The Joy of Building Software That’s Useless

Lessons from Our First AI Tooling Award

To stay fast, you have to stay playful. We’ve found that the best way to build internal capability isn't through workshops or simply offering access to the latest tools. It's through the freedom to build things that might be completely useless (or surprisingly helpful). With this in mind, we rolled out "Vibe Coding" hackathons across our network,  inviting everyone from Finance and HR to get their hands dirty with vibe coding. 

The goal was to lower the barrier and simply make technology feel a little less scary. We saw people who had never touched a line of code build recruiting tools, workflow automations, and finance dashboards. Our teams moved beyond just using AI to "chat"; they started to create custom visual workflows, pitch ideation tools, and compliance checkers.

One of our designers built a tool that auto-sorts messy screenshots into folders. Our UX Lead moved from wireframes to building a native app to vibe coding a Hackernews feed in dark mode. 

One of our favourite projects came from our designer, Anton, who wanted to solve the physical toll of the job. The vision was simple: make endless clicking healthier. The app tracks 10,000 clicks across your system and then forces a 15-minute reset with relaxing sounds and dreamy visuals to prevent carpal tunnel.

The outcome was a fully working macOS app shipped by someone who "didn't know how to code". It’s proof that if you are stubborn enough to ask four different AIs the same question forty different ways, you can ship something real.

We’ve now built workflows that generate custom illustrations and tools that analyze complex project data. But the real value isn't the apps themselves, it's the shift in mindset. As our designer put it: "I’ve called a robot a dickhead more times than I’d like to admit, so if AI ever becomes sentient, I’m finished." Until then, we’ll keep building, breaking things, and taking our click breaks.