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about

Hi, I’m Em. A decade in ops, now I build apps with AI.

I write down what it takes to finish them: the fixes, the prompts and the parts that went wrong first. Usually with a coffee going cold next to the laptop.

Gigi, the doodle girl with scribbly hair, smiling at her laptop beside a dusty box, three coffee mugs (one spilled) and three tiny robots typing on their own laptops
ops in a box, too much coffee, agents on laptops
  • 9.5years in operations, most of them leading teams
  • 200+teachers use NudgeCue, the classroom app I built
  • 13guides so far, a new one every Thursday

What you’ll find here

read Guides Fixes for apps built with AI: how they look, how fast they load, whether they’re safe. free The checklist Eight defaults to fix first, each with a prompt to paste. take Starter packs Templates for your first app, a coding agent and your own site.

How I got here

I spent nearly a decade in operations and picked up a PMP along the way, so a lot of how I build still looks like project management: I used to only write plans for things. Then the AI tools got good enough that I could build them, so I started building. Ship the smallest piece first and see what falls over. Along the way I co-authored a book, Master Effective Team Management. It feels like the gap between having an idea and having a working version of it has shrunk a lot, and I wanted to find out how far. I’m still finding out.

Most of it now comes down to one thing: finishing the apps you build with AI, so they look right, load fast and stay safe for the people who use them. That’s what the guides are for. If you’re new, start here.

What I try to stick to

  • Progress over polish. One step towards finished beats waiting for it to feel ready.
  • Show the middle. Share the work while it’s still messy, before it gets tidied up.
  • Say when something didn’t work. That’s usually the part worth reading.
  • Keep it free where I can. Here’s why, and what free means here.

A lot of build content seems to skip the messy middle, the stuck point and the workaround and the thing that didn’t work before the thing that did. So I write mine down as it happens. That includes the launch that got zero signups and the novel I shelved to figure out where my line with AI is.

Things I’ve made

A classroom dashboard that more than 200 teachers use, a friend-of-a-friend intro club, a Korean reading tool, a budget planner, an interval timer for my run intervals, and a few more. They’re all on the projects page, and the free templates live in Free stuff.

Em holding up a phone that says ‘follow?’ while three friends stare, thinking ‘she think she’s better than us’
me, asking you to follow

Say hi

I’m @creativemindhabits on Instagram, and I post the comics on X too.

If you’d like the weekly version, the newsletter sends one fix a week, and starts with the free checklist.

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