Todo-it: from AI experiment to live product
The goal was not to ship a product. It was to understand what it means to design and develop with an AI as your pair programmer. The outcome was both.
The experiment
Todo-it started as a side project to test whether Cursor could function as a design and development partner. Todo apps are the hello world of product design—everyone has built one. The point was control. You know the domain. You know the edges. You can focus on the process: how does it feel to build this thing with AI assistance?
The question was whether AI assistance could extend the practice of prototyping in code—design that ships rather than design that gets handed off. Could an LLM help with the scaffolding, the boilerplate, the iterations that slow you down when you are exploring alone?
What the AI did well
Scaffolding was the clear win. Generate a Todo model, add a controller, create the views. The boilerplate appeared in seconds. For someone who prototypes in code, that removes friction at exactly the moment when you want to move quickly.
The AI also helped with debugging. Paste an error message. Get a proposed fix. Often correct, sometimes not. The failures were instructive—they forced you to understand the stack trace, to verify the suggestion. The AI did not replace reading the code. It accelerated the cycle of try, fail, fix.
Where it fell short
Design decisions need context. The AI has no memory of your previous projects, no intuition about when a pattern fits and when it does not. It will suggest standard Rails conventions. Sometimes that is right. Sometimes you need to break the convention and the AI will not tell you when.
The most valuable takeaway: AI assistance amplifies what you already do well. If you can read code quickly, it makes you faster. If you can spot when a suggestion is wrong, it saves time. The tool works best as a pair programmer. Not as a replacement.
The product
What began as an experiment became something people could use. Todo-it is now a live, fully functional web app at todo-it.app. Try it free for 7 days, then download to your device forever for £10. No subscriptions. No lock-ins.
Why Todo-it is different
Beautiful notebook-style design. Move beyond generic todo apps. Todo-it brings the warmth and creativity of handwritten notebooks to your digital workflow—authentic hand-drawn aesthetics, typewriter animations, smooth checkbox transitions. Five curated themes included free: Classic Dotted, Lined Paper, Dark Mode, and more.
Privacy first. No social logins, no big tech tracking, no ads. Your data stays yours. GDPR compliant. Works completely offline once downloaded.
True data ownership. Download to your device and own your data forever. Works seamlessly as a PWA on phone, tablet, and desktop. No app store required.
Simple by design. Drag-and-drop reordering. No due dates—no stress, just simple lists. Stays logged in like YouTube or Spotify.
The outcome
A working product that validates a working process. The design decisions—flow, feedback, edge cases—stayed human. The AI was a fast first draft. The build revealed what AI-assisted development can and cannot do. And the result is something people can actually use.