AI-Ding

AI Ding is a Chrome extension that solves a surprisingly common problem for AI users: knowing exactly when the AI is done generating. *Aiding* AI-users one ding at a time (pun-intended).

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Inspiration

As a stay-at-home mom, I noticed how easy it is to get distracted while waiting for AI tools like Bolt.new or ChatGPT to finish processing. My home appliances, like the microwave, oven, washer, dryer, and even the fridge, alert me when they're ready or need my attention, but AI doesn’t. I kept running between chores, scrolling on my phone while waiting, and my ADHD brain would drift off, browsing on a different screen and forget that I was waiting for a response. Had it notified me, I'd look right up and continue prompting right away. What I needed was a "ding" inside Bolt to get my hackathon project progressing faster, eliminating the wasted time in between me waiting for Bolt and Bolt waiting for me. Question was... how do I get a "ding" inside Bolt? Do I tell Bolt to remake itself? Then I can just simply stick a small line of "ding" code in it..... In the end, this Chrome extension project worked great since I was unsure about creating the privacy policy and collecting people's data.

What it does

AI-Ding sends a "ding" pop-up/notification sound when Bolt or ChatGPT finishes processing your prompt. This way, you can step away or scroll on your phone without missing the result.

How we built it

At first, it was just another "stay-at-home mom" issue.... or more of a "me issue" since I'm learning to code and use AI technology.... Then I complained to my husband, and while the kids were swimming, I decided this is not only a mom problem. Especially after re-watching an episode of Bolt's livestream where everyone was going around saying what they do while their prompts are "thinking" and in the process of building. THAT was proof I am not the only one that's noticed this! Our thought was we would have to create a virtual computer of sort at first.... but that would be so inconvenient. Bolt is already inside a frame and to have that inside another frame would make the working space so small..... Then at one of the last weekly IRL rvr.to meetups that we hosted in our neighborhood, I pitched it. Nate, a young self taught full stack developer, quickly coded his idea of color detection with the mouse being placed over a specific spot where a change would happen when the AI was done generating a response to a prompt. HOWEVER, it wasn't ideal since we (the users... me) would want to move the mouse to do other things on my other screen while we waited for AI to generate a response. Then something dawned on my husband, and he went ahead and prompted Bolt to create a Chrome extension. We didn't know Bolt could code a Chrome extension! 🙀 Our minds were laser-focused on web and mobile applications! From there, he figured if we could detect DOM changes, it could signal an eventListener and ding he got Gemini to work, then ding Chat GPT worked then Bolt and then Claude. The Chrome extension was working! and my brain was fried.

Challenges we ran into

Time management: With kids finishing school, out of school, and a family camping trip, it was hard to find time to work on the Bolt project. It is 4:07 and I just finished creating the video

Technical hurdles: Figuring out how to detect when different AI tools (like ChatGPT and Gemini) had finished processing was tricky.... especially while we were on our trip (the single laptop screen was so tiny!)

Building with Bolt: How do we tackle this issue? How can we implement the Ding? We didn’t want to just remake Bolt with a ding, we wanted a smart, reusable, more diverse solution.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I’m genuinely proud of the courage it took to step up and apply to be a mentor. My motivation was twofold: not only did I want to help others, but I also hoped that the responsibility would push me to become a more proactive learner so I could truly guide others. I figured out how to use Loom, made like 20 Loom videos, because I kept rambling and going over the 5 minute mark. I tried my best to watch every Bolt Livestream and show support by being an active member in the chat. Even though I wasn’t selected as an official mentor, my commitment to supporting the community didn’t waver. I continued to host local meetups, aiming to be a real-life (IRL) mentor for those who showed up. Back at the beginning of March, before the Hackathon, I messaged Kate on LinkedIn if there's anything I can do to volunteer my time to help Bolt, because I liked the product, but this was my chance to help out. I stepped out of my comfort zone and pretended like I'm an extrovert!

As I mentioned in my application, hosting these events felt a lot like organizing my local Sand Volleyball Meetups: I show up, welcome whoever arrives, play with them, get some adult conversation going and make sure everyone has a good time. Most attendees had never heard of Bolt before, and honestly, I found myself and my husband acting like Bolt salespeople. Just eager to share our excitement and inspire others to use Bolt to build and create.

I’m especially proud of all the newcomers who showed up, many of whom had no coding experience. It was amazing to watch them tinker with Bolt and see the pride on their faces as they shared their projects with me. I do wonder, though—did any of them end up submitting something for the hackathon?

A special shout-out goes to my kids, ages 9 and 11, who became little Bolt salespeople themselves! Next to our table, sat the kids' table. The adults supervised. My 5th grader took the lead and together, the children identified real world problems and they built solutions on Bolt.new to keep the other little people engaged while my husband and I chatted with the adults about Bolt.new. The kids did all the work (Just like how they do in the First Lego League). Over the course of our meetups, they created:

  1. A kid's cooking/recipe app.

  2. A mental health animal app (kind of like Microsoft’s classic paperclip assistant)

  3. A game where you quickly solve math problems while cooking a hot dog on a stick over a campfire without getting it burned.

Watching them get creative and excited about building has been one of my favorite experiences. Also, watching experienced coders watch the code appear and being shocked was pretty entertaining. I’m proud of us all for showing up and trying new things, especially those people whom I convinced to check out Bolt even though they had no idea how to code anything and neither did they have any interest in building. I thought maybe I could convince them with my excitement. They were wowed, but many didn't have the energy to dive deeper into it.

AND I'm especially proud of my husband, who kept encouraging me to be involved with Bolt and came up with the final solution for the AI-Ding project and kept on bolting while I'm facing anxiety as the due date is approaching.

What we learned

I learned something new every LiveStream I watched (I'm Crispective on Youtube 👋). I've learned so many experienced people are very negative toward vibe coding around where I live and the people who are non-coders don't have the energy to learn it. It takes time to find your people, I suppose. Not everyone will believe in your idea or even agree with it, but there are people like me who think my idea is just as amazing somewhere in this world, though (I hope). They're out there.... I just have to expose myself, tell a good convincing story and keep marketing, keep selling.... get better at story telling LOL

What's next for AI-Ding

  1. Add more AI platforms (Perplexity, Claude, etc...)
    1. A community chat where people can communicate about what's new in AI and the various platforms out there and what they've created with the AI tool (Discord? Instagram? Facebook, etc...) ✔
    2. Make the project open source, enabling the community to contribute and adapt it for use with various AI platforms (Github)
  2. Add a pop-up notification on the screen ✔
  3. Add a paid tier? - alert to the phone and to the watch (for when you walk away from the computer)
  4. Advertise/Market - maybe other AI companies will be inspired and implement a little toggle button permanently into their AI platforms. Having a notification sound or popup brings the attention that drifted away back and psychologically, hearing the ding can make the user FEEL like the wait time isn't isn't as long.
  5. Get it to the Chrome webstore

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