How a 91-year-old vibe coded a complex event management system using Claude and Replit | John Blackman

Summary

How I AI Podcast Summary

Episode: How a 91-year-old Vibe Coded a Complex Event Management System using Claude and Replit | John Blackman
Host: Claire Vo
Guest: John Blackman
Release Date: June 23, 2025

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1. Introduction

In this inspiring episode of How I AI, host Claire Vo welcomes John Blackman, a 91-year-old enthusiast affectionately dubbed the "vibe coding grandpa." John shares his remarkable journey of leveraging AI tools—specifically Claude and Replit—to develop a sophisticated event management system for his church. This episode delves into John's motivations, the development process, challenges faced, and the profound impact of his creation on his community.

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2. John Blackman's Background

John Blackman's multifaceted career spans several decades and industries:

• Early Career: Began as an electrical engineer at Kansas City Power and Light.
• Entrepreneurship: Transitioned to running a hardware store in Oklahoma, where he also earned an airplane mechanic certification.
• Engineering Innovations: Returned to Kansas City, became the first in his department to master AutoCAD in the 1980s, and trained others.
• Fiber Optic Projects: Played a pivotal role in one of the first underground fiber optic projects in the U.S. Later, he was brought out of retirement to assist with launching Google Fiber in Provo and Kansas.
• Personal Ventures: Owned Bitcoin since 2018, showcasing his forward-thinking mindset.

Notable Quote:

"Is there anything you haven't tried?"
— Claire Vo [03:55]

"Not yet."
— John Blackman [03:49]

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3. Identifying the Problem and Crafting the Solution

John sought to enhance the efficiency of his church's "impact weekends," where they offer free services like haircuts, eyeglasses, car washes, and meals. The manual registration process was cumbersome, prompting John to envision a computerized system to streamline operations.

Key Steps:

1. Outlining Needs: John drafted a detailed outline of desired features for the event management system.
2. Leveraging AI: Collaborated with his grandson, Brett, to utilize Claude for creating a requirements document.
3. Development with Replit: Transferred the requirements to Replit, where the platform rapidly generated the program.

Notable Quote:

"We started at 10 and finish about 3 o'clock in the morning."
— John Blackman [00:32]

"We did it in two days."
— John Blackman [31:02]

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4. Utilizing Claude and Replit for Development

John's collaboration with Claude involved interactive dialogues that refined the project's roadmap, user stories, and technical requirements. This structured approach enabled the swift building of a complex application without prior extensive coding experience.

Process Highlights:

• Requirements Documentation: John used Claude to transform his initial ideas into a structured requirements document.
• Automated Coding: Copied the generated user stories into Replit Agent, which autonomously built the foundational codebase.
• Iterative Development: Continuously added features and made refinements based on testing and feedback.

Notable Quote:

"I just talk to it like it's a person."
— John Blackman [25:11]

"It's better than some work I've seen in professional organizations."
— Claire Vo [12:33]

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5. Features of the Event Management Application

John's application boasts a comprehensive suite of features tailored to manage church events efficiently:

• Multi-Admin Interface: Hierarchical access levels allowing system admins to oversee all churches, while local admins manage their respective locations.
• Participant Management: Real-time registration tracking, including participant demographics and service utilization reports.
• Service Flexibility: Ability to toggle available services (e.g., haircuts, eyeglasses) based on event needs.
• Automated Reporting: Generates detailed reports on participation, service usage, oil changes (with VIN number integrations), food pantry orders, and vision center data.
• Participant Interaction: Mobile-friendly registration forms accessible via QR codes, complete with digital waivers and signature capture.
• Asset Generation: Creates printable passports for participants, consolidating their registered services for easy navigation during events.

Notable Quote:

"It's easy to read, it's simple to navigate."
— Claire Vo [00:35]

"They couldn't believe it. They said, this blows me away."
— John Blackman [31:45]

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6. Challenges Faced During Development

Despite the rapid development, John encountered several hurdles:

• Production vs. Development Issues: Features worked seamlessly in the development environment but faltered in production, particularly with email functionality and PDF attachments.
• Technical Glitches: Encountered problems with environment variables and API key management, leading to issues like incorrect VIN number processing.
• AI Limitations: Sometimes Replit Agent deviated from intended tasks ("rabbit trails"), requiring John to intervene and correct the process manually.

Notable Quote:

"It always doesn't work in production, what works in development. And that was very frustrating."
— John Blackman [26:09]

"It breaks and crashes."
— John Blackman [24:34]

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7. Impact on Church and Community

John's innovative system promises substantial benefits for his church community:

• Operational Efficiency: Automates previously manual tasks, reducing administrative burden and minimizing errors.
• Enhanced Service Delivery: Facilitates smoother event management, allowing volunteers to focus more on assisting participants than on paperwork.
• Data-Driven Insights: Provides pastors and ministry leaders with valuable data for follow-ups and tailored outreach.
• Scalability: Enables the church to serve more people effectively, adapting to varying event sizes and service demands.

Notable Quote:

"Now my VIN number does not work in production now, but it does work in development because the OpenAI key changes as we deploy it."
— John Blackman [30:20]

"They are ready to use it as soon as I can get it running."
— John Blackman [31:20]

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8. John Blackman's Wisdom and Insights

Drawing from his extensive experience with technological advancements, John offers valuable advice:

• Embrace a Growth Mindset: Continually learn and adapt to new technologies to stay relevant and engaged, even well into later years.
• Overcome Fear of AI: Understand both the positive and potential negative impacts of AI, focusing on leveraging its benefits responsibly.
• Persistence is Key: Tackle challenges head-on, whether it's debugging code or managing unforeseen technical issues.

Notable Quote:

"It's just like AutoCAD. A lot of my friends didn't want to learn AutoCAD and so when I retired in '94, I still was working. In 2018, I was still having fun."
— John Blackman [01:00]

"Learn this technology, because if you learn it, you can be having fun well into your 70s, 80s and 90s."
— Claire Vo [01:09]

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9. Conclusion

John Blackman's journey exemplifies the transformative power of AI tools in empowering individuals to create meaningful solutions, regardless of age or prior coding experience. His dedication not only enhances his church's operations but also serves as an inspiring testament to lifelong learning and adaptability in the face of technological evolution.

Final Thoughts:

"It's been unbelievable."
— John Blackman [33:16]

"It's been so much fun."
— John Blackman [39:58]

---

This episode underscores the accessibility and potential of AI-driven development platforms, urging listeners to explore and harness these tools to address real-world challenges effectively.

Transcript

[John Blackman]

We do impact weekends at our church. We go to a local church and provide free haircuts, free eyeglasses, free car wash, free food and everything. I handle registrations for these events. And so I said it'd be nice to have that computer somehow. So I wrote up a kind of an outline of what I wanted to do. We sent it to Claude, told Claude we wanted for riplit, then we had him write a program and we sent it to riplith in to do the program.

[Claire Vo]

You all told me the story correctly. John, you and your other grandson did this into the wee hours of the night.

[John Blackman]

We start at 10 and finish about 3 o' clock in the morning.

[Claire Vo]

It's beautiful. You've got beautiful navigation. It's easy to read, it's simple to navigate.

[John Blackman]

So I have control of all the churches and here I see all the participants that have registered. I have the services that are available. I have reports and I can print this report out beforehand to know what people are coming.

[Claire Vo]

Do you have any wisdom or advice for us as folks in our professional. Professional careers are facing this technology change?

[John Blackman]

It's just like AutoCAD. A lot of my friends didn't want to learn AutoCAD and so when I retired in 94, I still was working. In 2018, I was still having fun.

[Claire Vo]

So that's another reason to learn this technology, because if you learn it, you can be having fun well into your 70s, 80s and 90s. Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive, here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. I'm just going to get to the punchline. Today we have John Blackman, a 91 year old vibe coding grandpa. He used Claude and Replit to build a very complicated, very impressive app for his church. And he's going to show us how he did it. Let's get to it.

[Brandon]

This episode is brought to you by workos. AI has already changed how we work. Tools are helping teams write better code, analyze customer data and even handle support tickets on automatically. But there's a catch. These tools only work well when they have deep access to company systems. Your copilot needs to see your entire code base. Your chatbot needs to search across internal docs. And for enterprise buyers, that raises serious security concerns. That's why these apps face intense IT scrutiny from day one. To pass, they need secure authentication, access controls, audit logs, the whole suite of enterprise features.

[Claire Vo]

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[Brandon]

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[Claire Vo]

So I don't usually start this podcast with bios, but John, yours is too good to not give a little time to. So let me embarrass you a little bit with a quick bio of your experience. So you started as an electrical engineer at Kansas City Power and Light, and then you left to run a hardware store in Oklahoma, where while you were in Oklahoma, you earned your airplane mechanic certification. Then you returned to Kansas City and rejoined engineering, becoming the first in your department to learn AutoCAD in the 1980s. And you were eventually training others. You worked on one of the first underground fiber optic projects in the US you were brought out of retirement to help launch Google Fiber in Provo and Kansas. And then at 91, you are vibe coding software using AI agents. Is there anything you haven't tried?

[John Blackman]

Not yet.

[Claire Vo]

Not yet. Oh, and I forgot the cherry on top. You've owned Bitcoin since 2018.

[Brett]

You've got some Bitcoin, right?

[John Blackman]

That's right, yeah.

[Claire Vo]

So you have the epitome of a growth mindset. You've had such an amazing career, learned so many different fields and practices, and now you are into AI. How did this all start?

[John Blackman]

Well, it's Brett's fault. My other grandson. Well, I was talking about we do impact weekends at our church, which we go to a local church and provide free haircuts, free eyeglasses, free car wash, free food and everything. Kind of a ministry type thing. I handle registrations for these events. And so I said it'd be nice to have that in the computer somehow. And so he said, well, let's do it. So I wrote up a kind of an outline of what I wanted to do. We sent it to Claude, and then Claude turned around and we said we were going to send it to Riplet. Told Claude we were going to. We wanted for riplit. Then we had Rip him Writer program and we sent it to Ripley then to do the program.

[Claire Vo]

Okay, so you had this idea to support your church and your ministry services, and you just needed something that was more scalable than paper. And you did what all my peers in technology are now doing, which is ask Claude to create what we in the business call a requirements document. And then you Sent it over to replit. So, Brandon, can you help us dive into the actual Claude chat and where this all got started? And I, I think if you all told me the story correctly, John, you and your other grandson did this into the wee hours of the. Of the night. So you got started with Claude and then did it till, you know, one in the morning or maybe even longer than that.

[John Blackman]

We started at 10 and finished about 3 o' clock in the morning. And then we started the next day at 10 until about 5:00 clock that evening.

[Claire Vo]

Well, you are in good company because I think 10 to 3 in the morning is every vive. Coders schedule, schedules. You're good. Okay, so tell me how you know you started here? It sounds like you started by asking if you could plan a development roadmap. So you went right, right to it.

[Brett]

And grandpa, what's cool about this I picked up on is that you have things like in here, like, if you need more information from me, ask me the questions right away. Like you were telling it exactly what it should be doing. And then it started just going from there and you started providing information.

[Claire Vo]

Yeah. So you started the top with a very general query, which was, how do I create a roadmap? Basically? And then you got the chat to actually ask you enough questions about your specific project that it could do a good job. So you have a draft of what you want the application to do, and in specific you say it wants to be built on replit. How did you find out about replit? Why did you pick that application?

[John Blackman]

That was suggestion by Brett. Yeah.

[Claire Vo]

All right. My, my replit friends, do not underestimate grandson influencer marketing for your agents. Okay? So he said, let's just build it with replit. And so you instructed the system that. And then, you know, did you list out all these. These ideas here? Were these from YouTube?

[John Blackman]

Yes, I typed them up in a Word document and then we sent that to Claud.

[Claire Vo]

Great. So this is a very structured step by step, what we would call kind of user journey or flow. So you're talking about registration, what data you need, and then what kind of services they can do. And these are all wonderful services that you can get in your community. You know, haircut, dental service, those kinds of things. And then how did you come up with this idea of an impact passport?

[John Blackman]

I saw that at another church one time. They had. They did a lot differently than I do it. But anyway, they had a little. A piece of paper that the people would carry around with them to this event. And so we do that too, but we do it by. We would write it out by hand. And so that I wanted something that we could print out and then they could bring with them to the event.

[Brett]

Yeah. And so they'll sign up for something online. They'd be like, okay, you signed up for the haircut and you signed up for the face painting, and then you signed up for the health clinic, and then they'll get their passport and then they know what stations to kind of go to. And like you mentioned, that was all done by hand beforehand. So.

[Claire Vo]

Right, so what you're trying to do here is you have a bunch of manual handwritten processes.

[John Blackman]

Correct.

[Claire Vo]

You're doing to run this event and you're asking Claude, how do I turn this in to software? And how, how could I do this both on the volunteer side, on the ministry side, as well as the folks coming to receive services. And so I see in this chat you're getting a nice back and forth between you and Claude. And then let's see what the roadmap looked like. All right, so you got the core features for an mvp. The first piece of it, the admin interface passport generation, as we spoke about, and then data management, all that good stuff, and a bunch of development phases. And then it looks like on the side, Brandon, it also generated user stories and requirements.

[Brett]

It did, yes. And I see here it said QR code. Did you know it was going to do a QR code?

[John Blackman]

Well, I'd seen this done at this other church for their passport, so I wanted to do that in ours because it would, it'd make it a lot easier because everybody has an iPhone now and so they can just scan that code and then it brings up the registration form for them to fill out.

[Claire Vo]

So you were taking inspiration not just from your manual processes, but from ways you've seen other churches do this work. You sort of brought that all together use chat to put that in an organized structure. And then we're looking at these user stories. Brandon, do you want to walk through kind of some of the key user stories here?

[Brett]

Yeah. So he's got the registration chunk of it right here, which a lot of this would be driven from someone who's typically responding from like a Facebook ad or something like that.

[John Blackman]

Correct. Well, Facebook, we have brochures that we hand out about 5,000 in the neighborhood. Yeah.

[Brett]

And this is the part that honestly, even to this day, I still can't wrap my head around in terms of just the complexity of the multi tenant setup that he has here. So there's an admin interface and that has to have lots of different levels because, and you keep me honest here grandpa, you've got the overall impact organizers which sit at one admin level which.

[John Blackman]

Is like we call system admins, System admins.

[Brett]

And then beneath that you've then got all of these churches, individual or local admins that then have their own admins and their own logins and their own data and visibility can go up and down. So the, the impact admins, the system admins can see all the way down, but the individual church admins can only see their own church and their own events.

[John Blackman]

And the system can actually approves all of the admin administrators for those that.

[Claire Vo]

Are not on the YouTube or the video. I am smiling ear to ear because you're building this complex, what we call roles based access system, multi tenant. Brandon, as you said, complex piece of software with admin backend functions, you know, front end, you know, consumer or participant facing functions, all from a paper process and something that you just want to make better for your community. And so I'm seeing those two kind of like major users and then as we go down we're seeing these user stories which again are, I love user stories as a product person because it really lets you describe how you want the software to be experienced from the user's point of view. And so John, did you find these user stories were pretty accurate right out the, right out the gate?

[John Blackman]

They were pretty accurate. I made a few changes to them as we went through the program but mostly he had a pretty well described what I was thinking.

[Claire Vo]

Yeah, and I even see here you're not just looking at administrators and users, you're thinking what would the pastor of the church want, what would the ministry leader want from all of this, all of this data. And you even have non functional requirements. You are a very good product manager. This is better than some work I've seen in professional organizations. Okay, so you built this great set of product work with Claude and then this is going to blow people's mind. You just took it to Replit agents to start building it. So did you download, copy and paste this into Replit agent? Do you remember what you said?

[John Blackman]

I just took and copied what Claude had put together and put it into Ripplet and then it started going blip, bloop and there it was.

[Claire Vo]

Well, I have to tell you, that's the official AI noise.

[John Blackman]

It was so fast I couldn't believe it.

[Claire Vo]

Okay, so let's hop over to Replit and show a little bit of what, what you've built Here I'm going to pause really quickly, so I'm just looking at the side. You've got docs migrations, you've got generated static assets here in these passports. This is a real, this is a real meaty application here you built. So let's jump to the punchline, let's do a little world tour of what you actually built and then we can maybe go into some of the problems that you've been trying to solve lately with, with replit.

[John Blackman]

Start with. We go in as a system administrator, I will go into this LBC multiple which that's the system administrator. The LBC church is a local church, Testimony Church is a local church and so forth. So anyway, I go into this and I sign in with an admin sign in what this does, it brings me into the individual churches so I have control of all of the churches. And then when I go in here, then I can actually manage the event. So this way I could go into Testimony Church and here I see all the participants that have registered, which a person would do. The local church would do this. Really. I have the services that are available and these services can be turned on or off depending on whether they are provided or not. If they're not provided, you just click the button and it says no service for that event. See? And then I have reports and the reports I have is demographics. That's everybody that's coming to church, coming to the event. It gives their name and it's name and address, phone number, address and how many people are coming. Like if they're bringing kids and put say three kids or something or three participants and it's in an alphabetical order by last name and I can print this report out beforehand to know what people are coming. Also this demographics report is used by the pastor as a follow up for his ministry after the event's over. Then I have a service usage which tells me how many people use what service. So it will print out a list of how many use the pantry and how many haircuts and all this. So we kind of know how many, what services were better used than others. And then the oil change, it will show when the people register with their VIN number. So this gives me an oil report of what kind of oil filters and how many that I need for the project.

[Brett]

So, and grandpa, how did it, how do you know? Or how does it know what oil to buy?

[John Blackman]

We use a VIN number search. When they fill out the registration, it asks us for their VIN number and then it searches for the VIN number and tells us what kind of filters you used all this guy name this.

[Brandon]

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[Claire Vo]

Okay, so I just have to pause for folks that are not on video to recap everything you vibe coded here. You have this administrative multi administration levels. You have data models for different locations or churches. You have data models for different events. You have data models for different services that can be turned on or off. You have a list of participants and real time reports of different ways those participants are either registered for events or coming to events. You have service specific software which will take, I'm just taking a pause here, a request for an oil change that comes with a VIN number and it will go, I'm presuming make some API call somewhere to tell you exactly what kind of oil that car uses and then you generate a report for an event that you can export to Excel and use as a shopping list to go get oil or tell people what they need to bring.

[John Blackman]

Right.

[Claire Vo]

Just that.

[John Blackman]

Also these reports. Here's the oil change report so it says the person's name and we have a check in for the oil change.

[Claire Vo]

Okay. And again for folks that aren't looking, it's beautiful. You've got beautiful navigation. It's. It's easy to read, it's simple to navigate. You have these little alerts and we call them toasts in the app that tell you when different actions happen and Then I know there's a whole participant side of this and maybe we can share some screenshots of that as well where people can register and actually get a little printed out passport that they can take to the, to the event.

[John Blackman]

Yeah. Now the other reports I have is for the food pantry. This orders all the food for the food pantry and also for the lunch that we provide, a free lunch. So it orders like hot dogs and hamburgers and buns and all that that we need for their lunch. And then the Vision center, when we go to the vision center, we need a report that will be used by the people running the vision center to know what the person that is coming to the Vision center, what their age is and everything. And that's filled out by this report. And then we have waivers that are signed by each individual so that the church is not responsible for anything.

[Claire Vo]

Yeah. So let's look at that piece from the participant perspective because you've built some things there that I think are pretty cool.

[John Blackman]

Wanna go through registration?

[Claire Vo]

Yeah, yeah, let's go through registration.

[John Blackman]

We'll just use test My Church. Cause it's events. So you put in your name and then the phone number. You have to put your phone number in.

[Claire Vo]

Okay.

[John Blackman]

And your address.

[Claire Vo]

So when you scan the QR code off a flyer or something like that.

[John Blackman]

It'Ll bring this form.

[Claire Vo]

Okay.

[John Blackman]

Yeah.

[Claire Vo]

And does it, does it look good on a mobile phone?

[John Blackman]

Yeah, it's pretty good. You can read it pretty easily. And then this one here is like the eye clinic.

[Claire Vo]

Yep.

[John Blackman]

And then you say next, you can even do oil change here. So let's do the oil change. So you can see how that works. It has a pro lookup through oil change.

[Brett]

And what API is it hitting? Do you know?

[John Blackman]

It's OpenAI API. OpenAI? Yep.

[Brett]

OpenAI's API.

[John Blackman]

So here, see, it shows that it's a 5, 5 W20 oil, 6 quartz and the filter nerve. So then you say, okay. And then this is the waiver that they have to read through. And when it gets down to the bottom, it's all filled in automatically. And then you proceed to the signature.

[Claire Vo]

So watch out, watch out. DocuSign, you have a signature capture flow here. Okay. You can do with your, your finger on your phone.

[John Blackman]

And then you say, I accept the signature. And then you say, complete the registration.

[Claire Vo]

This is, this is very good. Okay. I could, I could look at this all day as somebody who builds software. But let's go back to how you actually did this. So one of the pieces of the flow that I think is so interesting that people would love to get into is this idea of looking up the, this oil change. And so let's just say a feature like that, I'm sure wasn't the first thing that you thought of. It was probably something you added after. So how are you chatting with replit to add these features and how much of the work is it doing for you? How much are you researching outside? Can we look at some of those chats?

[John Blackman]

Well, right now what I'm working on is having a name tag for the staff at the event that will be printed out on a Word document on labels. So that way we could slip them into a plastic folder and had a laying around their neck. Because right now what we do, we write it with a marker on a sticky one and stick it on her shirt. And sometimes people don't want that stuck on their shirt or blouse. And so this will hang around her neck in a folder. So this is what I'm working on right now.

[Brett]

It looks like he uploaded this first with this prompt here. Claude then started to bring out some of these assets here. So there's the template that it used and then eventually it started to code down here.

[John Blackman]

Right.

[Brett]

And then he brought it over to repplit.

[John Blackman]

Yeah.

[Claire Vo]

Okay, so you wanted to make these name tags and so you had to add the idea of a volunteer into this already complex app. And so let's look through the chat that actually did that and how replit built it. Okay, so it said a couple weeks ago, you said that you want to add a function that will populate a volunteer list when it administrat a local administrator. So you're using your roles, fills an input page and then it says all the information that, that you need in that. And so let's scroll down and show what relet actually does for you. So with that paragraph of instructions, there you are adding a new table to your schema. So you're adding a data model. It's updating. So I mean, do you just sit here and watch this work? Are you totally fascinated by this?

[Brett]

You just sit there watching it.

[John Blackman]

I liked it. Yeah, I watch him sometimes. He goes off on a rabbit trail and I have to back.

[Claire Vo]

And so this, you know, keeps going. What's interesting about this Replit Agent implementation, as you can see here, it's pretty independent. You're not doing a lot of back and forth with it. It's doing big chunks of work for you.

[John Blackman]

It does.

[Claire Vo]

And then do you pull this up kind of locally in the browser and then check if it Works and give it feedback. How is that back and forth for you?

[John Blackman]

When he gets to a point where he says, I think I got this, then I'll go back into the program and run it. Let's see if it works. Then if it doesn't work, I tell him.

[Claire Vo]

And so it made a mistake here where it says not all events. You want it for the local event. So it's going again and making these updates. And have you found that you figured out how to prompt these agents? Are there any tricks you can share with us or do you just talk to it like you would anybody else?

[John Blackman]

I just talk to it like it's a person. Like you guys tease me about. Yeah, he.

[Brett]

He refers to the AI as a he. So the pronouns of he.

[Claire Vo]

Yeah, perfect. Chat prd. My AI is a lady, so that's fine. And then you do do what all of us do with our AI, which is you just say, wait. And then I saw another one that said, stop.

[John Blackman]

This is where he was going out on a rabbit trail. And I said, wait a minute, don't go that way.

[Claire Vo]

Stop, Stop. Yep. So one of the challenges, I think working with these agents, which you're experiencing here, is as we see, it can do tons of work for you without intervention. But it's interesting that you can spot when you need to tell it to stop or reset or start over. It's pretty amazing to add these features. Now, I have to ask you, what was the most complicated thing or the hardest thing that you built here?

[John Blackman]

The hardest thing, and I finally got it about two days ago, was it always doesn't work in production, what works in development. And that was very frustrating. And so in my production, I was sending an email to the participant informing them that they had registered for the event and attached is their passport, so they'll print it out there at their home rather than me having to do it at the event. In production, it would not attach that passport PDF file to the email. We worked on it for two or three days, and finally the other day, we finally got it working. But the reason we did, we had to change the type of PDF file format that we were using. And so the passport that we send with the email looks different than a passport that we have in development.

[Claire Vo]

So I'm going to give you some real cred and credit here, because if I just take a step back at what you've built, you know, everybody is going to listen to this and say, oh, yeah, you can vibe code a registration app. It's just like a form. But if I'm looking at the complete, the complete nature of what you've built. You have a very complex application here that's serving many different users, that has security needs, that has kind of opt in and waivers. You're generating PDFs, you're generating Excel files, you're emailing those PDFs, you're generating reports, you're doing all these different kinds of software development all wrapped in what I think is a beautiful ui. And just to confirm, have you ever coded software before?

[John Blackman]

The only thing I did in AutoCAD where I worked at Powerlight, we bought a program called IntelliCAD. It had logic files that we had to. They allowed us with open architecture to make our own logic files. So I did write logic files for that to show that conductors were attached to poles and so forth. And so I. But it wasn't really code like this. It was more like if, then, plus, if this happens, do this.

[Claire Vo]

But no Typescript.

[Brett]

No, no.

[Claire Vo]

This is your first time writing Typescript and you know, can you just talk us through some of the, you know, you said you use OpenAI APIs. Is Replit recommending what database to use? Is it recommending how to send emails? How much of that did you have to research yourself versus the agent telling you how it works?

[John Blackman]

No, I don't know. I, I've looked at it, I've looked at the database to see, you know, what, what's in there, parts of it, but I don't know what it is.

[Claire Vo]

Got it. So when the agent tells you use this to store your data or that to send your email, I think you're using SendGrid, you just take those recommendations and go. So for all of you coding agent builders out there, these out of the box integrations, John, I think make it simple for folks like you to add on new kind of technical capabilities without having to research or make those decisions correct.

[Brett]

Yeah, that is, that's a good point. So I listen to a lot of other VIVE coders and that's probably a piece of advice I hear a lot, is that they will say, just be open minded, like when you go in. Because I'm a technology guy, I work with software developers all day long and we're very opinionated. Like we know, like how it should be done and what tools it should be done with and what the layer should look like, I don't know. And sometimes that can trip up the AI because it's not going to naturally go that way, even if it's not the best way. And so it's interesting to kind of watch grandpa here just not have a single clue what it should look like or what it should do. And AI just makes it work for him, even though no real software engineer might have done it that way.

[John Blackman]

That's true. Yeah. I didn't know.

[Claire Vo]

I don't want to call you out too much, John, but I noticed you're on the free version of Claude. Have you paid any money to it for this app or is it is on the free tier?

[John Blackman]

I have spent at this point, I think it's about $350.

[Claire Vo]

Okay, so $350.

[John Blackman]

What amazed me though was as first two days the program was basically running and it cost me like $25 plus maybe 50 or something or I think I put a deal there. It cost me $171 when the program was running. And that's what Brett says. You know, it take his programmers probably six months to do it and we did it in two days.

[Claire Vo]

So I'm going to put some fear in the heart of the software engineers out there because you built some pretty impressive software a couple days, a couple weeks. $170 in cost, free version of Claude. Some. Some grandson time, which I'm sure feels like you're getting paid. You're getting paid. What has the impact been on your church, on your community? What I can imagine here is you can just serve a lot more people, your volunteers are a lot more effective. Everybody's probably having a better time at these events because they're not stressed out about paperwork. What have you seen about the impact of what you built here?

[John Blackman]

Well, to begin with, they couldn't believe it. They said, this blows me away. And so I've showed it to the, mainly the. The pastors that are in charge of these events, but we have not implemented it yet because I keep having little things, I keep adding to it and some things are still not working exactly right. And so I'm still working on that. But they were really, they're ready to use it as soon as I can get it running. Right.

[Claire Vo]

Okay, well, we're going to keep our fingers crossed that by the time this episode is released, you will have had your launch day for this impact platform.

[Brett]

Well, that's great.

[Claire Vo]

Okay. And I bet you will recruit some. Some volunteer developer assistance and I even bet the replit folks will help you out if we can get this in front of them. Okay. John Brandon, this has been so much fun. Just to recap, you found a problem in your life and in your community that you thought could be made better. With your words, not mine. Computers. You used Claude to create a requirements document. User stories. You downloaded those user stories, you put them in Replit Agent, as we've seen on screen. Replit Agent, just through all the requirements, you have this complex piece of software. You're adding to it every day. You spent a couple hundred bucks. And I'm guessing you feel very empowered, like you've learned a lot in the past couple months.

[John Blackman]

Yes, I do. Yeah.

[Claire Vo]

Okay.

[John Blackman]

It's been unbelievable.

[Claire Vo]

Great. Well, we are going to get you back. I know you're just going to code again till midnight. So we're going to get you back to your coding with a couple lightning round questions. Then we'll get you, get you out of here. So, John, my first question to you is, we were joking before the show started. Logging in to these applications is harder than actually building the applications themselves. But if you can make an ask to any of the kind of coding providers to repl it to Claude on things that they can make better for your experience, what would your ask be?

[John Blackman]

The biggest problem I've had is it works great in development, but then when you have production where you actually want to use, doesn't transfer everything. For instance, right now I have an OpenAI key. It keeps putting an old key in there, which is, I think he said it's stored in a cache somewhere and it keeps putting this key instead of the right key. And I can't figure out why he keeps doing that. And so I haven't been able. That's why my VIN number does not work in production now, but it does work in development because the OpenAI key changes as we deploy it.

[Claire Vo]

All right, so you heard it here. Secrets management from development to production, still a problem. And Brandon, we had an example of something else that John wanted from Claude. Do you think we can pull that up or show that.

[Brett]

Yeah, that's a great one. So we were, we were researching for the show his, his chat history with Claude and I don't know if you knew, did you know that the history was over here on the left hand?

[John Blackman]

Well, I asked him where the history was. He said he don't have it.

[Brett]

Yeah. And so it'd be nice if Claude could say, well, here's all your chat history.

[John Blackman]

He didn't tell me.

[Claire Vo]

Yeah, so I think you had the sidebar because when we first started you had the sidebar with all the history closed. And so the very obvious place, ask where my. Where is my history is in the chat. But these chats, everybody, memory is key.

[John Blackman]

It was over that was all over I could find.

[Claire Vo]

Okay, so the preferred UX is just tell me in the chat and point me to, to my other chats. Okay, so we got good two pieces of feedback there. You know, my second question is what I love about you and our, you know, what you showed us here and your entire career is you have such a growth mindset around and embracing what's next. You know, when you, when CAD was coming out, you told me this story where people were really resistant and you leaned in. I'm curious, do you have any wisdom or advice for us? As you know, folks in our professional careers are facing this technology change that to some people can feel scary and to others feel really exciting. What's your wisdom? Having gone through this a couple times.

[John Blackman]

I was mentioning this program to one of the people at one of these events and she said, oh, I'm scared to death of AI. I said, well, why? She says, well, I just don't know what it's going to do. And I said, well, it does a lot of good things, but I'm sure it could do bad things. But I said, I think right now if you figure out how to use it the correct way, it's going to help a lot of people. And I said that's, that's why I found out here that this program, it, as a registration person, I don't have to do anything but stand there and hand out passports. Now where before I had to write all this stuff down by hand and all the material that we have to order, it had to be done kind of by hand or by somebody else, you know. So now this, all these reports will be there and like the pastor follow up ministry. Now you have a complete report of everybody that attended with name and address and how many people attended. So he'd go call them and provide ministry for him. So I think it's been a good deal.

[Claire Vo]

I love that answer because I am like you, an optimist. I have to believe that if we put the ability of, into the hands of people like you to build something, you will take it and build something amazing and good for your community and good for the people around you. And this is something that wouldn't have never existed if these tools didn't exist. You would still be on paper. So we get to get a little bit of your imagination and your impact on the world because we have this new technology. That's really great, really great advice.

[John Blackman]

It's just like AutoCAD. A lot of my friends didn't want to learn AutoCAD. The power line. And so when I retired in 94, I still was working in 2018. I don't know what they did. I was still having fun. Yep.

[Claire Vo]

So. So that's another reason to learn. Learn this technology, because if you learn it, you can be having fun well into your 70s, 80s, and 90s. Building, building. Good stuff. There's a lot of longevity if you can learn more. Okay. And then we know that Replit is a he. So we know how you. How you speak to the AI. I am curious. When it doesn't listen, what do you do?

[John Blackman]

I try to keep going around the corner with it and say try. In fact, I've told him several times, go back in history to a certain point and use this, which used to work. And now you say it doesn't work. So go back and use that code. And sometimes it works because it was working before. And then he broke it. I broke it somehow. He didn't do it. I told him to do something. It made it break and so. And crash. And so he would go back and pick that up and it would work again. And mainly that's what I've been doing. And then when worst comes to worse, I call Brandon and Brett.

[Claire Vo]

Okay, so when the AI does not work, go back to a checkpoint or call. Phone a friend. Phone a friend.

[John Blackman]

Exactly.

[Claire Vo]

Okay. This has been just so fun. Brandon, thank you for nominating John to come on this show. You're going to be a hit. John, thank you for sharing your enthusiasm and what you built in your product and your openness to this new technology. Where can we. How can we be helpful to you? Is there anything we can do for you?

[John Blackman]

You can help me fix my VIN number.

[Claire Vo]

Okay. We're going to get this. We're going to hop off the podcast, and we're going to fix this environment variable. Well, thank you so much. You all have a great day. Thanks for being here.

[John Blackman]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Brett]

Bye. Bye.

[John Blackman]

Bye. Bye.

[Brandon]

Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Please consider leaving us a rating and review which will help others find the show. You can see all our episodes and learn more about the [e-mail] See you next time.