I Let AI Read 16 Years of My Writing – Then I Built Something With It

I asked AI to read 16 years of my writing and it told me: “You repeatedly enter new rooms, learn the invisible rules through observation and pattern recognition, integrate into those systems without fully abandoning yourself, and then translate what you learned back to others.”

I’ve had this blog since 2010. Apparently I’ve been doing one thing the whole time and just didn’t have a name for it.

Whether it’s how to navigate a cross-country move, or how to break into digital marketing, or how to balance who you are and who you’re becoming, I honestly do get so much joy in figuring things out myself and passing the baton back.

So here’s the new room I’ve been learning: AI. Not as a search engine — I think most of us are still there — but as a creative collaborator. Specifically, something called vibe coding.

Vibe coding is a term that’s in the hype cycle but is honestly quite silly when you distill it down into its core meaning. I think too many times we’re scared of a new term because it sounds like there’s some deep, esoteric meaning to it, when it reality, someone said something once or twice, it stuck and then it grew legs.

Simply put, vibe coding is when you use a tool like Claude, Lovable and even Canva AI to create an app or website by giving plain language prompts. Once the initial prototype is created, you continue to iterate with further prompts until the product is where you want it – or the vibe is right.

I tested this out myself.

I’m an Etsy Print on Demand (POD) seller, and it drives me bonkers to have to determine between Etsy fees, Printful fees, discounts and ads, if I actually made any money on a sale. Therefore, I wanted to vibe code a calculator to help me do the math. I started with a simple prompt:

Create a clean Etsy profitability calculator for Printful sellers with pastel branding and a simple dashboard layout.

Lovable

It didn’t initially incorporate the Etsy shipping costs, so I wasn’t able to determine margin if I were to offer a shipping discount. However, it offered quick check recommendations to give me a sense of best practices. I gave it another prompt to add shipping and it easily did.

Claude

I moved over to Claude and gave the same prompt. Nice UI, but Claude made Etsy’s fees fixed fields which made it impossible to account for fee changes and regional differences.

Canva AI

I then moved to Canva AI. Being a design company, it gave me 4 prototypes that were visually appealing, but lacked some of the more complex calculations I was looking for.

As you can see, there is no perfect tool – it’s up to us, as the prompt engineers in training that we are, to continue to iterate until the vibe is right.

Ultimately, I went with the Lovable Printful/Etsy Calculator as I found the app easy to use and the initial prototype was the closest to my vision. Since the initial prototype, I’ve added a bundling feature so that I can play around with the margins of offering product bundles. As I continue down my Etsy shop journey, I’m sure I’ll continue to iterate the tool.

If you are an Etsy POD seller, feel free to use the app, as well. If there’s something you think it’s missing, let me know and I’ll add it to my roadmap!

And finally, I’ll live you with this final nugget as an AI-verified translator of systems: it’s never wrong to ask thoughtful questions, no matter how someone may make you feel for doing so. If you’re scared to ask a human about AI, I’ve learned the most about AI just by asking AI. Maybe that’s a bit too recursive, but it hasn’t steered me wrong…yet.