the score at the end of each quarter. It's simple, it's fun, and it gives everyone a reason to care about the game even if their team isn't playing and gives people a reason to watch the actual game instead of just the commercials.
The problem is, my family is not all in the same living room this year. We're all spread out across the tri-state area. Coordinating a box pool over group texts with 50+ people is a mess. Screenshots of hand-drawn grids, Venmo requests flying around, people asking "wait, which box is mine?" for the tenth time.
I wanted to fix that.
Built <24 hours before Kickoff
On Saturday afternoon, I sat down and built Super Bowl Boxes in less than half a day. A clean web app where family members can claim their boxes, see the grid update in real time, and follow along during the game without anyone needing to text a blurry photo of a napkin grid.
The goal wasn't to build something impressive. It was to build something useful.
Vibe Coding turned into an Opportunity?
I shared the link in the family whatsapp group and, in less than 6 hours, 54 unique people had claimed boxes. No tutorial needed, no onboarding flow. Just a link and a grid.
And then the requests started coming in. People wanted the ability to create their own custom tables so they could share them with their other friends and families. Turns out when you solve a real problem for yourself, you could be solving the problem for others too.
Sadly, I didn't have the turn around time to integrate multi-table creation with custom rules and shareable links this time around, but I'll be prepared for next year.
For Now
Now I'm looking forward to cheering on Michigan Man Mike Macdonald and the Seahawks, judging the commercials, and checking my boxes every quarter like everyone else.
Check out the GitHub repo or the live app. If you want to build your own version of something like this, just do it! I'd love to hear about it!