{"id":360,"date":"2026-05-19T14:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T14:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=360"},"modified":"2026-05-19T14:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T14:36:07","slug":"meet-a-firefighter-vibe-coding-an-app-to-get-you-in-and-out-of-aldi-quicker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=360","title":{"rendered":"Meet a firefighter vibe coding an app to get you in and out of Aldi quicker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

When Joe Poynton went to the grocery store, he dutifully worked through his shopping list \u2014 before getting to the bottom and realizing he’d passed those items aisles ago.<\/p>\n

Read more Gen Z\u2019s AI backlash is getting louder<\/a><\/p>\n

The things he’d forgotten would taunt him from across the store, forcing him back to produce or pasta. The busy 44-year-old father \u2014 he’s worked in the UK fire service for 20 years, where he handles daily emergencies \u2014 had resigned himself to suffering this mild inefficiency every time he went shopping.<\/p>\n

No more. Poynton has finally fixed his grocery store problem \u2014 by building an app to optimize grocery runs based on how you navigate the store.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Poynton is part of a small but growing group of civilian coders: regular people who can solve daily annoyances and inefficiencies with their own hyper-specific programs. It’s a practice called “vibe coding,” and it doesn’t involve programming skills. Poynton, for instance, has never taken a tech course. Instead, users chat with an AI bot like Claude or Lovable and tell it what they want to build \u2014 think of it as bossing around your very own eager-to-please programmer.<\/p>\n

“I just started by saying, ‘I’m brand new to this, treat me like an idiot. I don’t know a single word of code. This is my vision. What’s the steps that I need to take to get there?'” Poynton said.<\/p>\n

To create the app, Poynton bounced between Claude and Gemini, using the two LLMs to troubleshoot each other. He began with aroughly $25Gemini Pro subscription, which walked him through app development 101.<\/p>\n

\n
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\n Poynton has friends, family, and a few folks online sorting their shopping lists with his app. \u00a0
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\n P\u00e5l Hansen for BI
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“I’m now lucky enough to have drifted into that period of life where I’m a little bit older, which means that I’m trying to be a little bit more creative in a whole range of aspects of my life,” Poynton said.<\/p>\n

Gemini talked him through each step, detailing what the process might cost and what software he’d need. He learned he’d need XCode, an Apple tool package for app developers, and have Gemini create files in Swift, the coding platform for Apple. His XCode, along with his app previews and icons, would have to go through the app review process before the app could go live.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Big Short\u2019 investor Michael Burry says the AI boom is a dead ringer for the dot-com bubble<\/a><\/p>\n

“It was fun,” Poynton said. “It’s a bit like trying to write a book in a language that you don’t speak, and I’m just doing it through a translator.”<\/p>\n

Since Claude had a better reputation for coding, Poynton uploaded his code to a free version and asked for feedback. Claude made tweaks and told him how it would do things differently, and he incorporated the new feedback. Gemini helped him take his iPad drawings from brainstorms into graphics. The entire process, which took place in spurts between work and other obligations, lasted about two to three months.<\/p>\n

\nAI Conversation Embed \u2014 Annotated<\/title><br \/>\n<!--\n ================================================================\n AI CHAT EMBED (ANNOTATED) \u2014 QUICK REFERENCE\n ================================================================\n \n Same config as the standard embed, plus annotations.\n \n PLATFORMS: \"chatgpt\" | \"gemini\" | \"claude\" | \"generic\"\n For generic, you can override the header name with \"name\": \"Lovable\" (or Cursor, Bolt, etc.)\n \n MESSAGE TYPES:\n Text: { \"role\": \"user\", \"text\": \"...\" }\n { \"role\": \"assistant\", \"text\": \"...\" }\n Image: { \"role\": \"assistant\", \"image\": \"https:\/\/...\", \"alt\": \"...\", \"caption\": \"...\" }\n Divider: { \"role\": \"divider\", \"label\": \"Optional label\" }\n \n ANNOTATIONS \u2014 add \"note\" to any message to attach an editorial annotation:\n { \"role\": \"user\", \"text\": \"...\", \"note\": \"This is an editorial annotation.\" }\n \n The note appears as a numbered callout alongside the message on desktop,\n or inline below the message on mobile.\n \n SPECIAL CHARACTERS:\n Double quotes: \\\" Backslash: \\\\ Line break: \\n\n Apostrophes and smart quotes: no escaping needed\n \n ================================================================\n -->\n<\/div>\n<p>Now, his app is live in the Apple App Store and has become his trusted companion at any grocery store.Poynton didn’t have to get his hands on any retailers’ floor plans. Instead, the app dynamicallylearns the layout of shoppers’ preferred stores by noting where they are when they check something off their list, and then sorts future lists with the newfound knowledge of where those items live.<\/p>\n<p>“As I’ve used it over and over again, it’s iteratively improving the knowledge of the store; it gets better as you use it,” Poynton said. “It’s nice to hold something in my hand to say that it’s me that’s created that, and it does a job.”<\/p>\n<p>For Poynton, vibe coding likely won’t be a lucrative side hustle anytime soon. He thinks it would be “lovely” to have enough people download and pay for his app to make back his App Storedeveloper fees of around $106. Ideally, he’d like it to be more visible on the app store \u2014 because grocery lists are such a crowded category, he believes his app is unlikely to surface for most shoppers. He’s had a handful of downloads from family, friends, and Redditors.<\/p>\n<p>“So far the reaction’s been positive or at least encouraging,” Poynton said. “This isn’t going to sweep Silicon Valley by storm. It’s a really basic idea and a basic execution, but it’s satisfying to have something out there that my mom’s used.”<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=329\">Figure AI had one of its robots race an intern to sort packages. See who lost.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Poynton has never taken a coding course. 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