I Built a Custom App in 41 Seconds. Here’s How AI Is Changing Everything

I had a problem. A tedious, mind-numbing, "brute-force-it-for-hours" kind of problem. I was sitting on hundreds of call log text files, and my goal was simple: open each file, type its own filename on the first line, and save it. It’s the kind of task that makes you question your life choices.

My first thought was to automate it. I jumped on a call with my colleague, Brandon Spivey, a

PowerShell wizard. As he started whiteboarding a script, mapping out the logic to loop through

directories and manipulate content, I had a nagging thought. We were approaching this the

traditional way: defining a problem and then writing code to solve it. But what if there was another way?

On a whim, while Brandon was sketching out his script, I opened Google's AI Studio. I had been

ignoring its "Build" feature, thinking it was probably a gimmick. I decided to give it a shot. Instead of writing code, I wrote a sentence. This was my exact prompt:

"Take a folder of txt files uploaded to the app and look at the file name. Make the first line

of the text file the file name, save and close."

I hit enter. Forty-one seconds later, I had a fully functional web application called "TXT File Header

Injector."

I was stunned. It had a clean interface with an "Upload Folder" button. I dragged my folder of 19 text files onto it, and in what felt like a single second, a "Processing Complete" message appeared.

Below it was a neat list of every single one of my files, now modified, each with its own download

link. At the top, a "Download All (Zip)" button.

It worked perfectly. The task that would have taken me hours of manual clicking or a carefully crafted PowerShell script was done in less than a minute, end-to-end. Brandon and I just stared, half in disbelief, half in awe.

But the story doesn't end there. After our call, I thought, "What else can it do?" I went back to the AI Studio build, tweaked my original prompt slightly, and asked it to also combine all the processed files into a single master file. It rebuilt the app, adding the new functionality without a hitch. Blazingly fast.

This experience was a paradigm shift for me. The question is no longer just "How do I code a

solution?" It’s becoming "How do I clearly ask for a solution?" We've moved from needing to be a

programmer to needing to be a good communicator. This isn't about AI replacing us; it's about it

empowering us to build the exact tools we need, right when we need them. If this is where

technology is today, the future of productivity isn't just coming—it’s already here, and it’s waiting for you to ask it a question.