AI code builders and my home library project
I was keen to solve a problem I had of working out how to document my home library so I know exactly what I have. It feels like a lifetime ago since I fully coded a frontend project, so I took this as an opportunity to try tools like Cursor and Lovable to see what I could create.
I spent some time fine-tuning my prompts to get the best possible results. On one hand, I was pretty impressed with the initial output of what Cursor and Lovable could do, and I thought I was onto something. I soon realised that I would take one step forward and five steps back when I made a change, and break everything else. Quite frustrating! I spent more time trying to fix errors than actually producing anything of value. It wasn't the outcome I was looking for.
I decided to change tactics and get back to the problem I was trying to solve:
'Create a page so I can easily see what books I have in my home library.'
I already have a personal website, so I coded a page on it that pulls in a JSON object of my books. Done! It wasn’t polished, but it did what I needed it to do.
With the main work of displaying the books complete, I decided to enhance the page by adding functionality that allows me to search by title, category, or author. As I said earlier, it has been many years since I fully coded a website, and JavaScript was never a strong point of mine. Knowing what I already know, I coded the frontend search component and asked ChatGPT to make it functional. Much better! I now have a functional book search.
I then adopted this approach with other ideas, such as clicking on a book to open a side drawer with more information, a statistics section that shows me how many books I have in each category, and my reading progress. I also added a wishlist to capture book suggestions and what I’m currently reading, which will serve as a conversation starter for people I share this page with who may have already read the book.
Having the ability to code the frontend myself, breaking the features down into smaller parts, and getting ChatGPT to make them functional has made this little project for myself really enjoyable. It still needs some work, and now that I’ve completed the main part, I will add the rest of my books (and book data) and continue iterating to improve it and test new ideas.
A bit about the project
- NextJS project
- Tailwind PLUS Spotlight template
- Hosted on Vercel
