Category: Commentary

Scrolling 𝕏, I saw a new AI called lovable make an app. I had to try it.

If you’re like me, you have ideas for software tools that aren’t available, and dream of one day learning how to code and making it come to life.

But you paid for a course, you got overwhelmed by a ton coding language, you hung in there for a month or so, deployed a basic app (readysketch.com), got frustrated hired a coder outside of the U.S. to finish it, and eventually quit because you we’re losing money.

Quitting is super lame, but sometimes you got to know which lane you’re in. I can’t do everything, even though I technically know how to do most things.

You need to focus on what you’re good at, and become great at it.

You can start for free, for a certain limit of messages with the GPT but in that first few messages you get a fully functioning app that would have cost you thousands of dollars in development costs.

So, you find out soon that paying $20 a month for lovable.dev is a steal.

I wonder what is it about $19.99 that ChatGPT, Claude, Lovable, MidJourney and every other AI is on about.

Ladies and gentlemen, taxed af. My first project with loveable.

I’m wildly impressed by lovable’s understanding of what I wanted and how it changed code, and implemented it so quickly.

At times it was faster than just a standard ChatGPT request.

I really wanted lovable to help me code an app for Shopify, but at present, it doesn’t work with Shopify’s CLI.

…so I started with Cursor AI to help me get a ‘Save 10% with Bitcoin payment button’ at checkout. It only got me so far, and I realized I was in over my head, and since a strike.me dev rep told me they already have a bitcoin lightning payment Shopify app I figured I was beating a dead horse.

_{Although, the save 10% option would be awesome and implementing docs on how small businesses can start putting BTC on their balance sheets would be an excellent service, but until then I figured I’d try something that doesn’t require such technical prowess at the moment.}

So, weaving back into what taxedAF is:

Everyone hates paying taxes. I sure do. Especially if you’re self-employed like me.

You should know what you’re going to have to pay your state and the IRS in April, or every quarter as some suggest.

So this is what the app I developed with lovable.dev does:

It breaks down every payment you receive based on your invoices you send out, if you’re smart this will help you find out what to even charge your client, and also what to put away when your client pays up.

It’s an estimation of what you’d likely pay, not an exact. Because obviously, everyones tax bracket is different, how you file, is different (single or married), and everyone’s state/county is different.

But this is a pretty damn close approximation of what you’d owe because I told loveable to include every state (and it’s income tax obligations), what the federal government will charge you, and (news to me) self-employment tax.

God, living in CA with all these taxes you really get f*cked, thus the name I branded it with, taxedAF.

It’s nearly half of my pay check for each invoice that is paid to me.

This is insane.

So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to save 30% of each pay check I receive to use to pay taxes with later.

But, this I guess in C.A. is not enough.

In one night I launched taxedaf.com

With all the tools connected to lovable.dev with netlify for domain hosting, supabase for SQL, and github for deployment I literally did what would normally take months, in one night.

It’s still a work in progress and with loveable’s help I can probably turn this into a stream of income for other self-employed IRS paranoid people like myself.

I could include some knowledge docs, some courses, some banking integration options, export to tax software options, assist with even filing taxes, damn loveable is my full stack developer, you know how much that saves me in costs for something this robust?

Over $100k easily is saved using loveable.

I get it, if you can afford a human full-stack dev, by all means. But for start-ups I’m sorry dev’s your job just got replaced → and eventually mine.

But until then, I’ll use AI tools to help all my clients, and myself.

Because bro it’s nearly 2025, this is America and here we go! 🇺🇸