So He Asked Claude Cowork to Build His Dream App

So now it's already taking a lot of tokens as you can see. So he created a golden popping eagle. I'm not sure what it is. Well, the icon feels a little dodgy. I don't have anything like that here. Am I blind? So I had to reinstall it. It didn't tell me to reinstall it though. So before it was just user is not a programmer. And here is user is not Hi, my name is Nikico. Since 2022, I've been helping Thiago to deliver videos to all of you, and I truly appreciate everyone watching them. Today, I'm excited to share a second brain experiment where we will explore whether it's possible to create a fully functional app using only my second brain and claude cowork. If you are not familiar with these terms, don't worry. We are basically going to use my personal knowledge management system along with AI to create an app. So let's try it out. I'll be working on MacOSS along with a few other digital tools. But first I need to think what problem I want to solve, what purpose this app will serve. This is where my second brain really helps. Let me show you. I use notion to keep all my notes, tasks and resources organized for future use. I follow par method. I have this structure not only in notion but also on my computer file system and also in my cloud drive storage making it easy to find what I need. For example, our upcoming app is a project. So I'll create a new folder in my projects and I'll name it second brain experiment app. Here it is. Now that I have folder with this project, I need to fill it with relevant information. I'll go back to my second brain in notion and navigate to areas. Here I will find my ongoing responsibilities. In particular, I'm interested right now in my mental well-being. So I'll go there. Here I store related materials and practical tools for my mental well-being. A while ago, my partner Olesia lent me a book called Feeling Good by author David D. Burns. It's right here attached to this area. And if I open it, I have a full PDF saved right here. It is full of practical exercises for managing mental health. And I used some of them for several years. So, this is the database I've built. It's pretty decent. But the thing is, opening notion, searching for this database, creating a new entry, especially when I'm feeling emotional can be a little unwieldy. I really would love to have a fully dedicated app I can quickly launch with a shortcut and start logging my mood, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, I'll need to gather all that information from notion areas into the app project folder that I recently created on my computer. But if you think about it, entire book has a lot of information. I need only some things that I found useful for myself. And what I did back then when I read this book, I used this service called reader. It helps me to highlight and save only the things that I found important from the book. So I want to export only the things that I found useful when I was reading that book. So I will save it as a markdown file. I'll navigate to our project folder that we recently created for this app and I'll save it there. So now everything is organized. I did a capture a few years ago by reading the book. I also did some of the organization. I placed it in my notion so I can find this now easily. I also did some of the distillation. So I did the highlights when I was reading the book. But this distillation is not enough. It has all my highlights but it's still quite a lot of information. So I want to distill it even more. I'll go into the cloth cowwork and the first thing I will choose the the tab that is says cowwork right at the top. Then I will go on the left side here and find the plus button and that will create a new task and I can start typing here. But before that I will first specify in which folder we're going to work. So I'll hit this work in a folder button and choose the folder we recently created called second brain experiment app. I'll ask it to get familiar with the contents. So I'll hold my shortcut and start talking. Hey Claude, could you please get familiar with the sources that uh I provided in the folder. So it says that it's familiar with sources now. But if you think about it, this is all highlights and the book. It's a lot of material. But for building an app, we need only step-by-step guides of what needs to be done every day. So what I'll do, I'll ask it to can you please generate instructions on how to apply those techniques from the sources I've provided as a stepbystep daily guide for me to follow when I need to register and log my mood and I need to do the cognitive behavioral therapy. And that's it. That was like um 4 minutes, four or five minutes. It says everything checked out. All 10 cognitive dis distortions. All 13 causes of procrastination. Right down here it says Claude is AI and can make mistakes. Please double check responses. So that's what we are going to do. So in part one it it wants me to measure my mood and it has 21 questions and scoring at the end. So imagine doing this manually. It will take forever. It also tips to keep a simple log of your weekly BDI scores. It has examples. It has some important notice. The thoughts are what you can challenge and change, but the feelings will follow. So, it provides additional tools for beating procrastination. And it lists all the cognitive distortions throughout the day as needed. Catch and log negative thoughts. Use Tik Tok technique. If you're stuck on a specific task, rate activities. Evening 5 10 minutes. Review your activity schedule. Look at your M and P ratings. Review your triple column entries every week. It suggests to do a 10-minut exercise, which is completing the back depression inventory to log my total score, track my trend over time. So, this is actually a perfect use case to create an app because I don't want to sit and calculate all the entries myself. I want just to log things and when I need go back to the dashboard and see at which state I am currently. How cool is that? It's not a replacement for professional therapy especially if your BDI scores are consistently at 17 or above. The key is consistency as I said before and it really helps and it truly shines when you are consistent with this. Start where you are, do what you can, adjust as you go. Now because I've read the book and I went through it and I'm already using those methods for several years. I know that this is correct. This is a really good uh start. So you will notice that there is one more document appeared in our working folder called daily CBT guide. Now as with any project we need to define what needs to be done when and by what order. and we'll ask Lord to create this road map for us. So, I'm planning to create an app that is based on the daily CBT guide that you just created. And I'm using MacOSS. I would like to have it on my computer and possibly on my phone later, but it should be a dedicated app that I can use even without internet. Please note that I am not a programmer. I know nothing about coding. Could you please help me through the process and be as detailed as possible in your instructions and suggest better approaches as you see fit? So it asks me the first question. What kind of experience are you imagining when you open this app? Pick the closest match. I'll just say something else. So I want this app to be a repository of my entries with a dashboard. I also want to have possibility to export my entries as a markdown file or as a table. And I also want to be able to program this app to automatically appear and ask me to log my mood and walk me through the process. The next question is, how important is getting this on your iPhone eventually? Well, it gets it wrong. I don't have an iPhone. I have Google Pixel. It's not that important yet. Uh, we can do it later. Please note that I don't have iPhone. I have Google Pixel. Let's see what it's thinking. Automatic reminders, pop-ups to log the mood, walk through the CBT process step by step, eventually Android support, works offline, user is not a programmer. So to summarize what we are looking for a standalone desktop app with a dashboard, user not a programmer. So before it was just user is not a programmer and here is user is not. He wants to do the progressive web app. Hm interesting. Would that be conflicting with the thing that I said that it needs to be usable offline? Well, let's see. PWA is ideal servers workers enable offline functionality. Okay. It installs as a standalone app on both Mac OS and Android through Chrome. All data leaves locally in indexed database. I would assume we maintain a single code base crossplatforms. Plus, we can run it from a simple local server using Python. So, he created a golden popping eagle. I'm not sure what it is, but sounds cool. So, now it's already taking a lot of tokens as you can see. And if I'm curious, I can go into the folder. It created a new CBT app here. It's even created an icon. Well, the icon feels a little dodgy, but it's okay. We can change the icon anytime we want. Now, let me test the app by starting a local server and verifying it loads. I'll just first go through the uh instructions. Doubleclick start CBT app. It will start the app and open it in Chrome. Look for the install icon in the address bar and click install. Start CBT app. Here we go. It started in the browser. So, here's the address line and here is the little computer screen. Install. Feeling good. Install. All right. We get it running. So, it says that I need to set up auto reminders. I don't have anything like that here. Am I blind? Log the mood. BDI assessment. Activity log. History export settings dark mode. Yes, thank you. Export all the data. M chicken interval weekly BDI reminders. Thank you so much. I'm trying to follow your recommendations. And on the third step where you say that I have to set up auto reminders, you say that I have to click setup reminders button, but I cannot find it anywhere in the app. Are you sure it's there? Let me clarify. The setup reminders file is not inside the app itself. It's a separate file sitting in the CBT app folder on your computer right next to the city. Okay, got it. Now it's set up reminders command here. It opens a terminal app where I can set up how often I would like to have the reminders. I would say three. Press enter to close. Okay, completed. So now as I understand correctly, it's saved this in my Chrome apps. I'll just put it in my doc right there. Now before I start actually testing it, I will open my Zoom app first to be able to record Zoom clips, which allows me to record my screen and talk and also transcribe my speech automatically. So I'll go into Zoom clips. I'll choose the microphone. I don't need a camera. And now I will just start narrating and talking to AI saying what doesn't work or what I would like to change. Okay. When I expand it, it looks weird because it has a lot of negative space and the whole app interface doesn't adapt to the window size. Now the button of logging my mood is too big. Now, let's try to actually to log my mood. Okay, it asks me, "How are you feeling right now?" I'm feeling very stressful and nervous because I'm recording this video. My English is not so good. I just feel very awkward right now. Here, I found major issues. First, we are rating our mood from 1 to 10. That's correct. But then, we have what's going on. But what I want to have is I will rate my mood first. Second, I will write my automatic thoughts. Third, I have to be able to look at my automatic thoughts and apply cognitive distortions by highlighting a certain thing and selecting the cognitive distortion that applies to that highlight. Next, I will write what's going on rational answer. And at the very end I will do again the mood rating. This entry is saved. Mood over time. Now I have this diagram that I can feel and watch how my mood changes. Wow. And BDI assessment. I'll just go through once to make sure that it's working. Fatigue. I get tired more easily. That's true. My appetite is much worse right now. That's correct. Mild mood disturbance. Your score suggests mild mood disturbance. Continue practicing the CBD techniques in this app. Save assessment and it's registering the BDI separately from the mood. Next one, activity log. Plan your day and track what works. M means sense of accomplishment and P means pleasure. So it works. And also when I press tick tock in the activity log tab, it just basically opens a blank page. So I have to relaunch the app every time. Now I'll check history and export. It would be nice to have the answers expandable so I could kind of glance through my responses. So that's enough for my review session and I'll wait a couple of minutes while Zoom Clips will create a transcript for me so I can then export it and paste it back to my chat with Claude Co-work so it understands what I need to fix. go into the transcript tab in my clips tab in the Zoom app and I'll hit this little button called export transcript and I will choose the project which I'm currently working on the second brain experiment app. I'll save it there. I'll just drag and drop it here. Let's do it that way and I'll say to Claude, "Hey, I've been testing this app and I found a few issues. Go through the feedback that I provided. help me to plan how we can fix those problems. Let's go. Thanks for detailed walk through, Nikolai. I went through every point in your recording. Let me organize what I heard into a clear list of issues and improvements and then we can plan the fixes. So, it's finishing the plan. I'll rewrite the full appj. Let me also add a new CSS first. So, because this feature I asked it to create is a is big. So, it has to rewrite the whole app. Okay, looks like it's almost finished. All done. So, all seven items from the plan are now complete. So, I had to reinstall it. It didn't tell me to reinstall it though. The button is smaller. So, I can click on the top windows as I asked it before. So, now I can read my automatic thought. I can see where my cognitive distortions are. And now I can write what's actually happening. My partner loves me and my cat also loves me. And then I feel even better. Aha. That's the problem. So that's what I will fix next. Before and after. There is in between some weird number. So your mood improved by two points. The exercise helped. save entry and in the history and export it shows now the details about every entry. That's great. So I think I would go through this whole process of reviewing the app and giving it uh an additional feedback. But I would say that the experiment was pretty successful. Now I have fully functional app that I can use every day to log my mood. I haven't tested the automatic reminders. I haven't tested a few other features that I will, but it's already very very decent and usable and it took me like 2 and 1/2 hours. I am very tired now. By the way, I will summarize the entire video and all my steps that I went through into one checklist that you can use anytime you want to create an app. So, if you want to get this checklist, please scan this co scan this QR code right here or click the link down below or in the first comment. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below and I'm really thankful for your time. See you next one.

Watch a live experiment: Nico, our video producer, builds a fully functional mood-tracking app with no coding skills — just his Second Brain and Claude Cowork. He pulls from his Cognitive Behavioural Therapy notes saved years ago, hits a few bugs along the way, and ends up with something genuinely usable. This is what putting your Second Brain to work actually looks like. 🔗 Get Nico’s step-by-step checklist: https://bit.ly/4tXZaWF Resources and Tools Mentioned: 📺 Tiago explains the PARA Method: https://youtu.be/T6Mfl1OywM8 🗣️ Voice Dictation Tool I use: http://ref.wisprflow.ai/tiagoforte 🤖 Claude Cowork (the AI tool Nico used): https://claude.ai/ 🎬 Zoom Clips (for recording and transcribing feedback): https://www.zoom.com/en/products/clips/ 📖 Readwise Reader (for saving and exporting highlights): https://readwise.io/tiago/ 💚 The Book “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy” by David D. Burns CHAPTERS: 00:00 - 00:34 Introduction 00:34 - 01:20 Meet Nico & the Experiment 01:20 - 03:35 Finding the App Idea in the Second Brain 03:35 - 07:18 Distilling the Source Material with Claude 07:18 - 10:38 Planning & Building the App 10:38 - 15:15 First Test Run & Finding Issues 15:11 - 17:43 Fixing the App with Voice Feedback 17:30 - 18:51 Results & Wrap-Up