Vibe-coding a kid-friendly AI fortune teller for your Halloween festivities | Marco Casalaina

1. 0:00 – 0:40

   Intro

   1. CVClaire Vo0:00

      Welcome to a spooky and unplanned Halloween edition of How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive, here on a mission to help you use LLMs to do spooky stuff for your kids. Today, we had a haunted episode recording that we couldn't get to work, so instead of our regular scheduled programming, we did a quick Halloween vibe code that I think some of you parents out there will be inspired by. If you have other Halloween vibe codes, please share them with us in the comments, and enjoy this very short episode of How I AI: Halloween Edition. [upbeat music]

2. 0:40 – 2:54

   Marco’s Halloween fortune teller tradition

   1. CVClaire Vo0:40

      Marco, we may, we may not be able to do our podcast today. We are haunted by-

   2. MCMarco Casalaina0:47

      We are haunted

   3. CVClaire Vo0:47

      ... expired cr- ex- expired corporate credit cards. But you have a, a Halloween-based AI use case [chuckles] we're gonna talk about instead, just for a few minutes before we reschedule.

   4. MCMarco Casalaina0:57

      I do, I do, and maybe I'll, I'll kind of do it live on the fly here.

   5. CVClaire Vo1:01

      Yeah.

   6. MCMarco Casalaina1:01

      And so why don't we, why don't we not just talk about it, why don't we actually do it? So I'm dressed as Captain Picard right now, uh, as I do every year, dressed as Captain Picard. I mean, it naturally fits with my-

   7. CVClaire Vo1:13

      fits

   8. MCMarco Casalaina1:13

      ... you know-

   9. CVClaire Vo1:13

      Brand

   10. MCMarco Casalaina1:13

       - brand and stuff like that. Of course, I am a huge Star Trek fan. I'm in the middle of Strange New Worlds right now, Season 4. But, uh, by night, at least for Halloween, I do something a little bit different. I am the block fortune teller. So this is the Halloween party block that I live on here in Piedmont, California, and so we will block off the street, and all of our neighbors do crazy stuff. And so, you know, my neighbor across the street is gonna have all this projection stuff going on, and they have, like, fire coming out of something and... But what I do, well, I am a fortune teller. So traditionally, uh, what I have done for the past few years is that I have pre-created fortunes. So I set up this table, and on this table, uh, I have a, a, a crystal ball, and the crystal ball glows and stuff like that. It's not a high-tech crystal ball. It has nothing but a couple of LED lights in it, but the kids come up, and there's lots of kids in town, you know, hundreds of them really, come up, and they, they will get their fortunes from this thing. Now, in reality, what I did was I, in the past, have pre-created these fortunes. So I make a list of them with GPT-3 and then GPT-4, and I store them in a note on my phone, and I kind of keep it between my legs under the table, and I'll kind of pick one at random. So when a kid comes up, I'll pick this one, and I make a kind of kid-friendly fortunes. Now, this year, I, I was thinking about doing this, and since we're talking, I'm gonna do this live now.

   11. CVClaire Vo2:38

       Yes.

   12. MCMarco Casalaina2:38

       I'm gonna actually do this live. I'm gonna- let me give you a moment, just-

   13. CVClaire Vo2:41

       Are you gonna read my fortune?

   14. MCMarco Casalaina2:43

       Uh, we're gonna, we're gonna make a fortune for you, yeah.

   15. CVClaire Vo2:45

       Yes.

   16. MCMarco Casalaina2:46

       So I think that for this... Now, there's lots of tools that I can use to do this.

   17. CVClaire Vo2:49

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MCMarco Casalaina2:50

       Uh, I could use Lovable, I could use Bolt, I can use v0. I'm gonna use GitHub Spark for this

3. 2:54 – 4:32

   Using GitHub Spark to create a fortune teller app

   1. MCMarco Casalaina2:54

      one.

   2. CVClaire Vo2:54

      Was not expecting a GitHub Spark today on Halloween-

   3. MCMarco Casalaina2:58

      How about that?

   4. CVClaire Vo2:58

      - so this is exciting for me.

   5. MCMarco Casalaina2:59

      How about that? Okay, so I'm gonna say, "Make a mobile app, which, when I click a button, generates a new fortune in the context of a fortune teller." Okay, uh, I don't think I need to tell it much more than that. It's probably gonna kind of work on the first try. Well, we'll see. Let's see what this does. Now, you know, in other circumstances, I have sometimes given it, like, a list of things to scroll between. You might have seen on the screen that earlier I had a chemistry ion flashcards app. My daughter, uh, is in honors chemistry, and she was, at the time, studying polyatomic i- ions, uh, chlorate, perchlorate, you know, sulfate, stuff like that, and, uh, she needed to memorize the name to the, the formula of these polyatomic ions. And so I made a flashcards app with this thing, which actually worked really well. I mean, I just gave it basically the list of the polyatomic ions, and it totally freaking did it in this kind of flashcard interface that worked on the phone. And so that was pretty nice. That's kind of one of the reasons why I decided to go with GitHub Spark for this one, uh, is because I know that kind of worked for me before. And in a way, you could look at this as kind of being a flashcard app, too. It's gonna kind of make these flashcards of fortunes, I guess.

   6. CVClaire Vo4:19

      Yeah.

   7. MCMarco Casalaina4:19

      Uh-

   8. CVClaire Vo4:19

      Oh, my gosh. Well, I, I have a block party tomorrow, so I might steal your idea. [chuckles]

   9. MCMarco Casalaina4:26

      You could do this.

   10. CVClaire Vo4:27

       I'm excited about this.

   11. MCMarco Casalaina4:28

       You could definitely pass for a fortune teller as well, you know?

   12. CVClaire Vo4:31

       Yeah.

4. 4:32 – 6:53

   Using Spec Kit for scoping out complex feature specs

   1. MCMarco Casalaina4:32

      And-

   2. CVClaire Vo4:32

      Oh, my gosh. Okay, so this is gonna... Oh, it made a PRD. That's, you know, I love to see it.

   3. MCMarco Casalaina4:36

      It made a PRD. Let's see. Can we see it? Let's see if we can see what it's doing while it's doing it. Oh, it does. Okay. So wow, it's really, it's going fast and furious over here. So it's, it's totally writing this PRD over here, and now it's, it's made a page index, so it's starting to make the actual HTML. So it's, it's gonna write this in HTML, and, you know, this is, this is common, and now it's got some CSS, so it's gonna style, uh, the page. Uh, but, I mean, this is, this is vibe coding or any way front-end vibe coding as we do it today. Uh, now, in reality, though, I mean, when I'm doing real vibe coding, uh, projects, and while this thing is working, since I actually already have this on my screen, I'm gonna bust this out over here. Now, if I'm doing a real project, like a serious project, that's not just a little fortune teller app, nowadays, I will 100% use SpecKit. Uh, I absolutely do use SpecKit. In fact, it so happens I was, earlier today, working on just such a project. So I am, by the way, I'm VP of Products of Core AI at Microsoft. However, uh, I do come from an engineering background, and I still code pretty much every day something. So I'm working on this project, and in this project, uh, where I did use SpecKit... So here, like, this is a full feature specification that I'm working on. I have this whole agent thing that I'm, I'm working on, and, uh, I am adding this ability to give user feedback. So this agent will, like, fill out a questionnaire for me, and that's cool, but I want to be able to pick a, a cell, a question, and be like: "No, no, you did that wrong. Fix it," and then the agent should just wake up and do it.... when you use Spec Kit, and so, like, this is the proper way to write a spec, uh, when you use Spec Kit, it does this stuff over here. So you see what it's gonna do? It throws these questions at me. So it's like, "Wait a minute, how long should the feedback be? What if the user gives you, like, a ton of feedback? Then what do I do?" And it, and it- it'll lob all of these questions at me while it does this. So Spec Kit is cool. It's totally free. It works with, like... I'm, in this case, I'm using it with GitHub Copilot, but it works with Claude Code, and it works with Cursor and all these other things. So that is super cool. Uh, I love it. It helps you write a better spec. Uh, but let me-

   4. CVClaire Vo6:40

      Oh, look at this.

   5. MCMarco Casalaina6:41

      My app is here. Okay, tap to reveal your fortune, the cosmos.

   6. CVClaire Vo6:45

      [chuckles] Okay.

   7. MCMarco Casalaina6:46

      Leave your question.

   8. CVClaire Vo6:46

      I'm very excited about this.

   9. MCMarco Casalaina6:49

      Wow, okay.

   10. CVClaire Vo6:50

       Oh.

   11. MCMarco Casalaina6:51

       That's a little bit too, uh-

5. 6:53 – 10:20

   Making fortunes more concrete and kid-friendly

   1. CVClaire Vo6:53

      Hold on, let me, let me read this for people that are not on video. "In the tapestry of the cosmos, the stars weave a path illuminated by your dreams. Trust in their guiding light." Now, what I like about this is it is completely ambiguous and means nothing.

   2. MCMarco Casalaina7:07

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CVClaire Vo7:07

      Excellent. Excellent fortune. But I bet you want it to be a little more fun and kid-friendly for-

   4. MCMarco Casalaina7:13

      Exactly

   5. CVClaire Vo7:13

      ... for your use case. [chuckles]

   6. MCMarco Casalaina7:14

      And so over here on the left-hand side, you can see that I'm saying, "Make each fortune only one sentence, and make it kid-friendly." So now I'm gonna kind of prompt my way towards doing something, and it's starting to generate again. So I mean, I mean, you gotta admit, though, I mean, it's pretty freaking good on the first try.

   7. CVClaire Vo7:29

      Really good. You know what? I haven't seen, um, this GitHub Spark, uh, done live, but the design is actually really cute. So, so often in these vibe coding tools, you get these incredibly boring designs, but that is actually quite, quite lovely. Okay.

   8. MCMarco Casalaina7:48

      All right, let's see.

   9. CVClaire Vo7:49

      Did we get it?

   10. MCMarco Casalaina7:50

       It's done. It says it's done.

   11. CVClaire Vo7:51

       Okay.

   12. MCMarco Casalaina7:52

       So here we go. Let's see what happens.

   13. CVClaire Vo7:52

       Mystic Oracle, what is my fortune?

   14. MCMarco Casalaina7:56

       "When you sprinkle kindness like fairy dust, the whole world transforms into a playground of magical adventures and shimmering smiles."

   15. CVClaire Vo8:03

       Ah, that's it is... That is lovely and kid-friendly.

   16. MCMarco Casalaina8:06

       Still maybe a little bit on the big words there. I mean, I could-

   17. CVClaire Vo8:09

       And on the abstract side.

   18. MCMarco Casalaina8:11

       Yeah, on the abstract side. I mean, uh, let's see. Make the fortunes a little more concrete.

   19. CVClaire Vo8:17

       And, and let's make them a little more fun.

   20. MCMarco Casalaina8:20

       And maybe a little more humorous.

   21. CVClaire Vo8:24

       Yeah.

   22. MCMarco Casalaina8:25

       Try not to use such big words.

   23. CVClaire Vo8:27

       [chuckles]

   24. MCMarco Casalaina8:29

       I mean, a lot of times, like, the kids that'll come up to my fortune-telling booth, they'll be, like, you know, two or three years old, you know?

   25. CVClaire Vo8:34

       Yeah, yeah.

   26. MCMarco Casalaina8:35

       And for them, sometimes I'll, like, not even use my little app thing-

   27. CVClaire Vo8:40

       Yep

   28. MCMarco Casalaina8:40

       ... and I'll be like: You're gonna try a new food today, and it's gonna be yummy.

   29. CVClaire Vo8:45

       [chuckles]

   30. MCMarco Casalaina8:46

       And their parents will be like, "Thank you!" [chuckles] Like-
6. 10:20 – 11:46

   Closing thoughts

   1. MCMarco Casalaina10:20

      the, the, I mean-

   2. CVClaire Vo10:21

      You got it. Okay, I, um... You know, it's, it's Halloween. It's almost 11:00 a.m. I've got, uh, my block party's tomorrow, so we're blocking off the street, and we're doing a post-Halloween, everybody bring your candy so you can give it all [chuckles] more away party.

   3. MCMarco Casalaina10:36

      Right.

   4. CVClaire Vo10:36

      And I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna hook it up to voice.

   5. MCMarco Casalaina10:41

      Sweet.

   6. CVClaire Vo10:42

      Give it, like, a spooky fortune teller voice and, uh, set it up out front. Well, Marco, despite our haunted podcast episode-

   7. MCMarco Casalaina10:52

      [chuckles]

   8. CVClaire Vo10:52

      ... we will get you back on to actually talk about spectrum and development, but thank you for doing our first and maybe an annual tradition of our Halloween AI, How I AI episode. [chuckles]

   9. MCMarco Casalaina11:05

      Gotcha.

   10. CVClaire Vo11:05

       Thank you for showing this off.

   11. MCMarco Casalaina11:06

       We'll involve this every year. We'll have, like, different elements to Halloween every year.

   12. CVClaire Vo11:10

       Perfect. Well, we'll get you back on, on the pod soon, and I think I'm gonna just- I'm gonna go cut this and-

   13. MCMarco Casalaina11:15

       All right

   14. CVClaire Vo11:16

       ... and share it. [chuckles] [upbeat music] Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube, or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Please consider leaving us a rating and review, which will help others find the show. You can see all our episodes and learn more about the show at howiaipod.com. See you next time! [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 11:46