I Built an Entire App in Only 52 Min with Codex & Idea Browser

25:20Alex Finn:And it looks like that is still working here as well. So we had 1 ,200 lines of code built out for us while our marketing agent was working the cloud to build out that plan. While we were talking smack about OpenAI, 1 ,200 lines, they're just beautiful lines that they're creating for us. And what's really cool is if I actually, it's probably not going to be too visible on the camera, but if I go into Codex on my phone and I refresh here on my chat GPT app, I have that entire marketing plan on my phone as well. That's cool. Right? And so it's completely cross platform. Everything I do in the ID is in my mobile app.

26:03Alex Finn:Everything I do in my mobile app is on the browser and vice versa across the board. which is an ecosystem I don't think any other AI company can really pull off right now at the moment, which is really awesome. So we have it still building out our app. We're going to have the MVP done when it does that. But I think typically when people are building out apps like this, during this time when the agent's building, they'll go on X, they'll doom scroll, they'll do whatever. All of a sudden, two hours gone, they got nothing done. If you kind of shift your mindset now to having cloud employees, AI employees, which is unlocked with Codex, you can get a lot more done in these kind of in-between moments, right?

26:51Alex Finn:Like while this is working, I can maybe spin up a new chat, make sure we're working in the cloud, and we can say, you're a product manager. Come up with a roadmap for the app based on project.md. and I hit send. Now I have my product manager employee working for me all while I wait for the MVP to be built out, which looks like that is actually good to go and set here. Boom. Okay, perfect. Yep. So now we can run this and we can test it out. So let's see, we didn't set up the database just yet. So this might not work right away, but if this doesn't work right away, we can run through setting up the database as well.

27:38Alex Finn:But I'm going to, let's see here, I'm going to run this. NPM run dev, let's see. Oh, we've got to run NPM install, okay. NPM install. So this is going to install all the dependencies, all the tech, all that, so it's good to go, and we'll be able to run the app after this. All right, so we'll do a little bit of debugging here. We're getting errors trying to install the dependencies. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go to Codex. I'm getting errors when running npm install.

28:16Alex Finn:Here they are. Let's make sure we run this locally. Yep, we're running it locally. I'm going to hit send. And it'll go through and it'll figure out the errors and fix whatever needs to be fixed here. I'm happy that there's errors, to be honest, because it happens, right? It's a part of the process. It looks like it had the wrong version of Supabase in the dependency. So it was trying to install a version of Supabase that doesn't exist, which is an issue. So let's try that again. Still having errors with Supabase. Let's do this. Let's just say, for the sake of this, seems to still have issues with Supabase.

29:02Alex Finn:For this MVP, let's just save data locally. I'm going to hit send, so we can get a working version first, and then we'll implement Supabase right after, so we can get that working off the rip. So that's going to kind of remove that dependency that's giving us fits here, so we can see kind of the MVP version here that we can test.

29:29Alex Finn:but again, unlike other apps, what we can do with Codex is we can have many different strands of work going on at the same time. So we still have our roadmap going here. So we have the roadmap. Let's check in on that. So here's our roadmap vision, deliver a delightful adaptive habit tracker that keeps people consistent in wellness routines. So guiding initiatives, product alignment, Phase one, the core MVP experience, which we're working on. Improved habit here is via smart nudges. Let's see, phase three, expansion and monetization experiment. So it really builds us out step by step what we're going to be building out with our product manager agent here, which is really cool.

30:14Alex Finn:You can always make sure you're being productive. We can go back to our local agent who is fixing our dependencies here. what are you using at the moment to uh kind of vibe code are you using claude or what have you been playing with yeah i mean i've been in a claude code phase for maybe what has it been three months um but have been seeing it's kind of one of the reasons why i wanted to have you on like have been seeing some of the codex stuff and i'm starting to get tempted to go deeper into it. It's worth playing around with to see how it fits into your workflow. Because it works a little different.

31:02Alex Finn:I find in some ways Codex isn't as proactive. It seems like Claude always does a little bit extra of what you ask, which some people annoys them, some people they love. Codex is almost the opposite where you have to nudge it along sometimes to do things. So it's worth playing around with to see if it's compatible, right? Like the same way you'd interview employees to see if they work well in your company. It's like interviewing the AI agent. Yeah. You also get to know, you know, who they are and, and how they work and you can kind of, what might be good for you might not be good for someone else.

31:40Alex Finn:Exactly. Exactly. You know, there's people who live and die by cursor, right and they all work in different ways and have different features and functionality for me i'm having uh i'm i'm having a lot of productivity almost like 60 40 codecs to cloud code where you know i i have the workflow i'm showing you here and then if it gets stuck i'll have cloud code kind of be the surgical go in and fix that like micro issue that's been working well for me. So I'm going to try installing this again. We change this around. Boom. Okay. So we added the packages. Looks like it installed. Let me see if I can do NPM run dev and get this working.

32:23Alex Finn:Looks like it's working. Okay. Let's test this out. All right. I am going to switch over. Habit flow. Build sustainable routines with energy aware planning. Adaptive wellness routines without the rigidity. Habit flow calibrates your day every morning. Set up your focus, pick your starter habits, and let the app shape a plan that responds to how you feel. Track completions, watch streaks grow, and help the momentum with gentle data-driven nudges. Okay, let's see what, see if we got, oh wow. So we have an entire onboarding flow. And again, like first of all, this is awesome, right? Like we have like, obviously this isn't the full app, but this is a pretty cool MVP where we have like the intro, the onboarding experience, whole lot of other cool things in here.

33:09Alex Finn:In this, really, you get these types of awesome results when you do things like build out a PRD ahead of time, right? When you develop your idea and it takes a little bit of extra time to do, right? To go into idea browser, find a really good idea, develop it with AI, but you're going to save time in the long run because you're going to be a lot more focused and get better results from your agents because you have that in-depth PRD built out. So let's play around with this a little bit and see what we want to add, what we want to tinker with. And I can kind of show you how I use Codex to tinker with different things and add on new features and things like that.

33:47Alex Finn:So it's personalized habit flow. Alex, check-in preference morning check-in. For me, focus is the issue. You get so many different AI tools out there. I can never focus on one thing at a time. I'm sure you got that same issue. Starter habits, 10 minute mobility flow, two minute breath. So I could use that hydrate. I'm pretty good at that. Let's get rid of that. Let's do, I could, I could do more deep work sprints habits. I want to meditate more. Everyone talks about meditation. I want to meditate more. Let's do that. Let's add that to the list. Ooh. Okay. So it saves the habits we want to do and then we can save and continue.

34:24Alex Finn:Please add your name. I got to add my name in here. Alex. Saved. You can hop in today to generate your first adaptive plan. Okay. So let's go to today. Let's see how that works. Today's pacing. Tune your energy, then work through the tailored plan. How's your energy? I had a lot of coffee today, so we're going to do five. All right. We got an error. We'll do some debugging in a second. Plan mode. So it gives us, okay, it gives us some to-dos for wellness techniques we can do. And then routine logic, primary rank habits. Okay. So this is pretty cool. We give it our goals and it gives us a bunch of to-do items to stay well.

35:05Alex Finn:I like that a lot. Let's do a little debugging. Let's see what this error is. Set log is not defined. So a lot of people, they have really complex workflows when it comes to debugging and errors. They have MCPs that has codecs or cloud code, watch your log, and screenshot your browser, and this and that. They have all these. At the end of the day, they're probably usually trying to sell you something to get you to do these really complex workflows for no reason. Here's my really complex workflow for debugging. I highlight the error. I do command C and then I go into my IDE and I hit command V and then I hit enter.

35:50Alex Finn:I don't find any need to set up MCPs for this. I don't need to do any sort of advanced workflows. Please solve this error. And then I hit enter. This seems to work best for me. I don't need to have codecs connected to my browser or anything like that. I just copy and paste errors and it seems to fix it pretty well. And it looks like it's fixing the error. And at the same time, while it fixes the error, again, you probably want to get into kind of that codecs mindset of, okay, how can I be productive while my agents work? I'll spin up a new chat. I'll make sure I'm in the cloud. and I can say, set up an AI chat interface where I can chat with a wellness expert AI and get advice.

36:44Alex Finn:So I thought of another feature to build out while this works. I'm going to give it to our cloud agent. And what I'll show you towards the end of this is how we can start pulling down these changes and implementing it into our app as we go. And so the key here, especially when you're using a really awesome tool like Codex, is productivity, focus. And because we have these cloud agents, we can always make sure we have things cooking, things baking in the back end and have new features pumping out as we go. So let's see here. Let's go into, let's see, did we have this here? Let's go. The only downside is sometimes you get tripped up and you forget which agents are working on what.

37:28Alex Finn:Here we go. Looks like it fixed the error. Let's go back in, make sure we're not getting an error on the screen anymore. Is this kind of percolating ideas for you, Greg, around Codex and things you can do with it? Yeah, totally. First of all, I agree with the whole MCP, complicated workflow to the errors. so I've tried using some of those tools and it's oh man it's like it just feels like I'm over engineering things so I'm happy you said that so that's that was actually what I was thinking about um the second thing is I was literally I was thinking about this app and I you know one of the beauties about uh building an app instead of just like sketching it uh you know on a notepad is it got me thinking that this in a mobile setting would actually probably rip um you know not that we're going to build an ios app today but you know maybe if people want in the future we can follow up follow up uh ios focus on where we show you how to build an ios app i like that yeah no but i think that's that's how i i would think about it and then what i do is i would i would probably write out that idea and be like hey here's what here's what i've built out you you know, this is, here's, you know, here's my vision for an iOS app.

38:45And I would use Idea Browser's AI agent to basically scan, you know, scan social sentiment, give data around, you know, is this a good idea and how would it implement it? So that's something that always exists. That is a pro feature, but, you know, that is, that's something I, it's like you have to build it to get those ideas. You know what I mean? So this is the researcher ideas agent, right?

39:19Alex Finn:I mean, I think that's really good because, again, this is the mindset you need to be building when you start becoming an AI builder is, you know, how do I get maximum efficiency? How do I get maximum productivity? Well, this is another employee we can spin up, right? So while our codex agents are building out roadmaps, marketing plans, debugging, fixing our next feature. Let's get an agent going, an idea browser that's going to now take our PRD. We can go in here. Below is a PRD for my wellness app. Please research how this would do on mobile or how we can improve this idea. And I paste that in and I can hit send here.

40:09Alex Finn:And now, right, this is the kind of AI agent employee mindset. I have my three to four employees working for me in Codex. I now have my employee working for me in Idea Browser to research this idea and expand upon it. You know, maybe now I go back into ChatGPT and I spin up, you know, I give another task. Hey, can you build out the landing page for the app? Right. I can go in here. hey, please mock up for me a landing page and all the copy for it for this app. I hit send on that. And now, you know, this is how you build a one person billion dollar business is it's one person, but it's eight employees working for you at the exact same time.

40:55Alex Finn:Our chat GPT agent, our idea browser agent, developing our ideas for us. And then our codex agents, right? Writing PRDs, writing code, and building out our roadmap for our app. This is the mindset you need to have to build a successful one-person business. This is really cool. You can edit your research brief, generate the research report. This is really cool. It gets the challenges, the moats, the observations. This is cool. If you click generate report, it's generating now. If you scroll down, you'll see an example of a report. it basically is the idea browser format but for your idea which is really cool and if you if you scroll up and you see at the top right there's a build this idea this is a new feature that basically gives you optimized prompts for your idea and for the database of ideas you know for marketing, email sequences, ads, all that sort of stuff.

42:00And then you can just copy the prompts and put it in V0, cursor, cloud, whatever.

42:05Alex Finn:You know what would be really cool? What? Using the V0 API. And when they generate this report, it automatically builds just the V1, kind of the shell of the page to kind of give that visual inspiration. Like right in the report, boom, you have your V1 copy this code to V0. Totally. That'd be sick. That'd be really sick. It's an idea. This is sick. Ready to build, choose your, copy your prompt, paste into any of these builders. Oh, and this is the prompt. Yeah, that's the prompt. That's sick. And if you see on the left-hand side, like, marketing product, you can see what you can actually build.

42:48Alex Finn:Wow, that's amazing. Sales funnel, lead map, what would the email sequence look like that we build here? This is where I stink. I have 40 ,000 people on my email newsletter, but like, I just, I don't understand the email funnel thing. Like I'm like a dog chasing the car. I want to know what to do with it. You know, it's like, this would, this would be helpful. This is cool. Nice. All right, cool. And what happened? What happens when I click the tool? Oh, it just takes me to the, all right. Got it. Got it. Okay. Yeah, this is awesome. Yep. All right. So we can now see, we have our seven different employees working for us.

43:26Alex Finn:Let's switch back. And like, I love Claude Code. Don't get me wrong. I love Cursor, but like this isn't possible with any other tool at the moment. This is like a really big advantage. I'm going to switch back to Codex. Let's do this. Let's see what we got here. Okay. So it fixed the error. And then let's see what else we got. Set up the AI chat. How's our agent doing here? Okay. it's still working oh let's apply apply results skipped close okay did this put in our let's see if this actually put in the chat bot and see if that's ready to go so i'm going to switch back to our app let's see what we got here habit flow and refresh progress we probably have to ask it to build it into our menu here, the AI chat bot.

44:19Alex Finn:But we can do that. Let's go back in. We can do anything. Anything we want. Anything we want. Unlimited ideas. As long as you got AI agents working for you to come up with the ideas, you got unlimited ideas. And this is, what you can see here is we went from, so far, we're like 40 minutes in. We went from literally zero idea to a fully working product. in what would probably take people weeks to do, right? You know, studying ideas, validating ideas. Then you get an engineer to build out the kind of V1. They have to put it live. Then you develop other ideas and you have other people come up with roadmaps and marketing.

44:58Alex Finn:We got all that done in like half an hour, which is pretty incredible. Let's make sure we add the chat section to the top menu bar. Hit send on that and our cloud agent will go do that. And then we can do things like, just to show the power of what we got today with agents, I'm going to go into Codex on my browser. So say we're on the go. Maybe we're working from a coffee shop or something or we're on a library computer. People are still going to libraries. And we can log in to chatgbt.com slash Codex because we don't have the ID on our computer. we can just go into the browser, go into Codex.

45:41Alex Finn:We can make sure we are in our wellness app and we can say build out the email marketing sequence for this app. And now I'm spinning up agents from the browser while I was spinning up agents from the IDE and also doing it from my mobile phone. And this is the really cool way to think about AI development now. So kind of as you've seen so far, We have a bunch of different AI agents working for us. We have an MVP good to go that people can start testing out now. Now the number one question I get other than how do I come up with ideas is how do I get people to start using the app? Well, the best way to do this is the free way, which is just organic marketing.

46:25Alex Finn:So if I go into Twitter, which for me is like I think the quickest way to just get people onto the app, you know, you get engagement in literally seconds. I'm going to pull open Twitter or X if Elon's watching. Please don't shadow ban me. And I'm going to go post and I'm going to say, been super obsessed with wellness lately, but can't think of any habits to implement. Anyone else have this challenge? thinking of building an app around this right i'd send this out this is literally how i launched creator buddy my social media app i was like i wish i had an ai that knew all my tweets and so i went into a tweet i said wish i had an ai that knew all my tweets but anyone use like an ai assistant that's aware of all your tweets and can coach you i hit send it went like super viral I got like 200 ,000 impressions.

47:28Alex Finn:And like, that's how I kicked off my beta. So I would post this. I would then DM anyone who replies, yeah, I'm interested. And I'd say, hey, do you want to beta test this? And I would send them the link to the app we just built. And like, this is how you start getting users and build kind of like your base for your app is you use organic marketing with Twitter. You leverage your community. You reach out to them. You do the kind of unscalable, which is DMing a whole bunch of people saying, here's the app, do you want to test it out? And that's how you get your beta testers and that's how you start building the scale which will eventually be a popular app.

48:07Alex Finn:This is how you start getting those users is just start talking about your app on social media. Alex, what do you say to people who are like, well, easy for you to say, you've got thousands of followers. I've got 500 followers. Well, my question is this, how do you think I got thousands of followers? By tweeting, right? Like I wasn't born and then God handed me 300 ,000 followers. I've been on Twitter for like two years now. I started tweeting. People liked what I tweeted. People were interested in the projects I was building. Then I got to that level. So how do you think I got 300 ,000 followers doing exactly what I'm showing you here, which is coming up with interesting ideas and then tweeting them out?

48:49Alex Finn:So even if you have 100 followers, tweet out your ideas. you'll still get a couple hits. You'll still get a couple people to use your app. And this is how you'll get to that level where you have 300 ,000 followers. Yes, is it easier for me to launch apps because I have a huge audience? Yes. But also, how do you think I got a huge audience by doing this, what I'm showing you here? So you have to start from somewhere. You might as well do it instead of complaining.

49:16Alex Finn:So you put it out. You get a couple bites. You're fishing in the water. You send them the link to the beta. now you got people using it right and so we went from in the span of this has been recording for 52 minutes now right we went from ideas in idea browser we had no idea what we wanted to do we went an idea browser we looked at some market insights we looked at some trends we looked at like okay what am i interested in here website save energy solar vomiting dog treatment i'm gonna get a dog soon this will probably be something i'm interested in once i do that right You found an idea that's interesting to you.

49:53Alex Finn:You went to ChadGBT. You developed that idea. You went back and forth, bounced ideas off ChadGBT, came up with a well-developed PRD. We went from there. We went into our building agent. We went into Codex, which I'm loving right now. We spun up a bunch of AI employees to develop the idea for us to build the code, to start building out a marketing plan, a product plan, a roadmap. app. We have all those people working for us at once. And while our employees work for us and the app gets built out, I'm now going on to X and I'm finding my first beta testers. And that's how you as a one person business can have the same power, the same leverage as a massive company and start getting your first users and first paying customers.

50:42Alex Finn:So it's pretty powerful. You just got to learn where you can find that leverage, like with Idea Browser and Codex and ChatGPT. Alex, thank you for your sauce and your generosity for coming on. Highly recommend people go and follow him. I'll include links for his ex, his newsletter, and Creator Buddy all in the show notes so people can go check that out. Anything you want to leave folks with, Alex? Check out the YouTube as well. All I do is post tutorials, how to build cool things as I go. And this is what I would leave people with. 99 % of people woke up today, picked up their phone, doom scrolled for 15 hours, and then are gonna go to bed, right?

51:25Alex Finn:If you just spend even five minutes today experimenting, searching for ideas, developing ideas here and there, you do that over the span of a week, a month, two months, you're gonna be so far ahead of the competition. It's gonna be unbelievable. So just find a little bit of time every day to do one of the two things we went through on this video. And over time, as that compounds, you're going to have incredible products. You're going to have paying customers. You're going to have something. You're going to have a lot more than what you have now. So just find a few minutes to do what we did today.

51:59Alex Finn:I promise cool things will happen. And send this to a friend because it's more fun to build with friends. You'll be held more accountable. so I don't know about you Alex but if I'm doing something like this I want to do it with the homies and I want to build something together so I think it's a lot more fun with friends personally you hold each other accountable you don't want to be the one that shows up in the group chat and they're like what did you do today and you're like oh I just doom scrolled all day so a lot of benefits to that as well thanks a lot man I'll catch you later of course my man see you soon