Canvas + "Vibe Coding": Build Software by Describing It

🧭 THIS WEEK AT AI SECOND ACT

Howdy, this week it’s a bit of Canvas and a bit more on ‘Vibe Coding’:

• Canvas - this is a tool in most, but not all, of the major chat tools that aids in the collaboration process. A live scratch pad of the ideas/topic you are working on.

• Vibe Coding - remember what ‘for loops’, ‘if-then’, ‘classes’, and ‘inheritance’ are, but can’t be stuffed breaking out the C (uggh), or C++ (not much better) text books from the ‘90s? AI has you covered.

  • Read on for a huge & free report on the tool landscape of vibe coding

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👉 You can also just hit "Reply" and let me know what you want more (or less) of, or use the poll to give feedback.

My goal is to make this as valuable and practical as possible as we navigate the new AI era. 🚀

🧰 AI NEWS + LEARNING

Here’s a few things I found recently:

• OpenSearchGPT - Personalised search engine - kind of like an open source ‘Perplexity’

• ReachyMini - Open-source robot from ‘Hugging Face’

• LMArena - A view of the leaderboards of the major models - interesting that Gemini Pro is a winner in several categories right now - Google!

🖼️ Canvas: Your 5-Minute Setup

Canvas lets you work with AI on documents, diagrams, and code side-by-side. Think Google Docs meets ChatGPT.

Look for the canvas option in your chat tool of choice [right near the prompt entry] or simply ask it to open a canvas - “draft a story of AFL team Richmond hammering Carlton in a canvas”.

This will open a parallel side area of the chat output where you can collaborate:

• Draft a story, article, or email, and then directly edit that in the canvas and/or ask for updates on specific sections

• Create a research report and update/collaborate

• Ask for a small app or web page to be created, and directly see the results live in the canvas

• Create a diagram or explanation of concepts - Here’s an example of simply asking for an infographic of ‘waterfall plan concept’ in Google Gemini. Incredible!!

  • Even better, “draft a small story on wombats” —> then, create an infographic! Wow!

Once a canvas is created, edited, and finished, you can often export the result as a Word doc, PDF, or markdown file. You can share/publish. In some cases, go further and create infographics or more elaborate versions of the canvas contents.

• Gemini: Incredible canvas, lets you create, edit, and export, but go further - create web pages & infographics.

• Claude: Pretty good, but not directly editable; however, you can ask for edits in specific sections

• ChatGPT: Solid, can directly edit and export

🗺️ FEATURED INSIGHT

🚀 The "Vibe Coding" Revolution

Now here's the thing that's going to matter way more than Canvas.

We're witnessing the birth of "vibe coding", where you describe what you want in plain English, and AI builds functional software. We will deep dive in future editions and perhaps a course, but incredibly, this concept goes further than simply creating/building code. The tools can now also autonomously fix bugs, create tests, create documentation, and push/pull code from repositories such as GitHub.

No syntax. No debugging. Just: "I need a tool that tracks my team's project status and sends weekly emails."

This isn't theoretical anymore.

⚡ What Vibe Coding Looks Like

Last week, I tried to build a high school geometry learning tool [who likes geometry?, answer = no one!] - after some back/forth iteration, I was able to get Claude to create a functional app:

Me: "Build me a tool to learn geometry 1 & 2 - easy concepts, simply a definition, medium difficulty concepts should have a definition, and at minimum, a diagram to explain the concept. Difficult concepts should have some form of interactive tool to help understand the topic. The aim of each across all difficulty levels is to help explain and teach the concept."

Claude: Creates a working web app with concepts as instructed

Time: minutes/hours vs. weeks of traditional development.

See this report I generated from Claude for further details and the major tools - ‘btw, this prompt to create the report took < 30seconds to write, a few minutes for Claude to research and build, and done - report generated!’:

🎯 Why This Matters for Your Career

Traditional coding required you to learn the language of computers.

Vibe coding means computers learn your language.

For mid-career pros, this changes everything:

Before: "I have an idea but need to hire a developer." Now: "I have an idea, let me build a prototype this afternoon."

Before: "Our team needs a custom tool, but IT says 6-month timeline." Now: "Let me whip something up and show them what's possible."

Before: "I wish I could automate this workflow." Now: "Let me describe what I need and see what AI can build."

🛠️ Your First Vibe Coding Project

Start simple. Pick something that bugs you daily.

The vibe coding approach:

1. Describe your problem in detail

2. Ask AI to build a solution

3. Test it, give feedback, iterate

4. Use it for real work

This is the basics, but of course, there is a lot more. If I have interest, we can go into much more detail in a course. lmk.

Future-proof your career with AI
— Brett

👉 Hit “Reply” and share your experience — I read every one!

_{Picture by Justwyn Warner on Unsplash.}