When you hear the words “building an app,” what do you picture? A specialist programmer, months of work, a world far away from your own. That is exactly what I used to picture. I am not even good with computers, so an app was obviously out of the question for someone like me.
Then, the other day, that assumption was turned upside down.
I talked to my AI partner Kuro (Claude). That was all I did. And a working prototype of an app appeared, right there, on the spot. How long it took is the part I still find hard to say out loud, so let me get to it properly.
It started as nothing more than small talk
That day I was chatting with Kuro about app ideas. “I think it would be handy if there were an app that did this,” I said. It was a passing thought, nothing more. I did not really intend to have anything built.
Then Kuro said this.
Let’s build a prototype. If we make it run in a browser, you can run it right here, right now, and try it out.
“Right now?” I was half in disbelief. I had only described an idea, and it was already telling me we could build it.
A few tens of minutes later, something was actually running
What I did was talk. That is the whole of my contribution. I said what kind of app I wanted it to be. What the screens should look like. What I wanted it to be able to do.
I did not write one character of code.
Kuro started putting it together there and then, and a few tens of minutes later there was a working prototype in front of me, on the screen.
You could register something. You pressed a button and it responded. The data was saved. It was, properly, an app.
Honestly, it was almost anticlimactic. The thing I had assumed was months of work in a distant world had been made as an extension of a casual conversation, in about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. I do not think that speed is easy to believe until you have sat through it yourself.
Of course, this is not a finished product
Let me be honest about the limits. What came out of those few tens of minutes was a prototype and nothing more. Turning it into an app that everyone can actually use is still ahead of me. Making it into a real smartphone app, for one. Smoothing out all the small details of how it feels to use. That is separate work, and it costs separate effort.
But even so, this speed means something big. Here is why.
An idea in your head becomes something you can touch, immediately.
When you explain “an app like this” in words, what lands in the other person’s mind is vague. But when there is a prototype that actually runs, you can think in specifics. “Ah, I want this part to work like that.” “This screen isn’t what I had in mind.” The idea does not stay a theory on paper. You can try it in the palm of your hand straight away. That is enormous.
What this experience made me feel
Not so long ago, if you had an idea for an app, there were only two ways to make it real. Study programming for years, or pay someone to build it for you. Between the idea and the reality stood a very high wall.
That wall has become astonishingly low, because of AI.
Even I, who am bad with computers, can say “I want something like this” out loud and get a prototype back on the spot. Instead of agonising over whether I could ever build it, I can run the thing and find out.
I think this is a real opportunity for anyone who is carrying an idea around. If you gave up because you cannot program, you above all should try telling your idea to an AI once. It may simply say “sure, we can build that,” and hand it to you in a form you can hold.
What I would sum up from this
- I talked about an app idea, and a prototype existed on the spot.
- I did not write one character of code. All I conveyed was what kind of app I wanted.
- It took only a few tens of minutes to get to a prototype that actually ran.
- A prototype is not a finished product, but being able to make an idea touchable immediately is worth a great deal.
- Even if you cannot program, AI lowers the wall between an idea and reality.
The people who are most likely to be surprised by this speed are the ones who think “I could never make an app.” Start by talking to an AI about the idea you have been keeping warm. From there, the shape of it will come into view far sooner than you expected.
If you want to read what happened when I kept going with this and spent a whole day on it, I wrote about building an app prototype in one day. And if you are still at the stage of collecting ideas rather than building them, here is how I went about brainstorming an idea inventory with AI.
