Side Quests

I'm George, tech-curious but not a developer. Building small web tools with AI in public: Textdoc, Writeurl, Zipdoc, Gamebitz. What works and what doesn't.

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

Hi, I'm George. I'm not a developer, but I build small web tools with AI.

This is where I share the process: what works, what breaks, and what I learn.

Currently on: Textdoc, Writeurl, Zipdoc, Gamebitz.

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

Muse Charm could really take off if they enabled active listening, transcribing and note taking a la @bee__computer 👏

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

@ajassy I think AI listening functionality will be present in our everyday lives. It will keep all parties honest and even the playing field.

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

Built the real-time sync with Claude — had never touched websockets before.

Open a room, share one URL, and you’re both in. Been fun to ship something that actually needs another person to play🎮

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

Gamebitz just got its first multiplayer game ✏️

Draw & Guess — you draw, a friend watches every stroke appear live and types guesses. Guess right and the roles flip automatically. No accounts, no downloads, just a link.

https://t.co/4hU2pCJFD5

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

@Polymarket AI allows anyone to have their own personal productivity suite.

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

105 search impressions for "daily digits" recently. Zero clicks. Turns out the title was just boring.

Used Claude to dig through my Search Console, spot the issues, and push out fixes — new titles, schema, and a redirect fix.

Hard to find on my own.

https://t.co/Z9y3kok36m

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

@Polymarket These are personal apps, not accessible by the public. So this makes sense and is a good addition to the Android ecosystem.

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

Because the templates control what gets posted, spam dropped sharply. It’s also a simpler product with a clearer purpose.

I built and rebuilt it with Claude guiding the work. Try it free: https://t.co/6DX6F00KlL

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

Writeurl started in 2012 as a custom-built rich text editor. Fourteen years and a few rebuilds later, it’s a completely different site. Here’s the history 🧵

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

So I stopped fighting it and changed the model. Writeurl is now document templates: invoices, business profiles, link in bios, press releases, services, meeting notes and more.

You fill in structured fields, then share a unique URL and track document stats in your dashboard.

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

🔗Lessons:

1) Audit the old system before you retire it.
2) Serve old data in place before you migrate it.
3) Test what used to exist, not just what you built.
4) Let AI carry you through tools you don’t know (MySQL, SSH, PHP).

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

I rebuilt my site with Claude and accidentally broke 480,674 links. 🧵

3 months ago I rewrote Textdoc with Claude and moved storage from MySQL to Firebase. Old links quietly died. A developer built the original database and I don’t know MySQL, so I couldn’t tell how many.

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

Step two was restoring the links. I didn’t migrate 480K docs into Firestore. A small PHP router serves them straight from the old table. A read-only link gives a read-only page, and an edit link opens the editor.

[Side Quests @sidequestsxyz]

AI has helped me create a more consistent user experience on our read-only and can-edit document types.

They now have consistent color schemes, buttons and labels. Individual functionality like templates, line numbers, or download as a .txt file are the only differences.