I’m Only Here Because My Build Is Building

That more or less explains how I ended up spending seventeen versions trying to rebuild my Made in Michigan logo while More Than Ingredients was being built in another window.

I have always liked the logo. I think I modeled it after something I had seen, but I made it from scratch. Unfortunately, the original was awful at small sizes. I wanted a proper vector version that would remain crisp and could easily change colors to match each weekly project.

How hard could that be?

(Yes, I vibe coded a way to compare the logos with a slider…)

For a while, the answer appeared to be “impossible.”

The M kept disappearing. The UP would vanish. The layers would not cooperate. The Upper Peninsula needed a clear margin, a thick white stroke, so it could sit over the letters without turning into an ink blot test.

Somewhere around version fourteen or fifteen, it finally looked right.

I was so proud that I pulled it up to show Sherry. I zoomed way in to demonstrate how crisp the new vector remained compared with the original.

That was when I noticed St. Ignace had moved approximately fifty miles west.

Thit had produced a beautiful, scalable, geographically inaccurate Michigan.

I used my finest and most descriptive words to explain exactly how the tip needed to align with one tiny nub. I was overly confident that this would settle the matter once and for all.

The next version shifted the entire Upper Peninsula! Menominee was now apparently connected to the Lower Peninsula by the Mighty Mac. This would make getting to Wisconsin a lot easier!

In one revision, Thit had changed the course of Ice Age glacier gouging history.

I laughed out loud for about two minutes.

The next version was perfect.

Seventeen. Seventeen versions, but thwe got it.

The MVP Was Okay

Meanwhile, the actual project had reached its original goal.

You could create an account, add recipes, import them from websites, save them, and use a cooking mode. It was what I had initially aspired to build.

But honestly, It was also pretty meh.

A recipe-saving website is useful, but there are already plenty of ways to save recipes. The more interesting idea had emerged while we were building: recipes are not fixed documents. People change them.

They add more giardiniera. They use less oil. They substitute what they have. They inherit a card from someone, write changes in the margins, and eventually make something related to, but different from, the original.

So we pushed for the stretch goal: recipe lineage and versioning, said no chef ever.

An engineer might, though.

A member could now copy a recipe, change the parts they made differently, publish their version, and preserve its connection to the original. Versions could have versions. Helpful contributions could travel through the family while remaining attributed to the person who shared them.

The build was ready very late Tuesday night. I decided not to deploy complicated database changes while tired and called it a night.

The following day, I deployed it with cautious optimism.

It worked. Ish.

You could create a version, change it, publish it, and let other people see how your version differed. The experience was still awkward and had a severe case of unnecessary padding, especially around the dietary restrictions, but the central idea worked.

My confidence was restored.

😅 Almost.

Take. My. Money.

Just about then, right as thwe found our groove, I hit my daily ChatGPT Work limit.

Full stop. No AI for you!

I was informed that I could start using Work again at 3:13 a.m.

WTF.

Seriously.

Take. My. Money.

My ChatGPT spending progression has now gone from $20 to $100 per month. I didn’t think I would need to upgrade. But here we are. At four projects a month, that is about $25 per website.

Heck of a deal.

At some point, the cost crossed below the value so decisively that upgrading stopped feeling expensive, but that deserves its own post.

Our First User Was an AI

To improve the dreaded ugly UX, I asked Thit to perform a user-experience review of the live site with some of these new (to me) fancy Pro features!

But how could thit see it, it was behind a invite only wall.

I created a tester@ account and let it loose inside my invitation-only recipe community. What could happen?!

Thit found a chocolate-chip-cookie recipe on King Arthur Baking (I need to look into this), imported it, saved recipes, tested links, entered cooking mode, and generally kicked the tires.

Then the AI, pretending to be a tenured UX designer at a major recipe publisher, produced an elegant and undoubtedly thorough sixteen-page report that I will never read.

I handed the report back to my regularly scheduled programming Thit and asked thit to extract the few changes that would actually matter before Thursday night.

This may be the new workflow:

1. One AI builds the product.
2. Another AI uses the product.
3. That AI writes a report.
4. The first AI reads the report because I will not.
5. I decide what is worth changing.

The most important result was not a button color or another round of padding removal. It was the user journey.

A new member does not follow anyone. Opening the site with “Newest from people you follow” gives them a beautifully designed empty room.

A first-time member should see the recipe library. They need immediate proof that there is something here worth exploring. From there, they can discover people and begin following them.

Once they have participated and actually have a feed, the site can show that feed first when they return.

• First visit: explore recipes.
• Early engagement: discover and follow people.
• Returning visit: see what those people have added.
• Deeper use: save, cook, contribute, and create versions.

While answering the interview questions for this post, I realized the requirement still was not quite right. It should not merely remember whether someone had visited before. It should show the feed first only when that person actually has one.

I opened another session and changed the requirement while writing the paragraph before this one.

The retrospective improved the product while documenting it. Huh.

Then a Human Arrived

Today, @lancer became the first outside human member.

He accepted his invitation. He logged in.

That is all I know.

I hope he explored. I hope he thought, “Holy crap!” I hope he didn’t hit a bug.

Maybe he opened it, became distracted, and went back to something important.

No recipes. No parade. No manufactured testimonial.

The first contribution from someone other than Sherry or me still came from an AI agent importing chocolate-chip cookies into an invitation-only recipe community.

The Axe Was Apparently Sharp

At the beginning of the week, I spent too much time changing how thwe worked. I sharpened the axe instead of hitting my first milestone, and I was frustrated about losing a day of real-world testing.

That work paid dividends.

Thwe can now develop requirements in one conversation, turn them into a structured build brief, hand the brief to a building session, and work on something else while it runs. We can have another session test the result, reduce sixteen pages of findings to a practical punch list, and send the important pieces back through the process.

Now, we are CRANKING!

Bring on the scope creep!

👆Famous last words.

The site is live. It contains real recipes with real stories: Mr. Prisk’s pumpkin cookies, J Ross’s Salade de Saumon et Pois Chiche, Chicago Hot BBQ, and the best recipe for Detroit-style coneys, which also taught us that uploaded photos need rotation and cropping because my hot dogs are currently sideways. Why does rotating an image 90 degrees mess with your brain?

People have asked for invitations. I have sent them. What I want most now is for those people to give it an honest try.

I am very proud of this one.

I think it is done.

Well, it will be as soon as I deploy the release package that is building right now.

Literally.

Now.

Version 1.7.3

Shipped.

P.s. this was the logo thit recommended for the site.. Just going to park this here.