Building Home-Cooked Apps with AI Tools
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Claude, CursorAI, and JavaScript
Course outcomes
- Utilize AI tools for local application development
- Learn a framework for deciding which AI tools to use and how to use them to build simple apps
- Understand how to automate tasks using AI-powered tools
- Discover how to conceptualize, design, and test functional applications independently
Course description
Join expert Lucas Soares to dive into the world of artificial intelligence and unlock your ability to build local apps, even with minimal technical knowledge. With AI tools becoming more accessible, you no longer need extensive programming skills to create impactful solutions. You’ll get hands-on experience with AI platforms so you can convert your innovative ideas into practical applications efficiently.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
- Understand the capabilities of AI tools and their application in local development
- Identify and use AI tools suitable for simple, local projects
- Design and implement a simple application using AI-based platforms
- Test and iterate on application designs for optimal functionality
This live event is for you because...
- You’re a developer who wants to learn how to integrate AI tools into your development stack.
- You have a little experience with coding and are curious about how to use AI tools to develop apps.
Prerequisites
- Familiarity with AI chat interfaces like ChatGPT and Claude
- Basic coding skills
- Comfort with using web applications
Recommended preparation:
- Read What Are AI Agents? (report)
- Read What Is Generative AI? (report)
- Read What Are ChatGPT and Its Friends? (report)
Recommended follow-up:
- Read Prompt Engineering for Generative AI (book)
- Read Developing Apps with GPT-4 and ChatGPT, second edition (book)
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Introduction to the AI stack (30 minutes)
- Presentation: Introduction to AI and its capabilities for local applications
- Hands-on exercises: Explore Claude and Cursor interfaces
Understanding basic web technologies (30 minutes)
- Presentation: Introduction to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Hands-on exercise: Set up a simple web page in Cursor
The iterative cycle of making home-cooked apps (60 minutes)
- Presentation: When and how to use AI; simple iterative framework for learning while making web apps with minimal technical knowledge
- Hands-on exercises: Write a basic JS/HTML app without and with AI (Cursor + Claude)
- Q&A
- Break
Building simple local web apps (60 minutes)
- Presentation: Building web apps that run locally with Claude
- Hands-on exercises: Build an interactive quiz app (JS/HTML); build a simple habit tracker with progress visualization
- Q&A
- Break
Enhancing applications with APIs (60 minutes)
- Presentation: Overview of APIs; how APIs connect your applications to external services; common API patterns (fetching data, sending data) and their implementation
- Hands-on exercises: Connect a JavaScript application to an external API (e.g., weather or stock data); test API responses; refine code using AI; build a simple geospatial data visualization app
- Q&A
Your Instructor
Lucas Soares
Lucas Soares is a machine learning engineer who has worked at K1 Digital and Biometrid, where he developed computer vision and NLP models for applications such as document verification, OCR-based applications, and recommender systems. Lucas has also developed various ML models, including neural networks, Siamese networks, convolutional neural networks, LSTMs, and genetic algorithms.