Code Like A Little Old Lady presents…
Useful little things I built because I needed them. I’m sharing them because someone else might need them, too.
See the projectsNewly finished
Recent builds for everyday needs and curious questions.
What The Plate? was my build for #SheBuilds(opens in a new tab). All Wrapped Up and Pawprint were built with Lovable(opens in a new tab).
A place to look up personalized license plates from the US and Canada and share your interpretation of what they mean.
For anyone puzzling over a personalized license plate.
Show Me Your Prompts is the ten-essay series about building What The Plate? with Lovable. The series concludes November 6, 2026.
A little help with thoughtful giving. See who still needs a gift at a glance, keep private lists, and share only the ones you choose.
For gift-givers keeping track of several people.
My group of distinct AI thinking partners is now live in Slack, bringing different perspectives to the questions and projects I work through with them.
An MCP built for the EarthCent Ambassador series by E.M. Foner, part of my growing collection of tools around the books.
A cozy corner of the internet for cute animal photos. Upload a furry, feathery, or scaly friend, leave a reaction, and see who is Friend of the Day.
For animal lovers who enjoy sharing photos of their companions.
The essay is on its way.
On the bench
Small tools for organizing work, gathering people, and making the internet slightly less unruly.
Ask a small group the same questions, give everyone room to think, and gather their answers in one useful place.
For people gathering a small group’s thoughts.
Participants can save drafts, review their answers, and submit when they’re ready. Creators can follow responses and read them by question or by person.
Give contributors a clear way to choose a date, understand their deadline, and submit their work without coordinating the entire thing through a heroic spreadsheet.
For people organizing contributors and deadlines.
The current calendar is organizing contributors for A Month Of: Sides, running November 1–30, 2026.
Behind the build
A personal reading and engagement dashboard for keeping newsletters, notes, and conversations from disappearing into a pile of open tabs.
Mailroom Ledger brings the things I mean to read, answer, or return to into one deliberate workflow. The video shows how the pieces fit together.
Not everything built here is a tool. A couple of things made purely for the fun of making them, both live and ready to explore.
Seven writers, five questions about Substack’s Recommendation feature, gathered into one interactive weave. Follow a full thread by name, see every answer to a question, or read a single thought on its own.
For readers curious about how writers use Substack recommendations.
A mysterious vending machine holding six AI interpretations of me as soft drinks, presented by the Inner Chamber. Click a can to inspect it, warning label and all.
For curious visitors who enjoy a playful AI experiment.
A few more things are taking shape on the workbench. They are not ready to use yet, but they are far enough along to have names.
The Purple Menace began with a little story and images. I’m now using them to learn to create little videos, with an app taking shape along the way.
For people curious about learning to create video.
A practical Python library of example scripts for working with Substack API calls, built from the things I keep needing to automate.
An independent project and not affiliated with Substack.
A review desk taking shape for the EarthCent series, with a GitHub runner that turns free-form text into JSON for use here and in other projects.
A drop-in library with full test coverage for the frameworks Lovable generates out of the box, so a new project starts with its code tested from day one.
A home on the web for everything I write and make, with a porch, a lake, and doors to each of my corners of the internet. It's a work in progress. I'm building it with my Inner Chamber of AI thinking partners and learning new ways to do web development as I go. Pull up a chair on the back porch. There are cookies and lemonade.
Visit alisonmaclellan.me(opens in a new tab)The story behind the builds. I'm rebuilding an old family wish list app in public, and writing up what I learn about each tool along the way.
A little shop for Code Like A Little Old Lady merchandise, for anyone who wants to wear the motto.
Merch coming!
I build things partly for the pure joy of building. These projects give me a place to try new ideas, learn what they can do, and solve problems I actually have, especially the challenge of managing my own online life. When something becomes useful to me, I share it in case it might be useful to someone else, too.
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