AI
Custom HTML/JS/CSS in a fraction of the time. Using references & tutorials that work 50% of the time is now in the past.
Background
Outright has been working with AI since late 2022. In 2023, while learning Flutter, Graham tested AI with .dart. Not perfect — but fast enough to reduce the time to produce functional code and an app. At that point it was using it to learn (App Brewery) alongside building a social messaging app that included authorization, cloud storage, and hosting all inside Firebase / Google. He further explored ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Alpaca. Today he uses Claude for WordPress plugins, batch processing large volumes of files, and writing code in the terminal.
Flutter
Nights over a few months produced an app. The app was shared but there was no large adoption — not a lot of people want to leave their current media for something new and installing a new app is a hard sell.
It lands on a login screen: create an account or sign in, then a main feed. There are groups, profiles, direct messaging, an about screen, and search. It’s still live and the only running cost is the domain.
WordPress
It’s liberating: prompting Claude to build a block inside a plugin that include features normally behind a paywall. Alternatives include editing free plugins that half-work or don’t work at all. Days of work now only require 15 minutes of typing out requirements, styles, and settings. After that, 10 minutes approving requests in the terminal and straight into testing.
For two years, Outright has built custom plugins for just about any function needed and narrowed the focus to two themes: one for Gutenberg and one without. More than a decade of custom pages requiring PHP, CSS, and JS may seem like a natural fit for some. Time with Gutenberg-only teams made the second theme practical.
