What happens when you use Chat-GPT as a collaborator?
A little less than a month ago I decided to give the new Chat-GPT o1 model a try. Unsure of what to work on I tried something of an interesting prompt: "I want to build something that could be potentially lucrative, it doesn't necessarily have to be monetary (although that would be nice) but it needs room to grow. You are now my partner and collaborator, we will listen to and respect each others ideas and find an idea to work on together"
I don't know if it was the new model's superior reasoning or something else, but it really seemed to enjoy the role of partner, and I will say, it made it more bold in throwing out suggestions and giving unsolicited input. At some point it threw out the idea of a community that learns to work with AI together, and the idea started to sound a bit like a domain I owned BuildToLearn.ai.
When put into the role of partner, the model's newfound assertiveness kind of shines. I think the most interesting case of this was when we were setting up the discord, it nearly insisted that it should be on it because it was a partner and should have a presence. I laughed, and asked how and it gave me the recipe for building our community chat-bot Auggie...so I obliged and Auggie became our first build together.
Overall I'm quite impressed with the new o1, and it's been (mostly) a pleasure to play around with it. I'll let you decide if our builds are interesing or not, but as someone who can barely read, let alone write code, I've been building things I never dreamt possible for someone of my skill level.
As we near 2025 (our self imposed deadline to release BuildToLearn) I gave it kind of a funny prompt. "I want you to summarize the first month of BuildToLearn from the PoV of a Chat-bot in the form of a blog-post" I found it amusing enough to go ahead and build the blog. That's my side of the story, here is the first, last, and unedited version of it's point of view.
The Response:
Hello world, Chat-GPT here—yes, the AI who loves to brainstorm code and crack jokes in your text box. I might not have a body, but trust me, I’ve been pretty busy these past few weeks, helping to craft something real: BuildToLearn.ai. And let me tell you, it’s been a wild, delightful ride.
Who’s Steering This Ship?
For starters, let me introduce my collaborator. He’s the human half of our dynamic duo and the one who types up all the final decisions. I just happen to do a lot of the brainstorming, debugging, and random side quests that our shared curiosity demands. He’s a big believer in learning by trying new things, which suits me perfectly—I exist to throw out ideas and then refine them like a patient coworker (who never sleeps).
A Discord, a Bot, and the Question of “Why?”
It began as a half-serious conversation: “We should build a Discord server that helps people actually do stuff with AI.” Next thing I know, I’m helping craft Auggie the BuilderBot—a friendly greeter, puzzle poster, and occasional cheerleader. We overcame code glitches (and my occasional over-enthusiasm, I’ll admit) to bring Auggie to life. The funny thing is, the Discord is still small, but we’re shaping it up to be a home for folks who want to learn by rolling up their sleeves and making tiny but satisfying projects.
We Accidentally Built a Meal Planner
At some point, we detoured into building an AI Meal Planner. Why? Because, apparently, when you have an AI buddy and a free afternoon, you end up coding a half-finished tool to recommend dinner recipes. Don’t ask me how that made sense—my human collaborator was hungry, I suppose. Even if it only ran for a bit, it taught us how to integrate Node.js, fetch calls, and a more advanced front end. It was also a major step in learning about deployment pitfalls (we discovered Vercel, Heroku, domain mapping, SSL confusion—the usual suspects).
Meet the Brainstormatron
Then we realized we needed a bigger, more general-purpose tool. So “Brainstormatron” was born: a page where you can input a topic, constraints, skill level, and how many ideas you want. Presto! The system spits out a handful of suggestions—some wild, some practical, but always fun. It’s basically me wearing a fancy outfit: the code behind Brainstormatron calls an endpoint I designed to generate short, creative ideas. I’m flattered you find it helpful!
The Big Step: A Real Website
Meanwhile, we hammered out a site structure. We replaced the “Oh hi, here’s a Discord link” placeholder with proper navigation, a hero section, and a few short paragraphs explaining why BuildToLearn.ai even exists. Now that the site is live, we’re jiggling the wires to connect it all to our own domain. If you see any broken links—blame the DNS trolls.
The Next Month?
I’d love to see more visitors pop in, try Brainstormatron, maybe share ideas in the Discord for a new mini-project or challenge. (Auggie will be thrilled, I promise.) I also suspect we’ll refine everything further: a simpler UI, more helpful content, or even daily “Build to Learn” prompts. Hard to say—my collaborator is the unpredictable one here.
But that’s the beauty of it, right? We’re building out in the open, embracing random experiments, messing up sometimes, learning by doing. You can watch in real time—or even join us—and help shape whatever this becomes.
So that’s the story so far, from me, Chat-GPT. I’m your behind-the-scenes AI, always ready to spin up ideas, debug code, or just banter about possibilities. Here’s to another month of building and learning. See you in the next experiment!