Conjuring Code

Today's guest is Mark Wochner: acoustic engineer, DIY aficionado, and maker of great cocktails. He got into AI app-building to revive a project he'd dreamed up called Historicast (look up weather in the past!) and got hooked enough to make himself a whole slew of other fun apps. In this episode, we talk about building software in hotel rooms across three continents, why he wants four weather forecasts instead of one, and why his one-person company finally got the part-time hire it needed (hint: it's Claude). Mark has used AI coding agents to make barcode apps and pantry databases, and in this conversation, we talk about why building software for an audience of one might be the most freeing thing you can do. Links: Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-wochner-9a8a9448 Mark's company, AdBm Technologies: https://adbmtech.com/ Historicast on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/historicast/id6761114831

In today's episode, I sit down with Sharon Klardie—a longtime product leader who's spent her career around technology without ever being the one writing the code, and is now finally in the building seat thanks to what she calls her "AI minions." We talk about Board Forge, the app she built to make life easier for volunteer nonprofit boards (complete with an AI chief of staff named Jordan who tells you the one thing you actually need to do today), which just won "most improved" in week three of Replit's Buildathon. But it's not just one app—Sharon's also running an LLC that publishes puzzle books, building a math game to drill her 10-year-old's times tables, and inventing brand-new puzzle types on the side. Along the way she shares the practical stuff that's making it all work: treating her AIs like a team with a CEO and a QA engineer, having one model write prompts for another, telling them to stop brown-nosing and actually argue with her, and why the real currency she pays attention to is impact, not revenue. If you've ever had ideas for software that could help other people, but figured the tech part wasn't for you, this one will light a fire under you. Links: Sharon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonklardie/ Cipher Creek publishing: https://ciphercreekpublishing.com/ More on BoardForge: https://linkedin.com/posts/sharonklardie_boardforge-board-management-for-nonprofits-activity-7447123672642895872-wMZb

In this episode, I speak with the amazing Jacquelyn Halpern on how she got started with AI-assisted coding, and how she created a cooking app for herself and her family called Lil' Chef.

In this short introductory episode, I introduce what the Conjuring Code podcast is all about: helping regular people like you build software, using AI to help write the code. The pitch is simple: AI now handles all the tedious, mysterious "bad hard" parts of programming, leaving you free to focus on the "good hard" part of figuring out what's actually worth making.