I was on a date, recently (about which, perhaps, more at some other point). But. We got (as often happens nowadays) to talking about AI, and – well, fast-forward through the conversation, we found ourselves imagining a web site that would be organized around rating the French Fries of New York, along various axes. I promised I would assemble that web site, and, literally an hour after I got home, I shared this.
It began with my dictating a voice memo as I biked home, which my “voice memo processor” – basically, an unnecessarily complicated Rube Goldberg situation – reduced to:
Summary
I want to build a whimsical Next.js app for rating french fries across attributes like length, girth, crispiness, potato flavor, and greasiness. It will feature 1,000 simulated NYC restaurants with fictional reviews, plus a user-submitted wiki section, maps, fry photos, and funny content.
Outline
1. Core Concept
- French fry search/rating app
- Attributes: length, girth, crispiness, potato flavor recognition, greasiness (scale 1–5)
- Additional metrics TBD
2. Two Sections
a. Simulated/Fictional
- 1,000 fictional restaurants
- Each with unique rating mix
- 2–5 opinionated reviews per restaurant
b. User-Submitted (wiki-style)
3. Geography
- Based in NYC
- Concentrated in Manhattan
- Additional entries in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx
- Map integration
4. Content & Style
- Lots of french fry photography (McDonald’s to steak frites)
- Oil type and fry method info (single/double/triple fry)
- Funny, whimsical tone
5. Technical
- Next.js website (v1)
- Geographic/map features
6. Next Step
- Up to 20 clarifying questions before build begins
I then pasted that into Claude, which dutifully asked me 20 questions. My answers to those questions were:
- What’s the difference? Why do I care?
- I have no idea
- AI-generated, but static/in advance
- Mock only
- Open/anonymous
- Google maps
- Secondary
- Pre written and seeded
- Christina’s Fry Guide
- Michelin
- Wiki only
- Still open. Suggest others!
- Yes!
- I can find you images – I’ll find you several
- Demo/portfolio
- Mobile first
- Seeding is fine
- No
- Filterable
- Vercel
Based on that, it asked me two more questions, which I answered:
- A character! I’ll find you an image.
- The former
It then gave me a Zip file, which I downloaded to my local (Windows) machine. I didn’t entirely understand it, and/but uploaded about ten pictures of Fries, and an AI-generated simulacrum of my date. It updated the Zip file, which I couldn’t figure out how to use/what to do with. So I switched to Claude Code, where I took it the last few steps, to completion.
There was a little trouble-shooting around getting the photos working, but now, it’s done. And damn.
That was, literally, less than an hour of my time.