I’m building a quick app to help manage the things we want to give away as we prepare for a move. It’s not a polished product. It’s just a simple tool for us, our friends, and neighbors. The app pulls from a folder of item photos, adds optional metadata, and lets people request items through a form. That’s it. No onboarding, no SaaS aspirations, just utility.
While working on it, I realized this is something more of us could be doing. If you’re technically comfortable, it’s easy to create bespoke apps that solve immediate, personal problems. Some are reusable. Others are disposable. But they all fall under the same umbrella: apps that support your life, not the other way around.
This made me think about the idea of a personal operating system. It’s been around for a while, people build entire workflows on platforms like Notion, Airtable, or Obsidian. These tools offer flexible data models, automation, and UI components that let you run systems for tasks, journaling, finances, writing, and more. It’s powerful, but often skewed toward those who enjoy building systems for their own sake.
What’s different now is the interface.
With AI, the idea of a personal OS doesn’t have to live inside someone else’s product. You don’t need to learn a tool’s quirks or wait for a feature request. You just describe the thing you want, and AI scaffolds the structure, data, UI, automation, logic. The app I built could have been generated from a conversation. Eventually, even non-technical users will be able to create apps this way. Many already are.
We may be entering an era where describing a task is enough to generate software that helps you accomplish it. Notion is still a great tool, but I’m starting to wonder if that same energy might be better spent just building what I need, when I need it. Over time, that might become the default.
It reminds me of Iron Man, oddly enough. Not the suits, but the way Tony Stark interacts with his environment. He talks to an AI, which helps him build, plan, delegate, and adjust in real time. It’s ambient, adaptive, and personal.
That’s the shape this feels like. A shift away from general-purpose platforms toward ephemeral, purpose-built tools. They may live for a day or a year. They might only matter to you. But with the right scaffolding and AI support, they can become part of how you live.
Not because you’re a developer. Just because you can describe what you need.