Building Apps using AI

Community Workshop

Fort Lewis College AI Institute

June 24, 2025 | 6:00 - 7:30 PM
https://nagoodman.github.io/preso-build-app-with-ai/

Welcome!

Nicholas Goodman
Fort Lewis College AI Institute

CTO at Signify (AI-Powered Compliance)
Advisor/investor to 12+ Startups

What do you want to learn?

  • Slides/Info
  • Hands-on demonstrations
  • Real-world examples

Agenda

  1. 🌍Landscape of Generative AI█████5m
  2. 🤖AI Assisted Building Apps██████████10m
  3. ✨Examples██████████10m
  4. 🛠️Build Together (App + Website)████████████████████20m
  5. 💻Hands-on Activity████████████████████20m
  6. 💬Wrap and Q&A██████████10m

The Landscape of Generative AI

The Landscape of Generative AI (cont'd)

Stochastic Parrot
Stochastic Parrots:
Pattern matching & repetition
Reasoning AI
Reasoning Systems:
Problem-solving & logic

AI assisted building apps

Rapid prototyping

  • Quick screen iterations
  • Painted door prototypes
  • Should this be built?
  • Generate "living spec" for IT
graph TD A[Idea] --> B[Build] B --> C[Review] C -->|chat in seconds| A

Applications

  • Internal Tools
  • Code generation
  • Test suite
  • Synthetic data for testing
  • Auto-documentation
graph TD AI[AI Coding] AI --- A[Internal Tools] AI --- B[Code generation] AI --- C[Test suite] AI --- D[Synthetic data
for testing] AI --- E[Auto-documentation]

AI assisted building apps (cont'd)

What options are available today?

No-code / Low-code

IDEs

VSCode extensions:

Command line / Terminal tools:

AI assisted building apps (cont'd)

Strategies and Tips

  • Small bite size projects with specific instructions
  • Think of agents like an eager, talented, but slightly naive intern
  • Connection and infrastructure still a PITA
  • Bigger projects experiment with Claude Flow / Task Master
  • MCP is your friend

Examples : V0 - Durango Adventure Maze

Try it: v0-new-project-upeckp5jro9.vercel.app

Prompt:
"Create a small maze game, that has 3 levels... take an inspiration from Durango, CO and name the things and icons in the game associated with town of Durango, CO"

Auto-generated features:

  • 3 themed levels (Downtown, Mesa Verde, Animas River)
  • Full keyboard controls (WASD/arrows)
  • Collectible artifacts system
  • Red rocks as obstacles
  • Train station as goal
  • Move counter & level progression
  • Responsive design
  • Sound effects & animations

Creation time: ~30 seconds → Fully playable game!
Cost: $0.06

Examples: V0 - Unisex Names Dashboard

Try it: v0-unisex-names.vercel.app

Prompt:
"Build a dashboard style app with flexible nice grids, with at least 2 or three interactive inputs (dials, selectors, ranges, whatever you choose) that displays 3-4 interesting visualizations for the unisex data."

Auto-generated features:

  • Interactive year range selector (1880-2022)
  • Name popularity threshold slider
  • Gender balance filter
  • Line chart showing trends over time
  • Bar chart for top names by decade
  • Scatter plot for gender distribution
  • Responsive grid layout
  • Real-time data filtering

Creation time: ~3 minutes (with two follow-ups) → Full dashboard!
Cost: $0.24

Examples: Roo - Expo Go Wigga What

Try it: Expo Go App
(iOS/Android)

Prompt:
"Create a new expo go app (use context7 for specifics), named wigga-what. For now it just has a three button app that cycles through wigga, what, then wigga-what with a haptic device buzz. Initialize all the boilerplate code, use colors and styles from this site here: https://ai.fortlewis.edu/"

Auto-generated features:

  • Complete Expo project setup
  • State cycling (wigga → what → wigga-what)
  • Haptic feedback on button press
  • FLC AI Institute branding/colors
  • iOS/Android compatible

Creation time: ~2 minutes → Native mobile app!
Cost: $0.71

AI Assisted Building Apps (cont'd): Website Demo

https://website-idea-generator.netlify.app/

AI Assisted Building Apps (cont'd): App Demo

https://appideagenerator.com/

Hands-on Activity (20min)

  1. Go to v0.dev (signup for vercel, free account, verify email)

Choices

  1. Download data from https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master and make an interesting application (quiz, analysis, etc)
  2. Create a full website for an invented Durango business (bonus points for humor)
  3. Make a little game (asteroids, maze, centipede, mario bros/lode runner, etc)

Wrap and Q&A

  1. Thoughts?
  2. Be cautious (don't deploy these without professionals)
  3. Be creative
  4. Questions?

Questions and Answers

Thank you for joining!

The Center for Innovation
835 Main Ave, Suite 225

Wrap

  • Slides: [GitHub Pages URL]
  • Code examples: [This repository]
  • Contact: [Your info]

Free Community Workshop

Appendix: MCP (Model Context Protocol)

MCP Server Examples

Official Servers

  • filesystem - File operations
  • github - GitHub API access
  • google-drive - Google Drive integration
  • postgres - PostgreSQL databases
  • sqlite - SQLite databases
  • slack - Slack messaging
  • puppeteer - Browser automation
  • fetch - HTTP requests

Community Servers

  • supabase - Supabase backend
  • figma - Figma design files
  • notion - Notion workspace
  • linear - Linear issue tracking
  • obsidian - Obsidian notes
  • spotify - Spotify control

How MCP Enhances AI Coding

graph LR A[AI Assistant] B[MCP] C[Files] D[GitHub] E[Database] F[APIs] G[IDE] H[Design] A --> B B --> C B --> D B --> E B --> F B --> G B --> H