Bragging about happy little AI accidents

•	Ryan and Sarah, a Vancouver couple who turned a tiny cat necklace into an AI-built focus app with 240K+ downloads 🐈
•	Hanna and Nikki, two friends who used Claude Code to build a pretend online checkout 🛒 that protected Hanna’s dad (and his wallet)
•	Ken Law, a former Meta manager who quit his job thanks to a Reddit post people hated 😹

Let's get into today's bragging! — Adam

HI IT'S ME   Pic of the week! You might remember me from my CatGPT 🐈‍⬛ project. I created it in a single day to show that people can make fun stuff with AI, and millions of people loved it!! 😻   New here? Did someone forward you this? Join 100,000+ awesome humans here →

 

 

Raise your hand if you’ve ever sat down to work on something important… then somehow ended up 30 videos deep on YouTube 😹🙋

Me too lol.



According to a widely cited estimate from UC Irvine researcher Gloria Mark, it takes around 23 minutes to return to a task after an interruption. That’s almost half an hour… EVERY time you get distracted!! 📱

So one cat-loving human decided to do something about it.

Ryan Yao already had a great job as a product designer (around $200K a year) but he’d always dreamed of building his own app. He just didn’t know what it should be… or how to code it. That all changed when Ryan noticed his girlfriend Sarah’s cat necklace, featuring a tiny cat sitting on a chair.

So he built Cat on Chair: a cozy focus timer with a cat companion. Every session you finish earns you gifts, which you can trade for new cats, furniture and backgrounds!

Ryan used AI coding tools to write around 95% of the code while Sarah, an illustrator, hand-drew the cats 😺. By October 2026, the app had reportedly passed 240,000 downloads and $160,000 in sales.

That’s a whole lot of productivity… and a whole lot of cats!! 😹🤯

Ryan and Sarah, you’ve officially turned a tiny cat necklace into a BIG reason to brag. And I for one support any productivity app that comes with a cat 👏👏👏

 

 

Some people show love with words 🧡. Other people give gifts... which one are you, bragger?

Hanna Miller’s dad was one of those gift-giving people. But dementia often made him forget what he’d already ordered… and the bills started piling up.

So Hanna teamed up with her friend Nikki Elbaz, and they used Claude Code to build ShieldCart: a Chrome extension that sends orders to a pretend checkout. Her dad got to keep doing what he loved most, without breaking the bank.

How cool!!



Hanna estimates ShieldCart saved her family thousands of dollars. And considering nearly 13 million Americans provide unpaid care for people with Alzheimer’s or other dementias (according to the Alzheimer’s Association) she figured other families might need it too.

Her dad sadly passed away in September. Now Hanna and Nikki are working to bring ShieldCart to more families through a pilot program.

Hanna… what an awesome way to give your dad back the thing he loved most: being generous!! 💸👏👏

 

 

In November 2022, Meta announced it was cutting around 13% of its workforce (more than 11,000 jobs). Its first big round of layoffs EVER.



Ken Law (a former engineering manager at Meta) thankfully wasn’t laid off 😌, but the cuts made him realize a “Big Tech” job wasn’t as secure as he’d once thought.

So using Cursor (a popular AI coding tool 🧑‍💻) he decided to build a phone game on the side… even though he hadn’t written a single line of code in over 4 years.

Ken even made a deal with himself: If the game ever hit $10K a month on its own, he’d quit his Meta job.

Here’s the wild part:

Just 6 months after launching Harpagia, Ken posted about the game on Reddit. People were overwhelmingly critical, but the post put it in front of thousands of potential players. His revenue jumped from around $1K to $10K a month almost overnight!! (and he still hasn’t spent a single dollar on ads)

Ken… I love that a bunch of strangers trying to roast your game ended up being the reason you got to quit your job. Happiest little accident EVER! 😹👏👏

Look what the cat bragged in.