DEV Community: Raymond

AppBlips: The Free, Open-Source AI App Builder That Runs on Your Computer

Raymond — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 20:57:12 +0000

Most AI app builders work the same way: you prompt in a browser tab, they generate a project on somebody else's servers, and you pay per credit while hoping you can export what you made.

AppBlips — a free, open-source AI app builder for Windows and Linux — takes a different path on just about every one of those decisions. Here's what it actually does, feature by feature, and how it compares to Wix AI, Framer, Durable, 10Web, and Lovable.

A desktop AI builder, not another browser tab

AppBlips runs on your computer (Windows and Linux). Your projects live in local folders. Your AI provider credentials sit in your OS keychain. There's no account, no subscription, no hosted service holding your work. If the internet goes out, your projects are still right there.

Flexible export: single file or multi-file projects

For simpler apps and sites, AppBlips exports a single, self-contained HTML file — all HTML, CSS, and JavaScript inline, no build step. Double-click it and it runs. For more complex apps, it produces proper multi-file projects, some built with Preact. You get the simplicity when you want it and the structure when you need it, instead of being forced into one model.

Point, click, edit — with or without AI

Here's the feature that changes the economics: AppBlips has a visual click-to-edit mode alongside AI prompting. See something small you want changed? Click the element and fix it directly — no AI request, no tokens burned, no waiting.

Use natural language when it's actually faster: describing a layout change, generating a section of copy, restructuring a page. The two modes live in the same workspace and you switch freely. You decide when the AI meter runs — which is to say, there isn't one. Point-and-click editing is free and unlimited.

You can also select any element and ask the AI to change just that part, surgically, without regenerating everything around it.

Build browser games with AI

AppBlips isn't just an AI website builder — its dedicated App Studio workspace builds interactive tools, dashboards, and browser games. Describe the game in plain English, watch it build, then tweak the rules or difficulty the same way you'd tweak anything else: prompt it, or click-to-edit it. Same export, same PWA packaging, so the game is installable on a phone like any other app.

Bring your own AI — no credit meter

AppBlips doesn't sell you AI credits. You connect your own provider — OpenAI, OpenRouter (which gets you Claude, Gemini, and more), DeepSeek, Z.ai, a local Ollama model, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Model costs come straight from the provider you chose, at their prices, with no markup and no middleman meter.

Prefer free? Point Ollama at a local model and your AI bill is zero.

Every version, kept

Every generation and every revision is saved as a snapshot. Made a change you regret three prompts ago? Step back through history with undo/redo and pick up where you were. Nothing is lost, nothing is final until you say so.

Build from a reference image

Have a mockup, a screenshot of a site you like, or a sketch? Attach the reference image and AppBlips builds something that matches it. Faster than describing a layout in words, and closer to what you actually pictured.

Two studios, zero clutter

The workspace is one prompt box on the left and a live sandboxed preview on the right. No file trees, no terminals, no twelve-tab IDE. There are two focused modes — App Studio for interactive tools and games, Website Studio for content-first sites — and a device toggle for checking responsive layouts at any screen size.

Generated apps can even call AI themselves through a built-in blip.ai.text() API, using whatever provider you've configured.

PWA by default — skip the app stores

Everything AppBlips builds is a progressive web app out of the box. Installable on phones, works offline, no App Store submission, no Play Console, no $99/year Apple fee, no review queue, no 30% cut. For a small business that wants customers to "get our app," the path is: build it, share the link, done.

100% free and open source (MIT)

MIT licensed. Free forever. No account, no credit card, no feature gate. The source is public — inspect it, fork it, self-host it. No vendor can raise your prices, remove a feature, or hold your work hostage, because there is no vendor.

AppBlips vs. other AI builders: what only AppBlips has

Feature	AppBlips	Wix AI	Framer AI	Durable AI	10Web	Lovable
Free and open source (MIT)	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Desktop app, works locally	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
No account required	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Bring your own AI provider	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
No credit meter on edits	Yes	Bundled	Metered	Metered	Metered	Metered
Click-to-edit without AI	Yes	Partial	Partial	No	Partial	Partial
PWA by default	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Single-file HTML export option	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Full version snapshots	Yes	Partial	Yes	Partial	Partial	Partial

A note on fairness: several of these tools do things AppBlips doesn't try to do. Framer is a better design tool. Lovable generates real multi-file codebases you can hand to a developer. Durable bundles a CRM. If you need those things, they're good products. This table isn't about who's "best" — it's about what's structurally different.

Who should use AppBlips

AppBlips is for people who want to describe an idea in plain English and get back a real, working app or website — without a developer tool, without a credit meter, and without handing their work to someone else's platform. Small business owners, solo founders, teachers, hobbyists, and developers who want a fast prototype without the scaffolding.

Free forever, open source, yours.

Download AppBlips at appblips.com — free AI app builder for Windows and Linux, no account needed.

How to Get 1 Billion Free Muse Tokens

Raymond — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 17:02:38 +0000

New Muse users can get 1 billion free tokens by entering an invite code in Settings within 48 hours of signing up. That is roughly ten weeks of the free weekly allowance, at no cost and with no card required.

If you have been curious about Muse, Meta's new personal AI agent, this guide explains what it is, what it can do, how its tokens work, and exactly how to claim the bonus. You can use my invite code below:

Muse invite code: 02F1OY
Sign up:          https://muse.ai/join

What is Muse?

Muse is a personal AI agent that Meta launched on September 8, 2026. Unlike a chatbot that only answers questions, Muse is built to take action and get things done on your behalf.

It runs on Muse Spark, which Meta calls its most capable model to date and which it designed for real-world agent tasks. You talk to it the way you would text a friend, either in the Muse app or through WhatsApp.

A few things set it apart:

Its own computer. Each Muse agent runs on a private cloud virtual machine (Meta calls it Muse Secure VM) with its own storage and a full web browser you can watch.
It keeps working. Long tasks continue in the background even after you close the app.
It's personal. You can name your agent, give it an avatar, and choose how it communicates.
Availability. Muse is rolling out in the United States for adults 18 and older, on iOS, Android, and the web at muse.ai. Support for Meta's AI glasses is planned.

What Muse can do for you

Muse handles both quick errands and long-running goals. According to Meta and launch coverage, it can:

Send emails and manage your calendar
Book travel and make reservations
Open a browser, fill out forms, and complete online checkouts
Negotiate on your behalf, for example to lower a bill or sell a car
Take a bigger goal, turn it into a personal plan, and keep working on it over days or weeks
Offer proactive suggestions as it learns what matters to you

You decide which apps it can connect to, such as email, calendar, payments, and shopping, and you can revoke access at any time. Meta also says Muse is the first AI agent covered by Link's purchase protections, including coverage for lost or damaged items and no-fee returns on eligible purchases.

A few practical ideas to try first:

"Find three flights to Chicago next month under $250 and hold the best one for my approval."
"Compare my internet plan to what's available at my address and draft a message asking for a lower rate."
"Plan a weekly meal schedule and build a grocery list for it."

How Muse tokens and plans work

Muse is free to use up to a weekly limit, and everything is metered in tokens rather than messages. Tokens are the small chunks of text the model reads and writes as it plans, browses, and fills in forms, so one long background task can use far more than a dozen quick questions.

Plan	Price	Weekly allowance
Free	$0	About 100 million tokens (reported)
Power	$20/month	500 million tokens
Max	$100/month	3 billion tokens

The free figure comes from Meta's announcements and third-party testing; check Meta's help page for the current numbers. When you hit your limit, Muse pauses until the weekly reset or until you upgrade.

Invite bonus tokens sit on top of your weekly allowance, which is why claiming them early is worth it.

How to get 1 billion free Muse tokens, step by step

The whole process takes about two minutes. The only rule that matters: redeem the code within 48 hours of creating your account, because the option disappears after that.

Create your account. Go to muse.ai/join or download the Muse app on iOS or Android. On the web you sign in with a phone number and a Meta account, then complete age verification.
Open Settings. On the web, click the gear icon in the lower left. In the app, open the menu and tap Settings.
Find Redeem Invite Code. It usually sits under General (on some versions, General then Usage).
Enter the code 02F1OY and tap Confirm.
Check your balance. Make sure the 1 billion bonus tokens show up before you close Settings.

That's it. You get 1 billion tokens, and so do I, as a thank-you for the referral.

Check out Muse, your personal AI agent. Redeem my code in Settings
within 48 hours of joining and we'll both get 1 billion Muse tokens.

Code: 02F1OY
https://muse.ai/join

Tip: Once you're in, you get your own invite code too (look for the Invite button). Each account can reportedly refer up to 20 friends, earning 1 billion tokens per successful invite.

What 1 billion tokens is actually worth

One billion tokens equals about ten weeks of the free weekly allowance, or two full weeks of the $20 Power plan.

Comparison	Equivalent of 1B bonus tokens
Free plan (~100M/week)	About 10 weeks
Power plan (500M/week)	About 2 weeks
Max plan (3B/week)	About 2 days

In practical terms, that is room to let Muse run real errands, research projects, and longer background goals without watching the meter. Agent tasks that browse many pages burn tokens faster than chat, so the bonus is most useful for the bigger jobs.

Privacy and safety: what to know before you connect your accounts

An agent that reads your email and makes purchases needs more trust than a chatbot, and Meta has built in several safeguards:

Isolated machine. Your agent and your data live in their own virtual machine that no other user's agent can reach.
Sentinel. A separate security agent controls internet access and permissions, kept apart from Muse at the system level.
Hidden credentials. Passwords and payment details are stored so Muse itself never sees them.
Your choice on training. You can opt out of having your conversations used to train Meta's models, and Meta says personal conversations aren't shared with its advertising systems.

Good habits still apply. Start by connecting only the apps a task needs, require approval for purchases, and review what Muse did before you hand it more access.

Frequently asked questions

Is Muse really free? Yes. The free tier has the same features as the paid plans, just a smaller weekly token allowance.

Do the bonus tokens expire? Bonus tokens are separate from your weekly allowance and don't reset with it. Meta can change promotion terms, so use them on real tasks rather than saving them indefinitely.

I missed the 48-hour window. Can I still redeem? No. The redeem option disappears once the window closes, so enter the code during your first session.

Can I use Muse outside the US? Not officially yet. An invite code only adds tokens; it doesn't unlock Muse in countries where it hasn't launched.

Is Muse the same as Muse Code or the Meta AI app? No. Muse Code is a separate coding tool for developers with its own plans, and Meta AI is Meta's general assistant.

Ready to try it?

Sign up at muse.ai/join, open Settings, and redeem code 02F1OY within 48 hours. You'll start with 1 billion bonus tokens on top of your free weekly allowance.

Why Isn't My Website Showing Up on Google? A Beginner's Fix-It Guide

Raymond — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 19:21:59 +0000

You did everything right. You got a website built, it looks great, and then you type your business name into Google... and nothing. Not on page one. Not on page five. It's like your site doesn't exist.

Take a breath — this is one of the most common questions small business owners ask, and it's almost always fixable. In this guide I'll explain the real reasons websites don't show up on Google, in plain English, and then walk you through setting up Google Search Console: the free tool Google itself gives you to see exactly how it views your site. Ten minutes of setup, and you'll never have to guess again.

Why isn't my website on Google?

There are really only a handful of reasons, and most of them are boring technicalities rather than disasters:

1. Google doesn't know your site exists yet. Google discovers websites by following links from one page to another — a process called crawling. If your site is brand new and nothing links to it yet, Google may simply never have visited. Think of it like opening a shop but forgetting to tell anyone the address.

2. Your site is accidentally blocking Google. This one is more common than you'd think. Websites have a behind-the-scenes file called robots.txt and little tags called noindex that tell Google "don't list this page." Developers often turn these on while a site is under construction — and sometimes forget to turn them off when it goes live. Your site can be finished, beautiful, and completely invisible because of one forgotten setting.

3. It's just too new. Even after Google discovers your site, it can take days or weeks to actually add your pages to its index (the giant list it searches through). A week-old site not ranking yet is completely normal.

4. Google can't tell what your site is about. If your homepage doesn't clearly say what you do and where you do it — in real words, not just pretty images — Google doesn't know which searches to show you for. A page that's all photos and a "Welcome!" headline gives Google almost nothing to work with.

5. You're a local business with no Google Business Profile. If you're a plumber in Plymouth and someone searches "plumber near me," Google mostly shows the map pack — those three business listings with stars. No Google Business Profile means you're invisible in the exact spot where most local clicks happen, no matter how nice your website is.

The good news: every one of these has a fix, and the first step for nearly all of them is the same tool.

Meet Google Search Console (it's free)

Google Search Console is a free dashboard from Google that shows you precisely how Google sees your website: which of your pages it has indexed, what search terms you're appearing for, whether anything is broken, and whether your site has any penalties. It's the closest thing to reading Google's mind, and every website owner should have it set up. It costs nothing and takes about ten minutes.

Let's do it now, step by step.

Setting up Google Search Console: the beginner's walkthrough

Step 1: Go to the Search Console site.
Head to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with a Google account. Tip: use a business Google account if you have one rather than a personal Gmail — this is a business asset, and you don't want access tied to an account you might lose.

Step 2: Add your website as a "property."
Click "Add property." You'll see two options:

Domain — covers every version of your site (with and without www, http and https). More complete, but requires you to add a record to your domain's DNS settings.
URL prefix — covers just the exact address you type in. Simpler.

If DNS settings sound intimidating, choose URL prefix and type your full website address exactly as it appears in the browser, e.g. https://www.yoursite.com. You can always add the Domain version later.

Step 3: Prove you own the site (verification).
Google needs to confirm you're actually the site's owner before showing you its data. It'll offer several methods — here they are from easiest to hardest:

HTML tag (recommended for most people): Google gives you a short meta tag. Paste it into your homepage's code just before the closing </head> tag, save, then click "Verify" back in Search Console. If a developer built your site, send them the tag — it's a 30-second job for them.
HTML file upload: Google gives you a small file to upload to your website's main folder via FTP or your hosting file manager.
DNS record: Add a TXT record where your domain is registered. Most powerful, slightly more technical.

Once verified, you'll never have to do it again.

Step 4: Submit your sitemap.
A sitemap is a simple file that lists every page on your site — it hands Google a map instead of making it wander around hoping to find everything. In Search Console's left menu, click Sitemaps, then type sitemap.xml and hit submit. Most websites already have one at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml (WordPress sites with plugins like Yoast or Rank Math generate it automatically). If yours doesn't have one, that's worth asking your developer about.

Step 5: Ask Google to index your homepage right now.
Instead of waiting weeks hoping Google stumbles onto you, you can jump the queue. Paste your homepage address into the search bar at the top of Search Console, open the URL Inspection tool, and click Request indexing. Do the same for your two or three most important pages. This is the single highest-leverage button in the whole tool.

Step 6: Wait a few days, then come back and look around.
Indexing isn't instant. Give it several days, then check two reports:

Pages (under "Indexing"): shows which of your pages Google has indexed and, crucially, why not for the ones it hasn't — with reasons explained in reasonably plain language.
Performance: shows the actual search terms people typed that made your site appear, even if you were on page 6. Seeing yourself appear for anything is proof the machine is working. This report is also gold for figuring out what to write about next on your site or blog.

"I did all that — how long until I show up?"

Realistic expectations matter here. For a brand-new site, it's completely normal to take one to four weeks before you start appearing in results at all, and longer before you rank for anything competitive. SEO is a slow burn, not a switch. Anyone promising you page one overnight is selling something — probably something worthless.

What you should see fairly quickly in Search Console: your pages moving from "discovered" to "indexed," and impressions trickling into the Performance report. That's the engine turning over.

When to call in help

Here's the honest truth: everything above is very doable, but it's also fiddly, jargon-heavy work that has nothing to do with running your actual business. If you've followed this guide and your site still isn't appearing after a few weeks, or if terms like "sitemap," "robots.txt," and "DNS verification" make your eyes glaze over, that's a completely reasonable point to hand it to someone who does this every day.

That's exactly what we do at TechMitten. Every website we build for small businesses ships with Search Console set up, sitemaps submitted, indexing requested, and the technical SEO basics handled from day one — so you never have to wonder whether Google can find you. We're based in Plymouth, Michigan and work with small businesses everywhere. If your current site needs a checkup or you're starting fresh, get in touch — we'd love to help.

Quick recap

Most "my website isn't on Google" mysteries come down to five things: Google doesn't know the site exists, the site is accidentally blocking Google, it's simply too new, the content doesn't clearly say what the business does, or there's no Google Business Profile for local searches. Google Search Console is the free, ten-minute tool that diagnoses all of it — set it up, submit your sitemap, request indexing, and check back in a few days. And if you'd rather have someone handle the technical side while you run your business, you know where to find us.

How I Build AI Receptionists for Small Businesses

Raymond — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 16:50:56 +0000

How I Build AI Receptionists for Small Businesses

Every week, small businesses lose jobs for the dumbest reason: nobody picked up the phone. The customer doesn't leave a voicemail — they call the next listing on Google.

Hiring a full-time receptionist costs $3,000+/month. An AI receptionist costs a fraction of that and never sleeps, never takes lunch, and never lets a call go to voicemail. Here's how I build them for my clients at TechMitten.

What the client actually gets

Every call answered instantly, 24/7 — nights, weekends, holidays
A natural-sounding voice agent that greets callers, answers common questions, and captures lead details (name, number, what they need)
The moment a call ends, the business owner gets a text with a short summary, plus a detailed email with the full breakdown
No app to install, no dashboard to learn — it works through the phone number they already have

The stack

RetellAI for the voice agent. This is the core — it handles speech-to-text, the LLM conversation, and text-to-speech with low enough latency that callers don't feel like they're talking to a robot. Voice quality is what makes or breaks the whole thing; a long pause and the caller hangs up.

Twilio for telephony. The client's business number routes to the AI agent. Nothing changes for the customer — they dial the same number they've always dialed.

A scheduled notification pipeline for lead alerts. After each call ends, the system waits for the call analysis to complete, then fires two notifications: a short SMS summary to the owner's phone and a detailed email with the call breakdown. I run this check every 15 minutes, so nothing slips through.

Building one for a client: the actual process

1. Conversation design. This is most of the work, and it's not code — it's writing. I map out: how should the agent greet callers? What are the 10 most common questions this business gets? What info must be captured from every caller? The agent gets a personality brief, not just a script.

2. Business knowledge. I feed the agent the details that make it sound like an insider: services and pricing, hours, service area, how to handle pricing questions versus "I need to talk to a human" situations. A generic agent is useless; a knowledgeable one books jobs.

3. Call flows and fallbacks. What happens when the caller asks something unexpected? The agent takes a message rather than inventing an answer. What happens when someone is angry? De-escalate and offer a callback. These edge cases are where cheap implementations fall apart.

4. Test calls. I call the number myself — repeatedly, with different scenarios. The friendly caller, the confused caller, the one who rambles. If the agent can't handle my test calls, it's not ready for real customers.

5. The notification loop. The owner needs to know about leads now, not tomorrow. The SMS is short enough to read at a glance ("New lead: Sarah M., wants a quote for a bathroom remodel"). The email has the full details. Speed of follow-up is what turns a lead into a job.

What I've learned

Latency is everything. The difference between a fast response and a slow one is the difference between "wow, that was smooth" and "this is a robot." A streaming voice pipeline is non-negotiable.

Owners don't want a dashboard. Every client I've talked to wants the same thing: "just text me when someone calls." The fancier the admin panel, the less they use it. SMS plus email beats any dashboard.

The agent should know when to stop talking. The best AI receptionists are brief. Greet, help, capture, confirm, done. Callers can smell a rambling bot instantly.

Test with real-world messiness. Accents, background noise, speakerphone — the real world isn't a quiet room. I test accordingly.

The bottom line

A missed call used to mean a missed job. Now it means the AI took the details, the owner got a text moments later, and the lead got a callback within the hour. That's the whole pitch — and it's why every client I've set one up for wonders why they didn't do it sooner.

I build these for small businesses at TechMitten — if missed calls are costing you jobs, that's literally the problem I solve.

AI Assistants Are a Game Changer for Small Business Automation

Raymond — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 04:37:17 +0000

AI Assistants Are a Game Changer for Small Business Automation

Running a small business means living inside a math problem nobody warned you about. There are maybe three hours of work you actually get paid for, and then five more hours of everything around it. Posting content. Organizing files. Answering the same questions for the tenth time. Researching. Keeping the blog alive long enough that Google remembers you exist.

Hiring someone to absorb all that costs more than the busywork is worth. So most small businesses just don't. The blog goes stale. The Facebook page posts twice, then goes quiet for six months. The "someday" list keeps growing.

This is the gap AI assistants have started to fill. Not as some sci-fi gimmick. As something far more boring and far more useful: an extra pair of hands that never gets tired and never forgets what you told it last Tuesday.

Where it actually helps

Skip the hype for a minute. The real wins fall into a handful of buckets that any owner will recognize.

Content that ships on schedule. A business page that posts every day builds trust. Nobody has time to write every day. An assistant can draft a full week of posts, tips, checklists, links worth sharing, and the owner gives each one a quick yes or no before it goes out through the platform's API. The page looks alive and consistent. The owner's total effort is a few minutes of tapping.

A blog that doesn't die. Same idea, longer form. The assistant drafts the articles, even generates cover images, and nothing publishes until the owner approves it. A blog that used to get updated "whenever there was time" starts publishing on an actual schedule. Search engines notice. Customers notice.

The weekend-eating tasks. Pulling a few hundred photos off a client's social pages, organizing them, delivering everything as one tidy package. Taking a shaky phone video and turning it into a clean promo clip with branding and captions. This is the work that used to swallow Saturdays. An assistant grinds through it in one sitting while the owner does literally anything else.

Technical setups without hiring technical people. Connecting a Facebook Page API, a blog CMS, publishing tools. This used to mean hiring a developer or spending three weekends learning backend plumbing. Now the owner describes what they want in plain words and the assistant handles the setup, then proves it works. The barrier between "I wish my tools talked to each other" and "they do" got a lot shorter.

Research without the tab spiral. Which platforms are actually hiring in your state? How do these two tools really compare? What's the cheapest way to handle X? An assistant can check multiple sources and hand back just the useful answers. No forty open tabs. No falling down a forum rabbit hole at 1 AM.

The setup that keeps it safe

Here's the part the breathless articles usually skip. If software is going to post under your business name and poke around in your accounts, it needs rules. Four of them cover just about everything:

1. A human approves anything public. Every post, article, and reply that goes out under the business name gets shown to a real person first. Silence is not approval. This one rule prevents nearly every horror story you've heard.

2. Everything else runs on its own. Research, drafts, file organizing, pulling stats. The assistant does these and reports back. If you had to sign off on every little lookup, you'd save no time at all.

3. Money always needs a human yes. No exceptions, no clever workarounds. No ads, no purchases, no spending without an exact amount the owner approved in plain words.

4. It says what it's doing. When the assistant works inside accounts you're logged into, it should narrate as it goes. Unexplained activity in your own accounts feels like an intruder, even when it's your own tool doing exactly what you asked.

Ten minutes to set up. They hold up.

What to watch out for

Straight talk: this stuff isn't magic, and anyone selling it that way is selling something.

AI assistants are confident. Sometimes confidently wrong. They'll occasionally read a short reply as approval for something bigger than you meant. That's not a reason to avoid them, it's the reason rule number one exists. Check public-facing work before it goes out, every time.

They're also literal. The clearer you are about what "good" looks like, the better the output. Vague instructions get vague results. Funny thing is, that's exactly how human assistants work too. "Make the website better" gets you nowhere with either species.

And they don't replace judgment. An assistant can draft five posts before breakfast, but deciding what the business should say, how it should sound, where it's headed, that's still the owner's job. Strategy stays human. Execution is where the leverage is.

The math, briefly

A part-time hire covering even half of this mix, social posts, blog drafts, media organizing, research, light technical work, would run well past a thousand dollars a month. If you could find one person who does all of it, which you can't.

An AI assistant subscription costs a tiny fraction of that. For a one-person operation, the difference isn't incremental. It's the gap between "I really should post more" and a page that actually posts. Between losing a weekend to a client deliverable and having it done before lunch.

A sane place to start

Don't try to automate the whole business on day one. Pick the single most repetitive thing eating your week. Posting content. Organizing files. Answering the same five questions. Hand that one thing over first, put the approval rule on anything public, and give it two weeks.

If it works, you'll feel it immediately. That low-grade background stress of "I'm behind on everything" starts to quiet down. And you'll start noticing the next thing to hand over.

For most small businesses, this is the closest they'll ever get to hiring a first employee. One that never sleeps, never calls in sick, and picks up your preferences without a training manual. That's the actual game changer here. Not that the AI is smart. It's that a tiny business can finally operate like it has a team.

The Ultimate Guide to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): SEO for the AI Era

Raymond — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:37:36 +0000

If you've been making websites or producing content over the past ten years, then you'll be familiar with the process: choose a keyword, write a long-form article, get some backlinks, and then hope that the Google algorithm grants your site a position among the top 'ten blue links'.

However, the internet is experiencing a major change in its structure since people are now going around the traditional search engines and are instead asking questions directly of AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.

They are not traditional search engines; instead, they are Answer Engines, and in order to optimize for them a totally new approach known as Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is needed.

If you want ChatGPT to recommend your web development clients (or your own TechMitten projects) rather than your competitors, then you need to understand how these AI systems browse the web. Let's look at the workings of AI search and examine how you can design your site for the AI age.

How AI Answer Engines Actually Work

If you want an AI to recommend your business, then you need to understand the way in which it obtains information. AI models have two methods of "knowing" things:

Parametric Memory: This makes up the AI's internal brain; it is the static data which the AI acquired during its initial training (for example, from sources such as Wikipedia and through large-scale data scraping). In the case of a brand that was not well known before the AI's training cut-off date, it will not know who you are.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): This is the method by which modern AI links with the live internet. For example, if a user asks ChatGPT to name the best web developers in Michigan, the AI does not depend on its own memory. Instead, it stops, carries out a live web search, reads through the top search results, and then produces a tailored response.

In order for your website to be cited by an AI, you have to win the RAG pipeline.

The AI Speed Limit: Why Web Performance Is Critical

When an AI bot (for example, OpenAI's search crawler) is looking for answers, it assesses around 40 to 50 URLs and then attempts to retrieve the raw HTML from the most promising ones.

The catch is that the AI allows only two seconds per page.

The AI will drop your page before it has even read one word if your origin server is slow, if you have complicated redirect chains, or if your host is slow. Moreover, bots such as OAI-SearchBot parse the raw HTML; they don't execute client-side JavaScript.

Lesson for web development: When you create Single-Page Applications (SPAs) using React, Angular, or Vue without incorporating hydration, the AI bot will simply see a blank page. Server-Side Rendering (SSR) or Static Site Generation (SSG) is not merely a performance advantage any longer; it has become a necessary requirement for achieving AI visibility.

Writing for AI: The 128-Token Rule

Generative models do not read web pages in the way that humans do, nor do they rank whole pages as Google does; instead, they break your document down into small sections (typically about 128 tokens) and then assess those particular sections for relevance.

A recent academic study (known as the "GEO-bench" study) looked at 10,000 queries and discovered that if you make intentional changes to the structure of your content it is possible to increase your visibility in AI responses by as much as 40%.

Here is how to optimize your content for AI bots:

1. Apply the Inverted Pyramid

Don't hide the answer at the bottom of the page since research has found that 44.2% of all AI citations are taken directly from the first 30% of a web page.

Under each of your main headings, provide a direct and concise answer (about 40 to 60 words). This effectively packs your answer into one highly scannable 128-token segment.

2. Introduce Specific Data and Statistics

AI models prefer verifiable facts and, if you include empirical figures, percentages, and financial metrics once every 100 words in your informative copy, your AI visibility can increase by as much as 41%.

3. Make Use of Quoted Material and Attributable Sources

Statements in the field such as "We are the best in the business" are ignored. AI systems require authoritative evidence. Visibility can be increased by 40% by including inline source attribution (that is, linking your claims to primary research), and an additional 30% in visibility can be achieved by incorporating direct quotes from named subject matter experts.

The Technical Setup: Directing the Bots

As a web developer you have complete control over the way AI bots interact with your server, but it's easy to remove your site from AI search because of a simple error.

The robots.txt Pitfall

Since many businesses are frightened that AI will take their intellectual property, they block AI bots in their robots.txt file; but it is important to make a distinction between training bots and search bots.

Bots used for training (for example, GPTBot): These work by scraping the web in order to train future AI models; you can safely block them if you want to protect your IP.
Bots such as OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot: These are the RAG bots which search for up-to-date answers to user queries. If you block them, you'll not show up in the search results on ChatGPT or Perplexity.

Tip: When you specifically permit OAI-SearchBot, be sure to also repeat your disallow rules for sensitive directories (for example, /admin/), since the bot will disregard the global wildcard rules the moment it comes across its own specific name.

Enter llms.txt

Just as there is a robots.txt file for giving permissions and a sitemap.xml file for URLs, so too has the AI era brought about an llms.txt file.

It's a clean, machine-parsable Markdown file that is located at the root of your domain (for example, at techmitten.com/llms.txt). The file gets rid of all the navigational clutter, popups, and layout formatting, thus giving AI reasoning models a clear text outline of what your business does, who it serves, and where your main documentation can be found. So add it to your site now.

Entity Grounding: Proving You Exist

AI does not reason in terms of keywords; instead it works with Entities (which are distinct people, places, organisations, or concepts). If the AI is unable to confirm that your business is a real and legitimate entity then it will automatically suggest your competitors.

To prove you are real, you need to establish a solid "knowledge graph" presence:

Use Schema.org JSON-LD. Place the Organization schema in the <head> section of your homepage and make sure that the @id URI is included, using the sameAs array to link your website directly to your official Wikidata item, Crunchbase, LinkedIn and your social profiles.
Declare your expertise. Make it clear to the AI which topics and technical fields you are qualified to discuss by using the knowsAbout property in your schema.
Keep your NAP consistent. For local businesses, ChatGPT makes heavy use of Yelp, whereas Microsoft Copilot depends on Bing Places and Facebook. The name, address, and phone number (NAP) must be exactly the same on all these platforms. The AI doesn't make guesses; if the address of your business differs on Yelp and Google, then the AI will reject you as a possible match.

Off-Page SEO: Mentions Over Backlinks

In traditional SEO the hyperlink held the position of king, but in Generative Engine Optimization unlinked brand mentions are now taking over that role.

Evaluation based on 75,000 brands reveals that unlinked references to a brand are related three times as strongly to AI visibility as traditional backlinks. Moreover, 82% of all AI citations are from earned third-party media (for example, digital public relations, industry news, and discussions on Reddit), whereas just 6% come from the company's own website.

The AI will not believe a major claim that you make on your website unless other credible sites are also talking about it; therefore, your public relations should centre on getting your brand name cited in reputable industry publications, even if they don't provide you with a hyperlink.

How to Track AI Traffic in GA4

A major source of annoyance with AI search is the fact that it functions as a "zero-click" environment: users obtain their answers without having to go to your website. Furthermore, when they do click through, mobile apps tend to remove the referral data, which causes Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to treat AI traffic as general "Direct" traffic.

In order to fix this, you have to create a Custom Channel Group in GA4.

In the GA4 Admin section, go to Data Display and set up a rule based on a regular expression, positioning it above the standard Referral channel. Use this precise RE2-compliant regular expression to capture traffic from AI:

^.*(chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|openai\.com|claude\.ai|anthropic\.com|perplexity\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|bard\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com|bing\.com\/chat|grok\.com|x\.ai|grok\.x\.com).*

You'll probably be amazed when you filter this traffic since, even though the amount of AI search is less than that of Google organic search, the conversion rate is usually much higher because the AI has already pre-qualified the user's intent.

Your 90-Day GEO Action Plan

If you'd like to optimize your site for ChatGPT and Perplexity, then follow this simple roadmap:

Days 1–30: The Tech Fix

Check your robots.txt file to make sure that OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, and PerplexityBot are permitted.
Audit your server response times (keep them below 2 seconds!).
Implement Server-Side Rendering if it's necessary.
Create a file called llms.txt.
Set up your GA4 regex filter.

Days 31–60: Content Re-Architecture

Rewrite the top 30% of your service pages by including a direct summary of about 50 words right at the beginning.
Add some hard statistics and check your claims against reliable sources.
Incorporate comprehensive Organization schema into your headers.

Days 61–90: Off-Page and PR Efforts

Audit the listings of your local directory to make sure the NAP information is consistent.
Begin carrying out digital PR campaigns with the aim of getting your brand name mentioned on industry blogs and forums such as Reddit.

The move to Answer Engines has already taken place, and by using these Generative Engine Optimization techniques you can make it so that when the AI is asked to provide the best web solutions it will directly point to you.

Welcome to TechRay.dev: Why I'm Writing About AI, Agents, and the Future of Building Software

Raymond — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:05:56 +0000

Hi, I'm Raymond Busuttil, and this is the first post on my new corner of the internet.

I've wanted a place like this for a while. Tech moves fast, and the last couple of years have felt like a decade of change compressed into a few seasons. I spend a lot of time reading, tinkering, and building with the latest tools, and I kept catching myself explaining the same things to friends and colleagues over and over. A personal site felt like the obvious next step: a place to think out loud, share what I learn, and hopefully save you some time along the way.

What TechRay.dev is about

Three things will show up here more than anything else:

Trending tech. I'll cover the tools, platforms, and shifts that are worth paying attention to, and I'll be upfront about the ones I think are overhyped.

AI, practically speaking. Not the breathless "everything is about to change" version, and not the dismissive "it's just autocomplete" version either. I want to look at what these systems are genuinely good at, where they fall over, and how to use them well in real work.

Agentic coding. This is the one I'm most excited about. We've moved from AI that suggests the next line of code to AI that can plan a task, read a codebase, run commands, fix its own errors, and hand back a working result. That changes how software gets built, and it changes what it means to be a developer.

Opinion, with receipts

Expect two flavors of content on this blog.

The first is opinion pieces. I have views, sometimes strong ones, and I'll share them. But I'll try to hold them loosely. If I change my mind about something, I'll say so, because in a field that reshapes itself every few months, the people who never update their opinions are the ones who get left behind.

The second is helpful, hands-on articles: how-tos, workflows, lessons learned, and the occasional "here's the mistake I made so you don't have to." If a post doesn't leave you with something you can use or think about, I haven't done my job.

A quick take on agentic coding

Since it's going to be a recurring theme, here's where my head is at right now.

The biggest shift isn't that AI can write code. It's that AI can now work on code. There's a real difference. Autocomplete helps you type faster. An agent can take a goal like "add pagination to this endpoint and update the tests," explore your project, make changes across several files, run the test suite, notice something broke, and try again.

That's powerful, and it's also where people get into trouble. A few things I've come to believe:

Your judgment matters more, not less. When code is cheap to generate, the scarce skill becomes knowing what to build, spotting what's subtly wrong, and deciding what "good" looks like.
Review is the new bottleneck. Agents can produce changes faster than a human can carefully read them. Learning to review efficiently, and to structure work so it's reviewable, is a real skill.
Clear instructions beat clever prompts. The people getting the best results aren't using magic phrases. They're giving agents clear context, tight scope, and a way to verify their own work, like tests or a build step.
Small, verifiable steps win. Asking an agent to rebuild your whole app in one go is a gamble. Asking it to do one well-defined piece and confirming it works is how you make steady progress.
Fundamentals still pay off. Understanding how systems work, how to debug, and how to read code makes you a far better collaborator with an AI than someone who's just accepting whatever comes back.

I don't think agents replace developers. I do think developers who learn to work with them will have a serious edge, and I want to help make that transition less intimidating.

The healthy skepticism clause

I'm optimistic about this technology, but optimism isn't the same as cheerleading. AI tools make mistakes, sometimes confidently. They can introduce security problems, invent APIs that don't exist, and produce code that looks right but isn't. Hype cycles also tend to skip over the boring stuff: cost, reliability, maintenance, and the impact on people's jobs and careers.

I'll try to cover the full picture here, the exciting parts and the uncomfortable ones. If something is impressive, I'll say so. If it's a shiny distraction, I'll say that too.

What's coming next

To give you a taste of what's ahead, here are some topics I'm planning to dig into:

How I set up my workflow for building with AI coding agents
Common mistakes people make when delegating work to an agent (and how to avoid them)
What to look for when choosing between AI tools and models
How to keep your own skills sharp while leaning on AI
Honest reviews of new tools and releases as they land

If there's something specific you'd like me to cover, I'd genuinely love to hear it. This site will be better if it's shaped by the people reading it.

Thanks for being here

Whether you're a seasoned engineer, a curious beginner, or just someone trying to make sense of where technology is heading, I'm glad you stopped by. I'm figuring this out as I go, and I'd like to do it in public, with you along for the ride.

Grab a coffee, look around, and check back soon. There's a lot to explore.

Until next time,
Raymond Busuttil
TechRay.dev

AppBlips: The Simplest Way to Turn an Idea Into a Working App or Website

Raymond — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 05:10:25 +0000

Almost everyone has had the thought, "I wish there were a simple app for that." Maybe it's a tracker for your daily routine, a quiz for your study group, or a small website for your bakery, your portfolio, or a side project. The idea is the easy part. Getting it built is where most people stop.

These days, AI can write code for you, which sounds like the problem is solved. But plenty of AI builders still feel like they were designed for professional developers. You open one and find multi-file projects, build pipelines, code editors, and settings to understand before you've made a single thing. If you're not a developer, that's a steep hill to climb just to test an idea.

AppBlips was made for the opposite kind of person: someone with an idea, not a computer science degree. It's a free AI app and website builder with one guiding goal: to make the whole process as simple as it can possibly be.

So, what is AppBlips?

In one sentence: you describe what you want in plain English, and AppBlips builds a working app or website for you in seconds.

That's really the whole idea. You don't write code, you don't set up a project, and you don't run a build step before you can see the result. You type, you watch, and you use what you made. The finished product is a single, self-contained file that you can keep, share, or publish.

AppBlips is open source under the MIT license, and it comes in two flavors: a hosted version at appblips.com where you sign in and start building, and a self-hosted version you can run yourself. More on both below.

Simple, in four ways

Lots of tools claim to be easy. Here's what "simple" actually means in AppBlips.

1. One prompt box. Instead of a wall of panels and menus, the main thing you see is a box where you type. Describe your idea the way you'd explain it to a friend, like "a habit tracker with a list of habits, daily checkboxes, and a progress bar," then press Enter or click Build. If you'd rather work from a design you like, drag in a screenshot or reference picture and ask AppBlips to build from it.

2. One live preview. Your app appears in a live preview right beside the prompt, and you can watch it take shape as it's built. The moment it finishes, you can click, type, and test it. There's no separate deploy step just to see what you made.

3. One file. Every app or website you create is a single, self-contained HTML file. There are no folders full of code, no dependencies to install, and no build step. Download it and you can host it or share it just about anywhere, and what you saw in the preview is what you get in the exported file.

4. Zero setup. On the hosted version, you sign in and start typing. There's nothing to install, nothing to configure, and no API key to track down.

Your first app in about a minute

Here's what a first session looks like:

Go to appblips.com and sign in. You can create an account right there.
Type a prompt, for example: "Build a simple habit tracker with a list of habits, checkboxes to mark them done each day, and a progress bar showing how many I've completed."
Press Enter or click Build, then watch your app appear in the preview.
Not quite right? Type a follow-up like "Add a motivational quote at the top that changes each day."
Happy with it? Export the file or deploy it to its own link.

That's it. There are no tutorials to finish first.

Tips for getting great results

You don't need any special "prompt engineering" skills, but a few habits help a lot:

Be specific about the main action. "A timer that counts down from 25 minutes with start, pause, and reset buttons" gives AppBlips far more to work with than "a timer app."
Say what it keeps track of. Tell it what people add, edit, or track, for example "each habit has a name and a daily checkbox."
Mention the look and feel. Something like "clean, minimal, dark theme with rounded cards" sets the tone from the start and helps you avoid a generic look.
Start rough, then refine. You don't have to get everything right in one go. Build a first version, then improve one detail at a time with follow-up prompts.
Show, don't just tell. If you've seen a design you like, attach a screenshot and ask AppBlips to match or adapt it.

Changing things is just as easy as making them

You ask for changes the same way you asked for the app. "Make the background dark." "Add a button that resets everything." "Put a daily quote at the top." AppBlips edits the app for you, with no code to read and none to write.

There's also a safety net. Every generation and every edit is saved as a version, with undo and redo ready whenever you change your mind. That means you can experiment freely without worrying about breaking your work. You can also switch between mobile and desktop views, with adjustable zoom, to check how your creation looks on different screen sizes.

Two studios, so you never feel overwhelmed

Rather than one giant tool that tries to do everything, AppBlips gives you two focused studios you can switch between from the header.

App Studio is for interactive things: to-do lists, budget trackers, habit trackers, quizzes, mini games, unit converters, calculators, planners, timers, and dashboards. Apps built here save their data in your browser and are designed to feel at home on a phone, so the preview starts in mobile view.

Website Studio is for content-first pages: landing pages, portfolios, restaurant or business sites, and blogs. It builds the parts you'd expect from a real website (navigation, a hero section, content sections, and a footer), and it's designed desktop-first so it reflows nicely down to phones. Websites are static and informational by default, and there's an extra convenience: you can click text, images, and links right in the preview to edit them directly. For bigger changes, you can ask through chat instead.

Each studio comes with its own starter ideas, so you're never staring at a blank box wondering what to type.

Sharing your creation

When you're happy with what you've built, you have two options.

Export. Download your app or website as a single HTML file. Because it's self-contained, you can host it or share it anywhere you like.

Deploy (hosted version). Publish your creation to its own public link with one click. Visitors can open it in any browser or even install it on their phone like a regular app, since it works as a Progressive Web App (PWA). If you'd like to keep it private, you can optionally add a password.

Bonus: put AI inside the apps you build

This one's optional, but it's fun. Before you build, you can switch on the AI toggle. Then you can ask for features that use AI themselves. For example: "Build a joke-writing app. When someone picks a topic and presses Generate, write one short, family-friendly joke, show a loading state, and display a friendly retry message if something goes wrong." AppBlips takes care of teaching the generated app how to talk to an AI model, so all you do is describe the feature in ordinary language.

How this works depends on where you run AppBlips. On the hosted version, AI features are powered by the platform, so you don't need a separate API key. On a default self-hosted setup, the first time someone uses an AI feature in the finished app, a small dialog asks them to connect their own AI provider, and that key stays in their own browser.

Hosted or self-hosted: which is right for you?

Hosted (appblips.com) is the easiest path and the best fit for most beginners. Sign in, build, and go. Your projects are saved to your account and sync across devices, and you get the deploy-to-a-public-link feature. It's currently a free cloud beta.

Self-hosted is for people who want full control. You run AppBlips on your own computer or server, with no account and no cloud sync, just you and the app. You'll need Node.js and an API key from an OpenAI-compatible AI provider (the docs mention OpenAI and local models through Ollama as options). You can start it with a few commands, or use Docker for a longer-lasting setup. Self-hosting doesn't include the public deploy feature, but exporting to HTML is always available. Step-by-step instructions are in the self-hosting guide in the docs.

One helpful note: a self-hosted setup is designed for a single local user, so keep it on your own machine unless you add your own access control.

Built with safety in mind

Every app you generate runs inside a sandboxed preview, which is a kind of walled-off space. The app can't reach into the rest of the AppBlips page, and the page can't reach into the app. It's one of the ways AppBlips keeps AI-generated code contained while you experiment.

Who is AppBlips for?

Anyone with an idea who would rather not learn a developer tool first. Students can build study aids, designers can prototype a concept, small business owners can put up a simple website, and hobbyists can make the exact little tool they've always wanted.

Developers are welcome too. The code is on GitHub, and issues and pull requests are always welcome.

Quick answers to common questions

Do I need to know how to code? No. You describe what you want in plain English and ask for changes the same way.

Is it free? AppBlips is open source under the MIT license, and the hosted version is currently a free cloud beta. If you self-host, you'll connect your own AI provider, which may have its own usage costs.

What can I build? Anything that fits inside a single web page, from calculators and games to portfolios and landing pages.

What if I make a change I don't like? Every edit is saved as a version, so you can simply undo it.

Ready to try it?

Head to appblips.com, type the first idea that pops into your head, and see what happens. If you'd like a guided start, the docs have a quickstart that walks you through your first build. And if you make something you're proud of, I'd love to hear about it.

No code, no clutter, just your idea, working.

How to Use LM Studio & Ollama From Your Android Phone in 2026 (Private, Local AI)

Raymond — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 06:27:45 +0000

Running powerful AI models locally on your computer is no longer the "hard part" in 2026. The real challenge used to be access—how do you actually use that power from the device you carry all day?

While there is still no official mobile app for LM Studio, the days of messy reverse proxies and manual IP configs are over. LMSA offers a clean, direct bridge between your Android device and your home server.

With LMSA, you can connect your phone directly to models served via Ollama or LM Studio without the headache. This turns your local AI into something truly usable, portable, and private.

👉 Get started at lmsa.app

Why This Matters: The Local AI Revolution

Local AI has improved dramatically over the past year. Models like Qwen 3.5 9B now deliver performance that rivals paid cloud tools while running entirely on consumer hardware.

The Benefits of Staying Local:

Zero Subscriptions: No monthly fees to access your own hardware.
Total Privacy: No data is sent to external corporate servers.
Zero Latency: High-speed responses over your local network.
Full Control: You choose the model, the temperature, and the system prompt.

Step-by-Step: Connect LMSA to LM Studio

This setup takes less than five minutes and works entirely over your local Wi-Fi.

1. Install LMSA on Your Android Phone

Download and open the LMSA app.
Tap Start Here to initiate the onboarding.

2. Open Server Configuration

Tap Configure next to the Server option. You will enter your computer’s details here shortly.

3. Start Your Local AI Server (Desktop)

On your PC or Mac:

Open LM Studio.
Navigate to the AI Server / Developer tab.
Load your desired model.
Click Start Server.
Crucial: Ensure the following are enabled:
- CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)
- Serve on Local Network

4. Bridge the Connection

Back on your Android device:

Identify your computer’s local IP address (e.g., 192.168.1.12).
Enter the IP into the LMSA server field.
Tap Apply.

Note: As long as both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network, the connection should be instantaneous.

Using Ollama (Recommended for 2026)

Ollama has streamlined network sharing significantly in recent updates.

Open the Ollama desktop application.
Access Settings: Click the gear icon (top-right) or find it in the system tray.
Network Access: Under the Server tab, toggle on "Expose Ollama to the network".
This automatically binds Ollama to 0.0.0.0, making it visible to your phone.

Why Use LMSA Instead of a Web UI?

While you could use a browser, a dedicated app provides a far superior experience:

Feature	LMSA App	Standard Web UI
Model Management	Switch models instantly in-app	Often requires desktop interaction
Persistence	Structured, saved chat history	Sessions often clear on refresh
UX Design	Mobile-first touch optimization	Squeezed desktop layouts
Security	Encrypted local-only traffic	Variable security

Recommended Models for Local Use

If you’re unsure which "brain" to give your phone, try these:

Qwen 3.5 9B: The gold standard for speed vs. intelligence.
Llama 3 8B: Excellent for creative writing and general chat.
Mistral 7B / Phi-3: Best for older hardware or maximum speed.

The Bigger Picture: Personal AI Ecosystems

Tools like LMSA are part of a shift toward personal AI systems. Instead of relying on centralized, censored cloud services, you are building a private intelligence hub where your devices work in harmony.

Quick Setup Recap

Install LMSA on Android.
Start Server in LM Studio/Ollama on PC.
Enable Network Access & CORS.
Enter PC IP into LMSA.
Load Model and start chatting.

Final Thoughts

Local AI is no longer a hobbyist experiment—it’s a practical daily tool. With LMSA, the gap between desktop power and mobile convenience has vanished.

Your local AI is no longer stuck at your desk. It's in your pocket.

👉 Download LMSA Now