TheGapMinder is a home for Apps intended to nudge humanity toward an abundant future, where learning new skills and finding meaningful ways to contribute to the world becomes a priority, for all of us. It's a lofty vision, but that is what’s needed in these days of unprecedented change, where the emergence of AI brings us to a fork in the road - dystopia or utopia, our choice.
The first App here is intended to smooth the path to learning and sharing music with the world - one of the more meaningful avenues out there. More Apps will follow exploring other domains - the opportunity space is enormous. Cooking, Fitness, all manner of hobbies and professions, all have unique needs that have so far struggled to find tools really fit for purpose in the real world. Shockingly, it seems that the really devoted contributors to most domains are not software developers. But now they can be, with a little AI help, and TheGapMinder community (such as it is), welcomes any and all contributions that move us collectively in that direction. Contact us below if you’d like to join the cause.
TheGapMinder started as an experiment in “vibe-coding”, to see if it’s possible for a complete newcomer to the world of App development to create something useful, and avoid generating pure “AI Slop”, using modern LLMs - starting, in mid 2025, with ChatGPT. The first app on this site was written virtually entirely by ChatGPT, through a collaborative process of iterative prompting, which was quite a journey, but also very fun and engaging from start to finish. Lots of lessons were learned along the way, and my hope is to share some of those lessons with others interested in seeing what’s possible with AI.
The first step on TheGapMinder journey is what I call the “Why” test, that is, “why hasn’t this been solved yet?” Find something that frustrates you when you’re doing what you love, and ask the question. For me, having chosen music as a hobby in retirement, I found myself juggling hundreds of songs, each with complex structures, lyrics, and spanning multiple genres, and I really struggled to keep everything I needed for learning, practicing, performing and just jamming with friends around the campfire, in one place that was always accessible, even when “off grid”. So I had to ask “Why isn’t there an app for this?” Well, now there is - in just a few weeks TuneMinder was born.
One asperational goal for TheGapMinder is to create “The Why Prize” (a not-so-subtle nod to Peter D’s X-Prize), to recognize contributions that make life more fun, and more meaningful for everyone (I need to get that Patreon thing going first…:)
Is it AI slop? Partly, sure - ChatGPT doesn’t use Apps, how can it know what frustrates us humans? Trust me, it doesn’t. While much time was spent coaching it on those things, I don’t get to take much credit for the app design, and I get to deflect the blame for its shortcomings, what could be better for a newbie hobbyist? So, you get the idea of the experiment - learning to love AI, I think, is the first step on this new journey.
The acid test though, is whether the App is actually useful for me, which it is. I now use it often, most every day, in a wide variety of contexts, and it's really helping. It’s certainly a massive improvement over what I was doing before, so I can put up with a little slop. Perahps in the near-term it's the price for AI inspired utility, but I expect it will get much better with time.
Of course I recognize that my musical needs may not be reflective of the broader musical community, and, as a hobbyist, I enjoy taking suggestions and feedback as a challenge, to see what more we can get out of these new AI companions. The plan is to open source the entire code base (once ChatGPT cleans it up a bit), so anyone interested can directly contribute.
That said, you are invited to give TuneMinder a try, provide feedback, and let me know what you’d like the AI to tackle next. It’s one way to join the experiment, and help shape our AI future in a positive direction…:)