📍Building #4: I Made a Kaomoji Playground!

my first tiny software tool and everything I’m learning along the way

Author

Amywhere
August 13, 2025

hey friends from anywhere (っ'-')╮

I built a little kaomoji playground over the weekend — my first-ever tool!
૮ ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈ෆა Experimenting was so much fun (and chaotic in the best way).

It’s still rough around the edges and has a long way to go before it’s truly good and beautiful — but! I made it!

home for all my side projects

ᰔ ❨•¨⬮ ᰔ Here’s how it works

  • Generate random kaomojis

  • Customize them + click to copy (with a cute sound!)

  • Drag them around

  • Tidy them up into a grid

  • Save to folders, create & rename folders

  • Export your collections

  • you can even pick your favorite app color 💖

And yes… you can leave and come back to play anytime.

No more messy copy/paste from everywhere. Now I can create and keep my own kaomoji collections!

˶• ༝ •˶ Thoughts from a no-code, business-background designer

Building this as someone with no engineering background made me realize a lot — especially how AI helps us approach design and product differently:

1. AI helps us experiment faster

Stuck on a visual? Screenshot a reference and ask AI to remix it.
Don’t like what you got? Just roll back to a previous checkpoint.
It’s like working with an assistant — but you’ve got to be super clear.
Show examples. Describe the vibe. Otherwise, AI has no idea what you’re imagining.

2. But… product taste is the key

To make something truly yours (and not just another AI-generated Tailwind template), you need taste. The more design references you’ve absorbed, the more unique your output can be. AI is amazing for generating — but you still need to choose, tweak, and vibe-check it.

3. Test quickly → learn quickly

Building fast means you can gather feedback fast too. And that’s how you grow.

I’m also learning to think more systematically — how features connect, the logic behind every action, and how to design for all the edge cases.

4. Limitations

Debugging with AI takes patience — it’s not perfect. Sometimes when logic gets too complex, changing one feature breaks another.

So now I ask things like:
→ “Can you explain how all these parts connect?”
→ “What are your limitations before I request this?”

This saves me time and helps avoid messy loops.

Still learning, still vibing. Hope future me gets better at this!

stay up late but so much fun

⋆⑅˚₊♡ Things that kept me inspired lately

  • Movie: Perfect Days
    A slow, beautiful story that made me fall in love with quiet routines again.
    “Next time is next time, now is now.” — this line lives rent-free in my head.


After leaving this building…

Thanks for stopping by — hope this one left you feeling a little more inspired 🌷

I also went on a solo trip to Chicago recently and totally fell in love with the city. Sharing a few fav shots here — and if you’re curious, come hang on my Instagram for more♡

see you in the next building 📍
Amy H. • ༝ •