Posted 14-Jun-2026 in Technology

The Age of Personal Software

One of my favorite things to come out of the generative AI wave is the speed in which I can knock out dumb little ideas I have. Before, when I would feel constrained by time, I'd reach for some off the shelf solution, often software as a service (SaaS) and would wire that up.

Because it's so easy to spin up projects now, the SaaS world looks like a garage sale, littered with too many options. These slop as a service options or simply "Slop SaaS" are spun up in a weekend, barely function and have no guarantee of being around in a few months.

This makes it even easier for me to think about building rather than buying. I can tell the robots to build me something too. But at least when I do it, I know that the tool will be maintained and stay online.

Code being free so to speak means the data is what becomes extremely valuable. Most of what I've been building has a heavy data component. Data isn't something you want to have a so-called AI hallucinate on you. I know first hand, as I run Holiday API, and still do a lot of manual verification. It's not only the right thing to do, but it's still the best way to ensure data accuracy.

So with access to the right data, you can build whatever you want around it. Within EULA restrictions of course. Because you can build exactly what you need, you end up with something that's exactly what you need. Since you're not servicing customers, each with their own personalized demands, you can keep things as trim as possible.

Because things are less complex, they need less resources. They can run natively on your system, rather than in the cloud. Fewer abstraction layers, and ultimately the fastest option available.

Speed is extremely important for things like say, a stock scanner. If you only focus on a handful of symbols, you don't need a service that boils the ocean. Even if a service has the option to limit to a certain number of symbols, they are most likely still scanning all of them. This adds time complexity.

Build the scanner yourself, limit to the symbols you need, and you have something that's going to be faster. Direct line to the data, limited scope, you're about as hardwired as you can get.

The communication layer is built into the software, rather than being pushed out to a chat service or live stream. Less network noise to contend with to get you access to what you need.

We're only as limited as the data we have available right now, which is pretty wild. In the last week alone I knocked out, you guessed it, a stock scanner for my wife. Also Friday I had an idea for a sports newsletter that explains key concepts based on the previous day's sporting events. I had it wired up before Fable 5 went offline.

Because I'm not trying to scale these ideas to hundreds or thousands of users, I'm fine with the fact that I barely had a hand in writing any of the code. I steered the earliest decisions and then I mostly serve as a play tester. Then I do one more pass to make sure there's no Trojan horses in the code.

Aside from my own exploits, some of my buds have been building themselves better versions of their favorite apps. Not better in the sense that the code is cleaner, or even that they have more features. Better because it's exactly what they wanted, rather than a series of decisions made by some company.

I'm starting to think this is the part of the shared AI hallucination we're in that I hate the least.

:wq