
This is the article we reference in the conversation: My yard is dying, so I made an app for that (The Verge)
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A
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B
Oh, thanks for having me.
A
So you posted a piece a couple weeks ago that lines up perfectly with this thesis, which is, hey, I did a funny thing with AI, even though I don't know what I did exactly. So first of all, let's set the table with you're not technical. Have you done any coding before or anything like that?
B
No, not technical. Enough HTML to get me by.
A
Be a little dangerous. Yeah, essentially working your CMS and stuff like that. Okay. Another thing, let me take your temperature on your feelings about AI or your experience with AI. Maybe before this project would be a better way to frame it. So are you a skeptical? Have you played around with it before? Just generally. What are your thoughts about AI up till now?
B
Definitely interested and I would say a little, you know, more than a little wary. I. You know, my my beat is smartphones for the Verge. I've been hearing nonstop about AI, how it's going to change how we use our phones, change our lives for the past at least three years. So it, I feel like just now these things are starting to actually ship and there's, you know, stuff that I'm. I've been hearing about for years is finally working on phones I'm using in my hand. So, like, it's exciting in that way, and I'm interested in seeing how it develops. But I have had more than my fair share of, like, arguing with Gemini about when my flight leaves or what airport I'm flying out of. So a little tired, I think.
A
I think that I did quote if you did this piece maybe a month ago after Google. I o like the ability to Google is letting you essentially, hey, with a prompt, you can create an app to put on your Android phone. So is that part of what inspired this project?
B
Yeah, definitely. That kind of popped up in the keynote and I was like, oh, that's exciting. You know, there's. There's no universe in which I can make an Android app without a. A lot of hand holding and help. So that was really appealing to me and it kind of got the, you know, got my brain working where I was like, what is something I would. I would like if I could make an app.
A
I think that's part of what all of this is discovering. I've said this before, but Paul Ford was on a, I think Kafka's podcast, and he said something along the lines of, well, I have worked with code my whole adult life, so I'm a person that thinks of solving problems with code. And it's sort of like normies like us are discovering that that may or may not be possible. Okay, enough table setting. Explain what the problem was and then explain how you went down the five coding rabbit hole.
B
Yeah, so the problem is my yard. I. I live in Seattle area. I have a very modest yard that we sort of inherited from the previous owners of the house we moved into, like eight years ago. It's, it's. It's nothing special. There's like some trees and some shrubs and roses and things. And when we moved in, I had no idea. I was like, I. I have never touched a pair of gardening shears. Don't know what to do. So we just kind of like left it on autopilot. That's not great for trees and shrubs, as it turns out. So we had kind of come to a place where we were. I was like, I need to fix this. We had all this, like, landscape rock that was Potentially killing all the shrubs. So I was. I. I kind of had this, like, growing list of to dos, and I'm still kind of clueless about how to, you know, I. I can tell when a plant is sick. I'm like, there's a lot of flies buzzing around this bush all the time. That seems bad. So I kind of. I needed some. Some help in, like, an ongoing way, and I needed to organize my to do list. So I was like, you know, why not make an app for that? Sure. I'm sure the app exists, honestly, but it was a fun kind of like, ooh, okay. I started thinking about, like, I could organize, you know, the plants in different zones in the yard, and I could bring in live weather API and make it kind of like a hub for all the stuff going on.
A
Let me interrupt you because, again, this is sort of part of. If someone's listening and thinking of going down this rabbit hole. Did you have all of that stuff in mind when you sat down with your first prompt, or was it simpler than that? And then, as you're prompting, you're layering on things? Well, maybe weather and stuff like that. How did the process go? Was it. Was it fully fleshed out at the beginning, or did the process sort of flesh it out as you're doing it?
B
I had kind of a loose collection of things I wanted and not a real solid, like, framework for how I wanted it to all come together. So I did just, like, spit a bunch of things out. And I used the Google AI studio because that was the one they talked about it, IO and you could just get the. Get an app onto an Android phone super easily. So I went in there and I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's all the things I want. Weather, help me diagnose plants and. And just kind of spit it all out and got. Got a, you know, working preview pretty quickly. And the more I played with it, the more I was like, oh, okay. I really needed to think about how, like, you know, if I'm organizing plants by zones and I have a to do list, do I want those things to tie together in certain ways? So I did have to do some backtracking of, like, okay, I got all of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to prune my yard app.
A
Well, let me. Let me right. Or prune your expectation. I think you called it like a list of demands. But did you experience the thing that, you know is famous, where you say to the AI, hey, I think I want to do this. Is it possible? And the AI is Like, oh, yeah, sure. Like, what was the experience of the back and forth where it's like, did it help you prune things? Did. Like, how did the AI shape what eventually you built?
B
Yeah, it was very. I thought there would be a little more back and forth, I guess. I don't. I didn't really know. I just sort of, like, spit a bunch of things out, and it was like, great. I'm making an app right now. Here it is. Um, so I was like, oh, okay. You know, I think if I had had sat down and kind of, like, thought through it a little more ahead of time, knowing that it was just gonna go off, like, running and make something for me, it would've changed the output a little bit. Um, I didn't give it any guidance about, like, what it should look like, the color scheme, and it came back with just the ugliest app I have ever seen. Dark mode.
A
Yeah.
B
Yeah, right. I was like, you know, let's be a little cheerful. Let's get some little plant leaves in there and things like that. So it was definitely a learning process, and I would like to play with more of these coding and agent tools just to get a sense of, like, are there some that hold your hand a little bit more? Because I probably could have used it,
A
you know, so also, like, the sense. Okay, let's start this way. So, like, you said, you went. You spit out a bunch of things, a list of demands, and you had a preview in five minutes. What's your feeling then? Are you like, oh, this is simple. I didn't realize it's this easy done. And then as you describe in the piece. No. You lost an entire day to it.
B
Yeah, it was a real, like, oh, that was quick. Yeah. I mean, it hit all the right notes of, like, okay. It's got this feature. I asked for this thing and this thing. Great. And I was just like, I fixed the color problem. And then I was like, I'll put it on my phone and I'll just go start using it. And learned pretty quickly that there was a lot of kind of testing and troubleshooting that that would. Would have come in handy before I'd started.
A
Like, I seem to have lost.
B
Yeah. I mean, the. The thing it gave me right away, like, on the surface level, had everything I asked for. I was like, this is great. There was a little tab for, you know, a plant doctor diagnosis and all this stuff. So I was like, cool, I will. I'll just put this on my phone and I'll go ahead and use it and I would kind of go out in the yard and start documenting my plans and be like, oh, this thing doesn't really work. Or there's like I have this way of organizing tasks but it's not really following the logic or little things here and there where I was like oh, this is not really.
A
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C
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A
in retrospect. Now, was that a you problem or an AI problem in the sense that you got fooled by oh this is so simple. But what you're discovering is that. Well, I kind of didn't architect. I didn't give it enough to do what I was assuming it was going to do.
B
Yeah, I think it was a me problem, honestly. I think looking back on it now, I'm like, I didn't have a crystal clear idea of what I wanted, and what I asked for was really like four apps in one. So I think, you know, the AI kind of did the. The best it could with it and came up with this. I gave it no structure, anything like that, and it came up with all of that. So, yeah, like, huge. Learning from all this was like, just go in with the simplest idea and be absolutely sure about what you want and then. And then like, build from there. Because it. It did turn into a whole afternoon and it was nice out, too. I was like, this stinks. Sitting in front of my computer, just. Just kind of going back and forth like, okay, well, we need to fix this thing now. And it's like, oh, yeah, sure, got it. And if I'd gone in as like, with like, one idea, like, I want to diagnose the plants in my yard with and kind of build on that, I think it would have been less like, iteration and. And, you know, going out and this thing's not working. And every time I updated it, I had to, like, you know, load it to the phone again and kind of start over.
A
Right. And one of the things that I've learned with my projects is that, number one, I have a greater appreciation for what software engineers do in that sense, where it isn't just like, well, here's an idea. One, two, three options, go. It is. You kind of have to scope it out and think it through. And if you're saying, oh, I want the camera to recognize this type of plant, or I want you to fetch weather APIs and stuff, you can say that. But then you actually have to think it through more in terms of, okay, what does that mean to fetch an API? And specific APIs and things like that. So it's almost like doing these sorts of things have trained me to think more in a software way.
B
Yeah. Yeah. It makes me so appreciative of the apps I have on my phone that work really well. And it really, you know, I get that thing where I'm like, do I need to pay for another app or another subscription? And it has kind of turned that around where I'm like, oh, my God, there's so much work that is required, like, on an ongoing basis to make these things even functional. So, like, yeah, right.
A
And you're only building for yourself. So imagine you're building something for other people where the users would come back to you and say, hey, this isn't working.
B
And so horrifying.
A
So you describe a scene where like the, the AI proactively discovers a bug and is debugging it for you. And it's saying things like channel is unrecoverably broken and race conditions and all sorts of things that you don't understand. So talk to me about what you learned about flying blind, where you. And I don't know what any of that means. So to what degree do you trust the AI to fix things? And then was that ever like a blocker where it's like, I don't know what you're telling me, so I don't know how to fix what you're telling me?
B
Yeah, it was a really uncomfortable feeling. I think I'm kind of a type A person where I'm like, I want to understand like every, all the context and all the steps of what I'm doing. So just, just kind of. Yeah. Blindly being like, okay, I clicked on the button to fix the bug and it says it's fixed. Like, great. I'm going to assume that's working. There were a couple of instances kind of like that where like something was not working. And I would ask Gemini, you know, like, what do I, what do I do here? What's the problem? And it would be like, oh, you know, that's a really common, that, that's like it called something the final boss. It was, you know, in that way that it just is like kind of cutesy and chatty. It was like, that's the final boss of deploying your app or something like that. Like, don't worry about that. And I'm like, do I really. Do I take that for face value? And you kind of just have to. Because I'm like, I don't know what the alternative is.
A
Well, another thing, another way to think about this because again, you go, you and I go out with an idea. We don't really know what we're doing and we're sort of hand holding the AI in a way. Sort of like I describe it as like dealing with a three year old where you're like, no, I want you to do this. No, I really want you to do this. No, I want, you know, but then at the same time, since we don't know what we're doing, we're. You're describing the AI having that sort of person. Like at the top of the home screen when you started, it says welcome back, gardeneer. And you didn't write that. The AI writes that right. So what I'm trying to get at is to what degree do you think what you produced was a collaborative thing where there's the AI sort of personality and decisions in it and how much of it was like you?
B
I think it did a fair amount of, especially around the structure. I wasn't like, I want a tab for this and I want to tab for this. It just kind of built all that. And I think that's, I'm sure the information it's trained on and it's sort of understanding of like, this is a basic format for this kind of app. You know, it's not reinventing the wheel every time it spits something like this out, which is, you know, kind of the, the. The beauty and the. The drawback of using AI. If you use AI for writing, you know, which I don't do, but, you know, people who are not writers use them for emails or whatever. It's like you'll. You'll get the right format and you'll get something that is. Fits the bill. It's. It's not gonna invent anything new or creative or exciting. You know, that kind of creativity comes from, you know, a software developer or a writer in, you know, thinking things through in a different way. So it's, It's a tool and it's fun. But, yeah, I'm like, this is a very, like, beginner kind of app. And it was also kind of a mess, too.
A
Well, I want to, I want to come back to what the end result was, and if you're still using it. But what I have encountered, I agree with you that it's not. It's. It's A.I. can't be creative on its own. But the degree to which, if you understand that the times when it's like, oh, that's a good idea. There's something that I did that recently that added a feature without asking me that I was like, oh, yeah, I should. And it just proactively did it, because I guess in its mind, the thing that I was trying to get it to do, it's like, well, logically, it should also, like, have a thumbnail so people can see the result. You know, like. And I hadn't thought that. So what I'm saying is, right in the same way that you're talking about writing, the AI can't write the script for you. But if you probe it and say, give me 30 good ideas, maybe one or two of those are things that you hadn't thought of. And so this is just my own personal thesis, but I'M curious for your take on it, where the creativity of the AI is around the edges. And so that if you go into a project knowing that, then you don't have to take everything. You just only have to take the good bits when it, you know, surfaces something that's good.
B
Yeah, totally. There's like a. Especially in writing, you can get kind of a blind spot or I'm. I'm not aware of the, you know, phrases I use a lot. And I think there is room for. It's helpful to have a tool like that that can be like, okay, I read your argument. You didn't consider this, or this might be. You're overusing this phrase. I don't use a ton of AI in my work that way, but I see the appeal of it. Where I could be, before I send a draft off to an editor, kind of be like, am I missing anything here? And that's where I think it really could come in handy for projects like this.
A
Tell me about how this app actually ended up, because I think it was good at certain things, like diagnosing. This is a plant, and this is what the problem is with it. How did it end up? Are you still using it? And what are the bits that actually worked and the bits that you're like, well, that was a fail.
B
It still exists. It's on. I had to switch phones. I had to switch over to iOS for work reasons. And so it's still on like a Motorola razor, but I haven't touched it in a bit. But the thing I did find the most useful was the kind of plant diagnosis. And it was like, take a picture of a plant in the yard, upload it, and it would give me a whole kind of diagnosis. But then it. Underneath that, it would have, like, action items, like, first you need to do this, and then clear out the. The dead pine needles in the middle of the. The shrub. And it would add those things to my little to do list in the app. And I was like, that's actually kind of all I need. You know, just distill this stuff. Because I would have a lot of conversations with Gemini, like, I'm noticing this in the yard, or what is a good idea? You know, how do I go about doing this thing? And those are kind of, like, dispersed. And I would be, you know, chatting on the phone with it or at my computer typing. It was nice to have that kind of, like, all in one place and very easily, like, distilled into, like, here are the next three things you need to do, right?
A
Because I Think you say at some point, you're like, this could have just been a Gemini chat, right?
B
Yeah.
A
But again, and you know, it's a pejorative to say that certain apps or even startups are just wrappers around what the AI does. But at the same time, like, that's kind of useful, like you're describing, if you can take it out in the real world in. In the moment, that the use case matters. Because in the end, that's what software is. Is like, there's the compute underneath and then just sort of like the wrapping and the UI and the UX that you put around it. So, like, again, thinking of this, like, now as like, oh, this is what software engineers think about all the time.
C
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A
Was it more useful for you to have this AI out in the real world, even if you could have just ran back in the house and had a Gemini chat?
B
Yeah, I think it was. And I think there is something about, especially with the yard project where it's. It's a lot of back and forth and it's a lot of. I go out in the yard and I do something and I'm cutting back, you know, some weeds, and I notice something. Yeah. I'm like, hi. I didn't see that before. This kind of changes things. And I would ask about it. There's. It is just a. A lot of in the moment and kind of, like, combining my observations and what I'm like, literally, like, seeing and feeling and smelling that, you know, AI can't do. And in combining it with, like, kind of an ongoing dialogue of, like, not. We're not chatting about everything in the whole wide world. You know, there's something about having that wrapper of, like, this is the gardening app, right?
A
The focus, right?
B
Yeah. Yeah. And just being able to feed that stuff in there and getting out what I needed in a format that was really helpful because I can't be going through chat logs while I'm outside and it's 80 degrees.
A
A few final questions, starting with, were you successful in getting the rhododendron back? What's the state of the yard after this project?
B
It is improving. It's definitely better. I'm, like, embarrassed at how bad this rhododendron looks. It looks like Tim Burton's rhododendron plant right now, but it's coming back. And then there's, you know, there's new leaves on that. We're taking up this, like, horrible landscape fabric and rock. If anybody needs some landscape rock in the greater Seattle area, please get in touch with me. But it's like, then I uncover new problems. I'm like, there's aphids on this rhododendron now. What do I do about that? So it is, you know, I think gardeners understand this and I'm learning it in real time. And, you know, and software developers, too, is like, it's. You're never done. You just.
A
Right now, now you need the 2.11 version where you're adding in the aphid and insect.
C
Yeah.
B
Yes.
A
Okay. These are more philosophical. But from this experience, after doing this, if you had to come down on one side, is it like, oh, crap, we're on the verge of anyone can build software now, or did this experience kind of expose for you the limits of that and where we might be far away from that?
B
Yeah, I. I went in kind of with that feeling of like, it was a little bit of conflict where I was like, could I just be paying a subscription for a gardening app that exists? Am I doing some kind of weird shortcut by, you know, prompting my own version of it? And I did come out of it feeling a little more settled with, like, I am not going to like Sherlock my way out out of subscription apps, like, anytime soon. I, you know, I have a handful of. Of paid apps that I. I love and I rely on, and I'm. I'm like, that. That's not going anywhere. You know, I. Something simple maybe, or something like, very specific that I want. I had this app that, like, checks if it's Peacho Rama, which is this, like, annual, like, peach event at our fancy grocery store. And I was like, is it Peacho Rama yet? And it tells me yes or no. I like fun stuff like that. I think I will continue to play with. But I'm. I, for one, am just going to pay the subscriptions when I need some. When it's like something I'm going to need on an ongoing basis that is pretty complex, like taking care of the yard, definitely, that's not going anywhere.
A
If you had something else, car trouble or, I don't know, we're going to build a back deck or something, you're not going to reach for the AI for one of those projects at least, you know, hey, we don't know what the next model is going to be. Like, but basically this taught you. Like, I'm not. It's not quite for me yet.
B
Yeah, yeah. And it's the way I've been using it, you know, because. Does this replace. Like, we would otherwise just hire a landscaper or someone to, like, a professional to come over. It's sort of like the thing that helps fill in the gaps. You know, it's almost like you see. You see a doctor once a year, but then you. You get little funny things and you're, like, checking on them, like, is this something I should talk to the doctor about? And, you know, for better and worse, but I think people are using AI in that kind of, like, fill in the gaps way. I'm sort of using it in. In my life of, like, okay, I think there's a problem here. I'm trying to understand exactly what it is. When do I call in a professional? Can I use the right words to describe it when I call a professional? That's where it's been most successful for me, and it definitely hasn't. We still have, like, a tree guy coming, like, the big trees. I'm not going to let Gemini take those. That's a professional's job.
A
Okay, final one. Let's assume that someone hears this episode this July 4th weekend and does have a deck project or something like that, and they're like, you know what? I'm going to give it a try to. Based on your experience, if someone was going to take a shot, what do you know now that you wish? What. What. What would you tell them to do that you didn't do when. When you went down this rabbit hole?
B
Yeah. I think, like, scope is everything. Just having, like, doing some of that work ahead of time of, like, what do I really need out of this? What is the problem I'm solving? And recognizing where AI is going to be helpful there and where you need to bring the like. No. Here's how it's structured. Here's how I want things to work with each other. And keeping it simple, I think is the key to a decent vibe coded app. But it was fun. Never in my life would I be like, I made a piece of software, so it's cool. It's a thing to tinker with. Definitely. And can. Can help you out if wielded correctly.
A
Yeah. Two things that have come up in just the first few episodes we've done on this is if you work with the AI first to create the scope of work and the spec and say in Claude and make a markdown file. That's like Work with me to make the master spec. And then the entire project comes back to that. But the other thing that I found useful is to ask the AI, what am I missing here? Like, if you just say, here are my four parameters, it'll just do that.
B
Right.
A
But if you say, here are my four parameters, like, what am I missing? Like, give me a pre mortem of, like, why, where the gaps are, why this would fail and stuff like that. And then. So, like, what I'm saying is it's not just giving the AI commands. You can ask the AI to help figure it out with you.
B
Yeah.
A
In the same way that, like, sometimes when I want to design a new feature, I literally say to it, hey, give me a prompt to give back to you. That would actually make this feature better than, like, the three sentences I've given you and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.
B
AI keeps. I have to keep reminding myself of that because I think with my type A personality, try to get in there and micromanage and be like, okay, I'm going to tell the AI exactly what I need in this scenario. And it's often more useful if you take that step backwards and kind of be like, here's what I'm trying to achieve, rather than going down, like, here's what I want you to do to achieve the thing. And it's. It's surprising how often that is helpful.
A
Yep, agreed. Well, again, glad your garden is at least improving. Maybe this 4th of July you'll have some more time to work on it. And maybe folks listening will be doing something crazy with AI on their fourth weekend. Thanks, Alison, for coming on and sharing that story with us.
B
Thanks so much for having me.
C
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B
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Host: Brian McCullough
Guest: Alison Johnson (The Verge)
Date: July 6, 2026
This bonus episode of Tech Brew Ride Home spotlights how AI-powered app creation is becoming accessible to everyday users, not just developers. Host Brian McCullough interviews Alison Johnson from The Verge about her hands-on experiment: using AI tools to build a personalized Android gardening app—despite having minimal coding experience. The conversation unpacks the promise and pitfalls of letting AI turn your ideas into software, the real work behind "no-code" AI platforms, and broader questions about whether we're on the cusp of anyone being able to build their own apps.
"I've been hearing nonstop about AI...I feel like just now these things are starting to actually ship...So it's exciting in that way, but...I've had more than my fair share of arguing with Gemini about when my flight leaves." [03:03]
"It came back with just the ugliest app I have ever seen. Dark mode." [09:53]
"I fixed the color problem. And then I was like, I'll put it on my phone...pretty quickly...there was a lot of testing and troubleshooting..." [10:45]
"Just kind of...blindly being like, okay, I clicked on the button to fix the bug and it says it's fixed...There were a couple of instances...where I'd ask Gemini...and it would be like, 'That’s the final boss of deploying your app.'...Do I take that for face value?" [17:51]
"...take a picture of a plant...it would give me a whole kind of diagnosis...action items...add those things to my little to do list in the app. And I was like, that's actually kind of all I need." [23:48]
"Scope is everything. Just...what do I really need out of this? What is the problem I'm solving? Keeping it simple, I think is the key to a decent vibe coded app." [32:45]
For anyone considering an AI-built DIY app for their next weekend project:
Keep your ambitions small, your prompts specific, be ready for plenty of troubleshooting, and consider asking the AI not just to code, but to think with you about structure, scope, and what you might be missing.