We are always told that programming is a tool for problem-solving. But this week, I experienced this truth on a completely different level. Using my autonomous AI Agent (Hermes), software development became my real-time, daily survival tool.
Instead of searching for half-baked third-party apps, dealing with intrusive ads, or compromising on terrible mobile UX, I spent the last few days building four highly customized, production-grade applications to solve exact friction points in my daily life and for my family.
Here is the story of how these four apps came to life.
- Remote Terminal (Defeating NoMachine's Screen Rotation Limit) The Problem: I use NoMachine to control my main development PC remotely from my mobile phone. However, I ran into an incredibly frustrating limitation: there was absolutely no way to rotate the remote display viewport by 90 degrees to fit my mobile screen orientation properly.
The Solution: Instead of giving up or hunting for obscure system-level workarounds, I built Remote Terminal. It is a lightweight remote execution client designed with a single killer feature: a built-in, hardware-accelerated 90-degree viewport rotation. Now, I can access and control my remote terminal rig perfectly, at the exact angle I need.
- Tefila Meditation (From Print Draft to Interactive PWA) The Problem: I saw the draft of my wife's new meditation and prayer book right before it was sent to the physical print shop. I instantly realized that this content deserved an interactive, accessible digital life.
The Solution: Within 24 hours, we built a generic, highly optimized book framework and compiled it as a Flutter Web PWA and Native Android App.
- Autoplay-Safe Audio: Implemented a synchronous audio player engine to bypass aggressive mobile browser autoplay blocks.
- Beautiful Visuals: Added native vector-animated CustomPaint widgets (a flickering flame, flowing water, and rotating mandalas).
- Offline-First Premium Model: Built a secure offline licensing system that unlocks chapters via secret coupon codes.
- Live Proofreading Portal: Included a hidden, secure proofreader screen (edit2026) so she can edit chapters and export updated Dart code directly from her phone!
- Deployed live on GitHub Pages: Check it out here.
- My Personal Gym Companion The Problem: Most fitness and gym trackers on the app store are bloated with subscription popups, social feeds, and annoying ads. I just wanted a clean, fast way to log my workout routines and track my personal metrics while at the gym.
The Solution: While heading out to my workout session, I scaffolded a lightweight, completely local Gym Companion app. It is entirely ad-free, runs completely offline, and lets me track my progress, sets, and health metrics with zero distraction.
- Today: Visual Food Tracker (With Gemini Vision AI Integration) The Problem: Today, I visited my diabetes specialist. She requested that I start keeping a meticulous daily food diary to monitor my dietary habits. The thought of manually typing every meal, ingredient, and portion size into a clunky text-based app sounded exhausting.
The Solution: I went home and, within a few hours, we built Food Tracker. It is an offline-first, visual-centric tracking app. I just released version 3.0:
- Multi-Image Support: You can snap multiple photos per meal to track individual food items separately.
- Smooth Carousel UI: On the home screen, meal cards turn into interactive swipeable carousels (PageView) so you can flip through the photos of your meal.
- Google Gemini Vision AI Integration: I integrated Google's official google_generative_ai SDK (using Gemini Flash). You take a photo, tap the "🪄 Smart AI Analysis" button, and the AI:
- Identifies the food items and auto-updates the captions for each image.
- Calculates estimated nutritional values (calories, protein, carbs, and fats).
- Automatically writes a detailed nutritional summary in the notes and suggests a cohesive title for the entire meal in Hebrew.
The Takeaway: Software as a Personal Utility
We are living in an era where the barrier between a raw idea and a working, compiled application has completely evaporated. When you pair your domain knowledge with a highly capable, autonomous AI agent, you stop being a mere consumer of software.
You become a producer of your own tools, tailoring technology to fit your life, your health, and your family's needs in real-time.
What is the next custom app you are going to build for yourself? Let me know in the comments!
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