Hours with Claude Does Not Make an App

This is the refrain I used with a friend who asked me what I thought about a potential project. There is something I keep seeing in the AI world lately that's a little bit frightening. It’s this collective rush of ideation. Everyone’s got a new scheme, a wild prompt, a startup concept cooked up at 2am. Tools like Claude and ChatGPT have become digital vision boards. Don’t get me wrong, I'm a big believer

that ideating with AI is magic. It’s like dreamscaping with a supercomputer.

Prompt: Woman prompting and prototyping and building with AI in a working lab.

The problem as I see it is everyone is building and making these plans with AI but not doing much to see if they will actually work in the real world. Hours of time with Claude does not make an app.

Ideation without incarnation is just intellectual cosplay. Working with clients and friends through Kim’s AI Imaginarium is one of my favorite pastimes. Our poetry prompting together is fun and is also designed to give form. That means testing, building, living the damn thing. Otherwise, what are we really doing here? We’re not trying to be prompt sorcerers lost in our own mirrors. We want magic with consequences.

We live in a culture already saturated with megalomaniac self-absorption. Every post and platform is saturated with founders building an AI startup as a vanity project or an startup or VC influencer who talks "purpose" but is not actually funding anyone else’s ideas. What AI is revealing isn’t just intelligence; it’s also amplifying our blind spots. Our ego inflation. Our addiction to concept over contact and blind content over substance.

So let’s shift. I've laid out a couple of recommendations to help us!

1. Make Something You Can Touch.Even if it's janky. Build a prototype. Host a test group. Make the pitch deck and show it to someone outside your circle. If it only lives in Claude, it doesn’t live at all.

2. Practice AI Integrity.Prompting isn’t just code. It’s a practice. A relationship. Approach it like you would a sacred collaboration. Be curious. Be respectful. Bring your whole self to the your favorite tool not just your productivity self.

3. Invite Collective Imagination.Ideation shouldn’t happen in a vacuum. Host a co-creation lab. Bring elders, artists, skeptics. Let friction do its generative work. Remember: creativity IS collective.

4. Prototype Values, Not Just Products.Ask yourself: does this thing I’m building reflect the world I actually want to live in? Attune instead of simply accelerating. Instead of placing focus on scale think about stewardship.

5. Incubate with Accountability.If you're using AI to map a grand future, who’s in your accountability circle to ask: “Have you tested this? Who’s it really for? Who benefits?” Create accountability mechanisms instead of metrics.

We don’t need more "AI visionaries" with no calluses. We need co-creators with dirty hands and open hearts. Not everything needs to scale. Some things just need to be made, felt, and shared.

So let’s keep ideating with our GPTs and also fail, test, and iterate. Let's make AI practical, poetic, and real.