I Built a Free AI Toolbox — Here’s What I Learned Along the Way

wertsdfgwerg — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 12:56:21 +0000

Why I Started Building It

I wanted to learn more about web development, but instead of following another tutorial, I decided to build something I would actually use.

That project became AI Toolbox, a collection of simple AI tools that can be used directly in a browser.

The idea was pretty simple:

Make useful AI tools that don't require an account, complicated setup, or a lot of technical knowledge.

What I Built

AI Toolbox currently includes tools for:

Generating AI prompts
Creating and improving resumes
Generating titles
Creating Xiaohongshu titles
Writing emails
Polishing articles
Summarizing articles
Writing replies
Creating social media posts

The website supports both Chinese and English.

🌐 Website: https://wertsdfgwerg.github.io/toolbox/

The Hard Part Wasn't the HTML

At first, I thought the difficult part would be building the interface.

It wasn't.

The real challenge started when I connected the website to an AI API.

I ran into problems with things like API requests, CORS, POST requests, Cloudflare Workers, API keys, and making sure the AI output was actually displayed correctly on the page.

Sometimes the API worked but the frontend didn't.

Sometimes the request looked correct but the result wasn't what I expected.

And sometimes the tool technically worked, but the output formatting made it feel much worse than it should.

That's when I realized something important:

Making something work and making something usable are two different problems.

What I Learned

Building this project taught me more than I expected.

I learned that small details matter.

For example, an AI tool isn't really finished just because the API returns a response. You also need to think about:

How the user enters their request
How errors are handled
How the result is formatted
Whether the output matches the selected language
How quickly the user can understand what to do next

These things aren't particularly exciting when you're writing code, but they make a huge difference to the final experience.

What's Next?

AI Toolbox is still a personal project, and I'm continuing to improve it.

I'm especially interested in making the tools feel more natural and useful instead of simply putting an AI API behind a button.

I'd also like to learn more about web development, APIs, and building projects that people actually find useful.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for the project, I'd be happy to hear them.

🌐 AI Toolbox: https://wertsdfgwerg.github.io/toolbox/