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VIBE CODING

Building an art prompt webapp using Lovable <3

Check out the app

Yep, inception is real.

I used prompts to build an app that gives you art prompts. 

AI has completely changed what's possible to build without a traditional tech background, and I find that really exciting. My approach is always to jump in and learn on the go, which means Lovable, Claude, and Supabase were all pretty new territory when I started this. Lovable does the heavy lifting on the code side, Claude powers the prompts, and Supabase handles the backend. I basically just had to know what I wanted and get good at asking for it clearly, which, it turns out, is a skill in itself.

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Current Features

This is the MVP: the good bones of what The Daily Sketchbook is becoming. More features are on the way, but everything here already does exactly what it's supposed to.

Quirky daily art prompt

A fresh, unexpected prompt lands every day. No login, no faff. Just the kind of little nudge that turns "ugh, I don't know what to draw" into "oh okay, that's actually kind of fun."

Log in / Sign up

Jump in with your email or Google account. Just a quick sign-in so your prompts, history and preferences have somewhere to live. Takes about 5 seconds and then you're in.

Unlock more prompts

Once you're logged in, you're not stuck waiting for tomorrow. Generate as many random prompts as you want, or get specific when you already have a vibe in mind.

Prompt history

Every prompt you've ever generated lives on your profile, ready to revisit whenever. Because honestly? Sometimes the best idea is the one you scrolled past ten minutes ago.

The inspo behind the app

It started with my daughter, Annie ->
She was putting together her portfolio for a design degree application, which meant keeping a daily sketchbook diary. Great in theory, except coming up with a new idea every single day turned out to be the hard part. The drawing itself? Fine. The blank page before it? Genuinely painful to watch. So I built something to take that bit off her plate.

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My favorite parts of building the app

Perfecting the art prompt voice

The first few versions of the prompts were either too vague to be useful, or so specific they left no room to actually make something. After a lot of tweaking and testing, I landed on a tone that feels quirky, varied, and just open-ended enough to spark something without telling you exactly what to draw.

My first real backend

Supabase was completely new territory. Setting up a database, getting user authentication working, and understanding how data moves between the front and back of an app, none of it came naturally at first. But once it started making sense, it opened up a whole new way of thinking about how apps are actually built.

Getting good at prompting

The better I got at writing prompts for Lovable, the less back-and-forth I needed to get what I wanted. Being specific about behaviour, precise about edge cases, clear about context, it made a real difference. And honestly? It's a skill that transfers way beyond this project.

Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things - Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things - Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things - Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things - Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things - Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things - Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things - Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things - Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things - Draw a cat that's sitting with the exact posture and confidence of someone who just won an argument - Design a coffee shop where the steam from every cup is forming tiny, perfectly legible word clouds above the customers' heads - Render a cloud that's stubbornly maintaining the shape of a perfect cube while all the other clouds around it are doing normal cloud things -

The roadmap

This project is far from over. Here is what I will be focusing on next.

Making it look arty

Right now it looks like AI slop, and that's not really the vibe for an app about art and creativity. The plan is to give it a proper visual identity, something hand-made, characterful, and a little unexpected.

Creating a history page

The prompt history exists, but right now it lives tucked away in a menu, which isn't really doing it justice. The plan is a dedicated page where you can browse, filter, and actually find what you're looking for. Because a good prompt deserves better than being buried in a dropdown.

Upload your art

You get a prompt, you make something, and then you upload it and link it back to the prompt that started it all. A proper little art diary, where the ideas and the things they sparked actually live together.

End goals

Further down the line, the plan is to make The Daily Sketchbook a lot more 'yours'. Choose the voice your prompts come in, sarcastic, refined, chaotic, whatever fits your mood. Pick an era to draw from: Victorian, medieval, futuristic, or alien. Set a time limit or dial up the difficulty when you're feeling brave. And beyond the personal stuff, the bigger dream is community. A place where people share what they made for the daily prompt, take part in seasonal challenges like Inktober, and follow the artists whose sketchbooks they actually want to peek inside. Less algorithm, more real people making cool stuff together.

One honest heads up: every prompt generated costs real money in API tokens, so at some point, a paid tier is going to have to be part of the picture. The core experience will always have a free version, but keeping the lights on means figuring out a sustainable model as the app grows.

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Check out the app for yourself

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