Using AI Tools to Build a Niche Web Calculator: My Experience

Hi everyone,

I’ve been diving into web development recently and wanted to share how AI tools have been a game-changer for creating my latest project. I built a soil calculator tool for gardeners and landscapers to estimate soil volume and costs for their projects. The process was both challenging and rewarding, and AI played a big role in making it happen.

I used AI-powered coding assistants like GitHub Copilot to speed up writing clean JavaScript for the calculator’s logic. It helped me debug tricky parts, like handling unit conversions (cubic yards to cubic feet, etc.), which saved hours of trial and error. For the UI, I leaned on AI design tools like Figma’s AI plugins to prototype a user-friendly layout quickly, even though I’m not a design pro.

One cool thing I learned: AI can help optimize your site for SEO too. I used an AI content tool to brainstorm keyword ideas around “soil calculation” and “gardening tools,” which gave me a head start on ranking.

If you’re curious, you can check out the tool here: https://soilcalculator.xyz/. It’s still a work in progress, but I’d love feedback from this community, especially on the UX or any bugs you spot!

Has anyone else used AI tools for coding or designing niche web apps? What’s been your experience, and any must-have tools you’d recommend?

Looking forward to the discussion!

This is a fairly common workflow these days, especially for small projects without a team. The soil calculator itself is niche, but useful. Simple utilities like these often work well when they're easy to use.
Overall, it's a good example of how AI can truly save time.

AI can suggest keywords and structure, but without a proper understanding of the topic, it often ends up being too general. I usually still double-check manually to make sure there aren't any junk queries, and recently I came across https://techflowzone.com/ which has a lot of discussions about web development and AI tools in development, how others approach such projects, and what stacks and tools they use. Overall, the direction is good. Keep developing the project.