That’s what first got me into writing creative nonfiction essays, which is a category of writing I’ve been drawn to ever since my Xanga blogging days back in the early 00’s. One of the surprising things I've noticed about creative expression on the Internet is that building software feels a lot like writing: You have to build what you know.

Given all that, it’s probably not surprising to learn that the first real app I built was for me and my kids. MuseKat, an audio-first learning companion for kids, was born out of a moment of extreme frustration. I spent nearly every weekend last fall solo parenting two young girls (ages 2 and 4) and struggled a lot with the over-stimulation from the constant barrage of questions, whines, and curiosities that little kids demand.

I vowed to get out of the house – to do something that appeased my adult brain, even if only a little – but even museums and cultural institutions are stressful to enjoy when you’re trying to prevent kids from touching the art, while you’re trying to appreciate it yourself.

That AI came naturally to me as a solution is a byproduct of my now-reflexive nature of AI-first problem solving. At the time, I knew I could use ChatGPT as a helper; I surprised myself when I designed a story-based experience out of it, in just a single weekend. In the end, this app was born out of equal parts love and immense frustration. (Just like many of my best essays.)

Last week, my friend Suman Nichani shared on LinkedIn that her vibe-coded app was featured in a live bootcamp demo.

Like me, Suman has worked in the tech industry for the better part of the past 15 years. But she’d never considered herself to be an engineer, despite overseeing highly technical teams as a VP of Product for many years. The first app she built? A sophisticated, gamified chore manager app designed to keep her kids motivated to do their chores.

She’s not alone. All year long, I’ve been delighted to discover how my industry peers have been applying this new wave of technology for the next generation.

Here are some of the things they are building:

Using digital tools or games to meet your kids at their passion points, and to encourage their creativity with the help of technology.

• Meghan Heintz, now a founding engineer at Herd, built an iPhone app to help her 4-year-old son learn basic reading and math skills, created in the style of one of his core interest areas: Greek mythology.

• Chris Kurdziel, a consumer product leader turned investor, encourages his son to draw ideas for video games, which he turns into real prototypes.

• Harsh Patel, the founder of Hack Reactor, built an audio-only app for his son to get answers to questions about the world through a friendly AI-powered elephant narrator, Ellie.

Hands-on experiences where kids and grown-ups pair together in a productive use of technology.

• Tarun Sachdeva, the former GM at Wattpad, turned his daughters’ favorite stuffed animal into a digital game, even going so far as to set up a mock Shopify shop featuring that character with swag. He printed its likeness on bathing suits, which quickly became the biggest hit in the closet. He also makes games with his daughters ever weekend.

• Matt Hamilton, who built the Venmo API back in 2010, is building Toy Boat, a tablet-based experience, to help kids make more meaningful connections with their grandparents through video-based co-play activities, like drawing and block-building.

• Ricky Robinett, a developer experience expert from Twilio and Cloudflare, went viral for a video showing how he is building apps in real-time with his eight-year-old daughter.

Tools, resources, and hyper-personalized helpers that would not be possible without AI doing much of the heavy lifting.

• Rebekah Rombom, who essentially built up the market for hiring developers out of bootcamps at Flatiron School, built a personalized storybook generator that helps parents and kids process the experience of moving into a new home.

• Saadiq Rodgers-King, a long tenured VP of Product across a wide array of industries, built an email parser to make sense of the many myriad of emails flowing in from daycare and keep themselves organized.

The list goes on.

The kid-friendly, AI-powered applications being born this new wave of builders are striking. Yes, there are plenty of stories about tech creators banning devices at home. So what stands out here is that even among wave-one internet veterans, not everyone is opting out. In fact, some of us are leaning in. Building what we know, for who we know. We’re building for our own kids. (And maybe yours, too.)

These apps (largely, mini-apps today, maybe something more tomorrow, maybe not) and AI-powered experiences are being built by a generation that lived through the technology boom, heard the cautionary tales, and walks clear-eyed into today’s anxious cultural moment.

This makes me feel pretty optimistic about what comes next.

When Suman walked me through her chore management game, what I noticed was an attention to detail and brand stickiness that you can only get with over a decade’s experience in building technology products. The only difference, of course, is that this time she’s not simply instructing an engineering team on how to execute against her product vision: She’s expressing it herself.

She is just one example of the persona I expect to see a lot more of in the months and years to come – those of us who have worked side-by-side with technologists but never before been able to break ground and initialize a Github repo of our own.

Now that AI-powered no-code tools invite people like us to (finally) brave the command line, we’re bound to see something different come out on the other side.

This fall, I’d like to convene a group of people exploring how we build with and for kids. If I’ve learned anything from community building, it’s that strength comes from numbers and collaboration. When it comes to designing for children, there’s plenty we could get wrong. But if we’re intentional about early design principles and effective constraints, there’s also a lot we can get right.

If you’d like to join this conversation and brainstorm a bit on how we want our kids to engage with technology, and what kinds of building experiences make sense for them, drop me a line at hello@buildfirst.ai. Let’s build something together.

That’s what first got me into writing creative nonfiction essays, which is a category of writing I’ve been drawn to ever since my Xanga blogging days back in the early 00’s. One of the surprising things I've noticed about creative expression on the Internet is that building software feels a lot like writing: You have to build what you know.

Given all that, it’s probably not surprising to learn that the first real app I built was for me and my kids. MuseKat, an audio-first learning companion for kids, was born out of a moment of extreme frustration. I spent nearly every weekend last fall solo parenting two young girls (ages 2 and 4) and struggled a lot with the over-stimulation from the constant barrage of questions, whines, and curiosities that little kids demand.

I vowed to get out of the house – to do something that appeased my adult brain, even if only a little – but even museums and cultural institutions are stressful to enjoy when you’re trying to prevent kids from touching the art, while you’re trying to appreciate it yourself.

That AI came naturally to me as a solution is a byproduct of my now-reflexive nature of AI-first problem solving. At the time, I knew I could use ChatGPT as a helper; I surprised myself when I designed a story-based experience out of it, in just a single weekend. In the end, this app was born out of equal parts love and immense frustration. (Just like many of my best essays.)

Last week, my friend Suman Nichani shared on LinkedIn that her vibe-coded app was featured in a live bootcamp demo.

Like me, Suman has worked in the tech industry for the better part of the past 15 years. But she’d never considered herself to be an engineer, despite overseeing highly technical teams as a VP of Product for many years. The first app she built? A sophisticated, gamified chore manager app designed to keep her kids motivated to do their chores.

She’s not alone. All year long, I’ve been delighted to discover how my industry peers have been applying this new wave of technology for the next generation.

Here are some of the things they are building:

Using digital tools or games to meet your kids at their passion points, and to encourage their creativity with the help of technology.

• Meghan Heintz, now a founding engineer at Herd, built an iPhone app to help her 4-year-old son learn basic reading and math skills, created in the style of one of his core interest areas: Greek mythology.

• Chris Kurdziel, a consumer product leader turned investor, encourages his son to draw ideas for video games, which he turns into real prototypes.

• Harsh Patel, the founder of Hack Reactor, built an audio-only app for his son to get answers to questions about the world through a friendly AI-powered elephant narrator, Ellie.

Hands-on experiences where kids and grown-ups pair together in a productive use of technology.

• Tarun Sachdeva, the former GM at Wattpad, turned his daughters’ favorite stuffed animal into a digital game, even going so far as to set up a mock Shopify shop featuring that character with swag. He printed its likeness on bathing suits, which quickly became the biggest hit in the closet. He also makes games with his daughters ever weekend.

• Matt Hamilton, who built the Venmo API back in 2010, is building Toy Boat, a tablet-based experience, to help kids make more meaningful connections with their grandparents through video-based co-play activities, like drawing and block-building.

• Ricky Robinett, a developer experience expert from Twilio and Cloudflare, went viral for a video showing how he is building apps in real-time with his eight-year-old daughter.

Tools, resources, and hyper-personalized helpers that would not be possible without AI doing much of the heavy lifting.

• Rebekah Rombom, who essentially built up the market for hiring developers out of bootcamps at Flatiron School, built a personalized storybook generator that helps parents and kids process the experience of moving into a new home.

• Saadiq Rodgers-King, a long tenured VP of Product across a wide array of industries, built an email parser to make sense of the many myriad of emails flowing in from daycare and keep themselves organized.

The list goes on.

The kid-friendly, AI-powered applications being born this new wave of builders are striking. Yes, there are plenty of stories about tech creators banning devices at home. So what stands out here is that even among wave-one internet veterans, not everyone is opting out. In fact, some of us are leaning in. Building what we know, for who we know. We’re building for our own kids. (And maybe yours, too.)

These apps (largely, mini-apps today, maybe something more tomorrow, maybe not) and AI-powered experiences are being built by a generation that lived through the technology boom, heard the cautionary tales, and walks clear-eyed into today’s anxious cultural moment.

This makes me feel pretty optimistic about what comes next.

When Suman walked me through her chore management game, what I noticed was an attention to detail and brand stickiness that you can only get with over a decade’s experience in building technology products. The only difference, of course, is that this time she’s not simply instructing an engineering team on how to execute against her product vision: She’s expressing it herself.

She is just one example of the persona I expect to see a lot more of in the months and years to come – those of us who have worked side-by-side with technologists but never before been able to break ground and initialize a Github repo of our own.

Now that AI-powered no-code tools invite people like us to (finally) brave the command line, we’re bound to see something different come out on the other side.

This fall, I’d like to convene a group of people exploring how we build with and for kids. If I’ve learned anything from community building, it’s that strength comes from numbers and collaboration. When it comes to designing for children, there’s plenty we could get wrong. But if we’re intentional about early design principles and effective constraints, there’s also a lot we can get right.

If you’d like to join this conversation and brainstorm a bit on how we want our kids to engage with technology, and what kinds of building experiences make sense for them, drop me a line at hello@buildfirst.ai. Let’s build something together.