Solo projects, building with AI
Proof points: 3
| Role | Product | Situation | Task | Action | Result | Year | Skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo projects, building with AI | TomBot TomBot, a chatbot CV at takenbyninjas.com | Tom wanted to create a novel way of presenting his CV, and find out first-hand what AI can and cannot do. Accuracy of recall was the key criterion: a CV bot that hallucinates is worse than no bot. | Build something real with AI and ship it, in his own content and voice. | Built with Claude Code on the Claude API: chunked RAG vector store, eval suite, guard-rails. Question-to-question matching against a bank of pre-mapped questions rather than searching raw content: it limits the chatbot nature but keeps the answers accurate. Content and tone of voice his own. | Live January 2026. Linked from every CV with a UTM tag per employer so each application's traffic is visible. Pinned on LinkedIn. | 2026 | AI, GenAI, regulated, compliance, prototyping, team leadership |
| Solo projects, building with AI | kittenpm.com kittenpm.com, a free browser-based product management training SIM inspired by Lemmings | Wanted a portfolio piece that is not a portfolio, aimed at product peers and recruiters. | Generate reach and demonstrate product skills by teaching product trade-offs as a game. | Built with React, TypeScript and Phaser, using Claude as the engineering team. Players practise balancing product trade-offs in real time; those who complete the game get a digital certificate to embed on LinkedIn, which drives further reach. | Live July 2026, in public beta. | 2026 | AI, GenAI, regulated, compliance, prototyping, team leadership |
| Solo projects, building with AI | deathspiralorgoldenage.org deathspiralorgoldenage.org, a weekly public poll, live sentiment tracker and open economic model on AI's economic impact, with CC0 data | A thought experiment that spun out from a discussion at a Claude meetup with Anthropic. | Build a public, open-data way to track the question over time. | Researched and built with AI. Content is human; the site is engineered and researched with AI. Weekly poll, sentiment tracker and an open economic model, all data released CC0. | Live September 2026. | 2026 | AI, GenAI, regulated, compliance, prototyping, experimentation, team leadership |
What have you built yourself with AI?
source: Tom's own account
Solo projects, building with AI (2026).
I learn by doing, and I love building. So I shipped three products with AI to find out first-hand what it can and can't do.
The task I set myself: build something real with AI and ship it.
- TomBot: a prototype AI trained on my CV. Built with Claude API, RAG vector store, eval suite & guard-rails. Live January 2026 at takenbyninjas.com/projects/tombot/
- kittenpm.com: a product training SIM inspired by Lemmings. Practice balancing product trade-offs in real time. Built with React, TypeScript & Phaser. Used Claude as my engineering team. Live July 2026.
- deathspiralorgoldenage.org: Will AI cut jobs or create new work? A public poll, live sentiment tracker, and open economic model with CC0 data. Researched & built with AI. Live September 2026.
Direct answers
- I use AI in different ways for different tasks. Automation: at Novo I created an agentic RAG thing that took the waiting out of compliance reviews for product teams[NOVO.R2.GENAI]; I've also used N8N and Claude cowork for automating admin tasks, like grabbing and processing logs. Divergent thinking: research, sparring, following what-if scenarios, and shaping ideas. Making stuff / prototyping: Claude Code as my engineering team; TomBot live January 2026, kittenpm.com live July 2026, deathspiralorgoldenage.org live September 2026[SOLO]. (Ghost application, Aug 2026)
source: Tom's own account, direct answers
Related
- Ask: how does TomBot work META.BOT
- AI: what is your AI experience THEME.AI
- Associate Product Director at Novo Nordisk: have you built anything with GenAI NOVO.R2.GENAI