BrainstormGPT
The whole world is talking about ChatGPT, and after seeing some rumblings of an API, I had to try it out. I found this Github repo, called OpenAIKit, and it was off to the races :)
Background
For those of you who don't know, my goal is to build some really awesome projects in public. That includes posting videos on YouTube, cutting some clips of that video and sharing that on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts, as well as writing about my experiences here and on Twitter. So, this project was a prime candidate to do that, regardless of the outcome.
What to Build
What do you build with an API that can do literally anything? Well, is the goal to build for fun or profit? If it's profit, then I think ChatGPT can do a lot of heavy lifting for you where the data may be hard to get - things like nutrition facts for a calorie-counting app come to mind. But I was building for fun. So, I reached down into my list of hundreds of ideas and reconnected with an old one I had - a brainstorming assistant.
Sure, you could just use ChatGPT as a brainstorming assistant, but part of the fun in this is packaging for mobile and guiding the user to write the correct prompts. By the way, there is value in packaging this for mobile, as some people are making a lot of money via an iOS ChatGPT app 👀
So the idea was that the user would have 3 prompts on a simple screen:
- I want a ____ (name or idea)
- for a _____(a long list of items, such as app, website, video, book, game, tv show, etc.)
- that ______ (this is where the user could customize)
From there, we plug those into the API with a specific sentence structure and we get our answer!
Testing
I wasn't sure this would work. I'm really glad I documented it all on video, because the first test SHOCKED me. Using my prompts, I asked the app for an idea for a restaurant that is innovative / unique that would make me a lot of money.
Are you kidding me!?
That is incredible! I knew I was onto something :)
Can this be a real app?
I changed up the UI a bit, added some animations, and implemented a payment / credit system where users would buy credits for x amount of brainstorming ideas.
This is where I began to run into doubts. You see, ChatGPT is free right now. You can pay for ChatGPT Pro for access to GPT4, but why would people pay for mine? Mobile access? Even with the link I shared above, I was a bit skeptical.
And then I ran a test. I tested if my app was capable of saying bad things, and it was. From there, I had a decision to make: do I take out the text field that allows users to customize their answer and replace it with a long list of adjectives? I tried it, and the value was lost, especially when you can already just use ChatGPT for free on the web.
So, unfortunately I did not submit this to the App Store. That being said, it was fun to build and I enjoy sharing these stories online.
The good news
It's not all bad - this helped me with my indie hacker momentum. I'm already working on a couple of new projects, as well as eyeing up what I can release for the rest of the year.
You can expect a new app, shared to the public, around mid-April. I'm really excited about it, and I can't wait to show you more.
If you've made it this far, know that I appreciate it. I haven't written anything long-form like this for a while, and I'm sensing a new hobby will come from it :)
See you next time.