🧭 THIS WEEK AT BuildProven
Howdy, seems summer is already winding down sadly. not a fan of Chicago winters. Been building a lot lately - some example of projects in the works -
lifescape - choose where to live
jobrecon - find a job
wanderpage - photos from travel
provensprint - upcoming ai coding course
the last cabinet - ww2 game run by an AI game master - run by telegram!
retirerunway - how much $ do u need.
QA Architect - get your stuff working
Claude Kit - build your stuff
would be nice if i actually finished some of these!
below, how to use AI to work on photos project at home.
as usual, would love it if you could share this newsletter, give feedback via the poll at the end, or best, just hit 'reply' and tell me what you need/want with AI. I will definitely reply and try to help best i can.🧰 Worth Your Click
Here are a few things I found recently:
Genspark open-sources GenOffice — A free, ad-free AI office suite for Mac and PC, built by one engineer in a week. The token bill is in the thread, and it is the honest part.
Pi, Minimal and Performant — How Pi's minimal harness improves coding-agent cost and performance, with examples from Databricks and Shopify.
Not Everyone Is A Tool Builder — Benedict Evans and Toni Cowan-Brown on why most people and companies are not tool-builders. A useful counterweight to a newsletter that keeps telling you to build things.
GrokBot from xAI is getting plenty of attention. The credit-card requirement for the trial is annoying. I still want to build something easier and more reliable than OpenClaw.
🗺️ BUILD THIS
Turn a folder of holiday photos into a private gallery
You probably do not need AI to rearrange thousands of photos into folders. I did not find that very useful either.
Here is the better home project: give Claude Code a small folder of holiday photos and have it build one clean, local gallery you can open in a browser. It creates something useful while teaching the work skill underneath: plan first, keep the source untouched, reconcile the counts, and approve the output yourself.
What you are building
Pick one folder with roughly 20–50 photos. Use copies if the originals matter. The output is a new photo-gallery/ folder containing a simple web page and a short report. Your source folder stays exactly as it was.
input: one folder of photos
output: photo-gallery/index.html
photo-gallery/images/
photo-gallery/gallery-report.md
rule: never alter the source filesThe page is a visual contact sheet: thumbnails grouped by the best available capture date, with each one opening the larger image. Files with no trustworthy date go under Date unknown instead of being guessed into the wrong trip.
Give Claude Code this
Open Claude Code in the folder and paste this. The pause before execution is deliberate: you see the file count and proposed output before the agent creates anything.
Use the image files in this folder as input.
Do not rename, move, edit, overwrite, or delete any existing file.
First, count the supported images and explain your plan. Then stop and wait for my approval.
After I approve, create a new photo-gallery/ folder containing:
- index.html: a clean, responsive contact sheet. Group images by the best available capture date. Each thumbnail should open the larger copy.
- images/: copies used by the gallery. Preserve each file's real extension.
- gallery-report.md: source count, included count, skipped files, missing dates, and any errors.
If a date is missing or conflicting, use a Date unknown group. Do not guess.
If a required image tool is unavailable, stop and tell me instead of installing or improvising.
At the end, prove that:
source count = included count + skipped count
If the numbers do not reconcile, stop and show me the mismatch.This is the useful pattern: the agent proposes, you approve, it writes to a new output folder, and the report accounts for every input. No file has to disappear for the exercise to teach safe bulk work.
Check it before you keep it
Open photo-gallery/index.html in your browser. Check a few photos from different dates, open the larger copies, and compare the report's totals with the source count. The human approval point is here: the gallery is only good when you have looked at the evidence and decided it is good.
If it is wrong, discard the new photo-gallery/ folder in Finder and revise the instructions. Your originals were never touched. That is the rollback.
When it works, save the prompt as .claude/commands/make-photo-gallery.md. The gallery is today's output; the reusable command is the thing you still own next month.
Next week the nouns change from photos to meeting notes. The control pattern does not: bounded input, proposed plan, human approval, separate output, and reconciled counts.
What this does not do
It does not identify the best photo, recognise an event reliably, remove duplicates, or repair bad metadata. It also does not publish anything. The gallery stays on your computer unless you deliberately choose to put it online.
Do not point this at your whole library first. Start with one small folder, inspect the result, and keep anything private or sensitive out of tools you have not approved for that data.
If someone forwarded you this and you want the wider map of what these tools do, the Field Guide to AI lays it out on one page.
This Week's Prompt
The separate-output rule — useful anywhere an agent transforms a batch of files.
Treat the existing files as read-only.
Show me the input count and your plan, then wait for approval.
Write every result into a new output folder.
At the end, reconcile every input as included or skipped.
If the counts do not match, stop. Do not fix the mismatch yourself.Try it on: a photo gallery, a folder of meeting notes, a batch of reports, or exported spreadsheet files.
P.S. Reply with the folder you wish was easier to browse. I read every reply, and it may become a future build.
Weekly build logs from a 25-year program manager who codes with AI.
— Brett
👉 Hit “Reply” and share your experience — I read every one!
👋 UNTIL NEXT TIME
📅 Next Week
200 meeting notes in, one action-item table out — the same count-check discipline, higher stakes.
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