One day, my mother reached out to me. With her dwarf poodle, she is competing in hoopers — a kind of obstacle course for dogs. She was facing a human issue though: for every map, she had to memorise the layout and she’s reached a point, where the dog was faster than her thinking.
Initially, she asked ChatGPT if it was possible to use Google Maps to project each of the obstacles to a view. ChatGPT was obviously saying “yes” and offered her to help. Fortunately, she asked me first if it was feasible before going down the rabbit hole herself.
A hoopers map consists of ~24 obstacles which have to be completed by the dog. My mom has also sent a sketch of the track. The challenge was to project this into some 3D space.
I asked Claude the same and gave it a description of the obstacles and where the person would be standing. I also told it it should preferably create a navigable version.
What I was not expecting though is what Claude created:
It took it some 8-10 minutes but it cooked up a complete standalone HTML version with a minimap and a small sized dog. Some impressive work!
I have lost my mind when I realised there is a dog cam and it has also respected the obstacle numbering. All of that in a single HTML file and JS.
After I have told my mom about the solution I have found, she wanted to hear all of it. Now she is continuously improving it. Some prompts later she wanted to show me her progress. To my surprise, Claude turned the html file into some sort of typescript project and produced several files.
I then remembered electron exists and figured out a way to turn these simple web-based apps into locally executable .exe-s. I originally asked Claude to do that, but it had no access to web devtools.
Now the workflow is this: my mom designs the app, gives me the icon (generated by OpenAI) and the zip it downloads from the chat and I turn it with a press of a button into a executable.
Never thought I was working with her this way.
This is, what accessible programming looks like to me. Also, this is one of the most fun applications of AI I have never thought of.