Koi.rest turns AI-assisted coding into a quiet shared pond

Koi.rest is a small virtual koi pond where strangers can watch fish quietly, together. I built it with AI even though I don’t know JavaScript, after an unfinished balcony zen garden and a long-running idea finally pushed me to make the “good enough” version. It’s a silly passion project, but it moved an idea out of my head and onto the internet.

I’m Paul, a developer, an explorer, and I have ADHD. As of the beginning of August, I’m also unemployed. That change, combined with everything else that happened over the past year, has created a great deal of stress. Even the small zen garden I wanted to build on my balcony remains unfinished.

What was I actually trying to build?

I wanted a virtual version of that balcony garden that everyone could use. That was the whole idea, but I kept postponing it.

The reason was straightforward: I had no idea how to build it because I don’t know JavaScript, and I didn’t have the capacity to learn JavaScript at the time. Rather than begin learning, I kept the idea to myself. In my mind, not being ready became a good enough reason to wait.

The problem was that waiting did not make the idea disappear. It stayed there, unfinished and occupying space in my brain.

I had been treating “perfect” as a requirement, even though what I actually wanted was something good enough to exist. That distinction sounds small, but it was the thing holding the project back.

Why did I use AI for the coding?

Then I said, “Fuck it,” and used AI to make the thing I really wanted to make.

I stopped trying to become the sort of developer who could build every part of the project from scratch before publishing it. That may not be the usual way to approach a software project, but it was the way I could finally move forward with the energy and capacity I had available.

The work still involved plenty of iteration. I tweaked things, added things, removed things, drew, researched, questioned, tested, and kept working through the project. I just wasn’t the person writing all the code.

Those are the actual details I can give. I’m not going to attach a neat model name, framework, or polished development workflow that wasn’t part of the experience. The important part is that AI let me turn a concept into something running on the internet while I focused on deciding what the project should become and continuing to refine it.

That was enough for this project. I no longer needed to be the coder for the idea to become real.

Why publish an imperfect passion project?

There is something appealing about making something entirely on your own. Still, an idea sitting untouched in your head does very little for anyone else.

I could keep postponing the virtual zen garden, but I could also let it exist. So I made the thing: a weird, little, quiet koi pond. It is a silly project of passion and a small corner of the internet where strangers can watch fish quietly, together.

The result no longer takes up the same mental space as an unfinished idea. It lives online where other people can use it. I hope Koi.rest helps them as much as making it helped me.