Personal Software

As developers, we love to customise our environment, and to build tools that fit our unique preferences and workflows. We do this not just because it improves productivity and ergonomics, but also, because it makes our daily routine feel more personal. And when things feel personal, they’re typically more fun.

And in this lies the irony with software today: we have powerful computers on our desks and in our pockets, but they aren’t nearly as personalised as they could be. Instead, we rely on general-purpose tools that were designed by and for someone else, because the complexity of creating bespoke apps is too high.

Which raises two interesting questions: how could we make personalising our software as easy as personalizing our dev environment? And then enable those around us to do the same? Not because that should be necessary—but because it could be fun 🙌

Single-use software

AI has changed our relationship with software.

Software can now adapt to you, not the other way around. Better yet, AI is making it possible for anyone, not just developers, to create single-use or custom applications.

We’re now seeing a world where you can build your ideas. Sometimes these apps, which precisely solve your own problems, are easier to create than anything you could purchase off the shelf.

An example of Meal Preparation app built using GitHub Spark. GitHub Spark is an AI-powered tool for creating and sharing micro apps which can be tailored to your exact needs and preferences, and are directly usable from your desktop and mobile devices. Without needing to write or deploy any code.

The software on-demand / on-the-fly era

We’re entering an era of software on-demand / software on-the-fly, where we can create software as easily as we can create a document or a spreadsheet. This is a profound shift in how we think about software, and it has the potential to democratise software development in a way that we’ve never seen before.

What if making single-use apps were 10x easier or faster than today? 100x easier or faster? You wouldn’t search "best chrome extensions for note taking". You would work with AI and it would generate on-the-fly something that works exactly how you want.

We need more builders, not fewer. Because building fosters understanding. And as more people start making personal software, the bar for what counts as "great software" will inevitably rise.

In this experiment, Claude generates software on the fly. No functionality is predetermined; no code is prewritten. What you see is Claude creating in real time, responding and adapting to your requests as you interact.