Built a ChatGPT chrome extension in a week with no coding experience.
I was curious to see if GPT-4 hype is real so I tried an experiment with it…
I’m a designer and have never coded in my life. So I tried to build a fully functional chrome extension with ChatGPT functionality that also allows you to save your prompts.
Here’s what happened 🧵
Day 1 - Non-believer 🧐
I spent the evening figuring out what type of extension I could potentially build and settled on one that integrates ChatGPT prompting with the added functionality to save prompts.
Day 2 - Entering the Matrix 😵💫
After years of hearing about people spinning up servers, I finally did it myself with guidance from ChatGPT. Using the terminal, I could get it up and running much easier than I thought it would be, in preparation for the extension.
Day 3 - Building Rome in a Day 🏛️
With about 30 prompts, I was able to get something mildly functional with little stress. It was mind-blowing to see that it was giving me functional code, and I'd integrated OpenAI's API to get responses.
Day 4 - Training dAI 🏋️
Although it was easy to get something working, I quickly realized that asking the same prompt multiple times could result in different results. This made minor issues mammoth, and arguing became essential.
Day 5 & 6 - Icarus ☀️
The extension works! It was an unbelievable feeling to go from 0-100 so quickly. I wanted to show the world! I prompted for help setting up a server on Heroku and ended up breaking everything. After hours of failing, I moved back to my lane locally.
Day 7 - ChatEXT 🚀
The extension is complete! It can search using GPT from any website, save prompts and outputs, copy prompts to clipboard, search saved responses, save your history locally, and delete saved responses on demand.
Building this extension was a fantastic learning experience. It was exciting to see the progress I made each day, and it was gratifying to know that I could build something that I never thought was possible. With tools like ChatGPT and a willingness to learn, anything is possible, even for non-coders like me. Now I'm going to sleep 😮💨
To see a demo of the extension you can find it here: ChatEXT Video
Faaaantastic! thanks for making my morning.
I am doing the challenge too -- make my first ever iphone app that uses an image-to-text model (and never coded with these new tools)
Step 1: ask gpt4 how to make iphone app that xxx using live text api (gave me 7 concise steps)
Step 2: feed each step into a text to video model so I get a in context 'How to' video
I think it will take me at least 2 months to build the app, or at least a solid prototype. You did it 1 week. Extraordinary.
I hope other indies share there no-code experience gpt-4 challenges. I love how transformational this tool is.
Good luck with it! Do you have no prior coding experience? If so the whole prompting experience might be a little less painful.