How I Built a Desktop App with AI in One Weekend (And I Barely Wrote Code)
A story about orchestrating AI, fighting with APIs, and finally shipping
I built Narrativ.
A simple desktop app for Mac that turns any topic into beautiful, shareable image stories using AI. It does everything for you: researches the topic, writes the script, generates the images, and saves it all to your computer.
The best part? It’s on Homebrew. You can install it right now.
Here’s the crazy part: I wrote maybe 1% of the code. Claude wrote the rest.
This is a look at how I used AI to build a small tool, how it works, and why this shift in how we build things might be interesting to you too.
What Does Narrativ Actually Do?
Imagine you want to make an Instagram carousel or a LinkedIn post about “The History of Espresso.”
Normally, you’d have to:
Google “history of espresso” and read Wikipedia.
Write down 5 interesting facts.
Go to Midjourney or ChatGPT to generate images for each fact.
Download them, organize them, and upload them.
With Narrativ, you just type: “The History of Espresso”
And the app:
Researches it (finds real facts, dates, and details).
Writes the story (using Gemini or local open-source models via Ollama).
Draws the images (using Nano Banana Pro or Huggingface)
Saves everything locally on your Mac, ready to share.
That’s the idea, at least. It tries to be a helpful research assistant and artist that lives quietly on your desktop.
Why I Built It (The “Honest” Setup)
I’ve been playing with AI coding for a while, but I wanted to push it. I wanted to see if I could build a real app and not just a web toy, but a proper Mac app that you install and keep.
My role wasn’t really “programmer.” It was more like a project manager who knows just enough to be dangerous:
Me: “Okay, the image generation works, but the app freezes while it’s thinking.”
Claude: “My bad. Here’s a version that runs it in the background.”
Me: “Better. But now it doesn’t sync with the vault instantly.”
Claude: “Ah, right. We need to handle that error case...”
I knew what needed to happen; Claude knew how to write it.
But here is the catch: You still have to pay attention.
When the app crashed, Claude couldn’t see my screen. I had to give console logs and 100s of screenshots to explain the issue. Just a very, very fast pair programmer who never gets tired but occasionally hallucinates.
“Wait, couldn’t you just do this with n8n?”
I know what some of you are thinking. “I could build this in n8n or Zapier in 20 minutes.”
And honestly? You’re probably right.
Technically, Narrativ is just a series of API calls chained together. A workflow tool is perfect for that.
But I didn’t just want the result. I wanted to understand the container.
I wanted to learn: How does a Python script actually become a clickable Mac app? How do you get software into Homebrew so others can install it easily? How do you structure a real project that isn’t just a fragile script on my desktop?
Building a workflow is efficient. But typically, I wanted to build a product, something with an icon, an installer, and a user interface. There is just something satisfying about double-clicking an app you “made” (even if you had a lot of help).
Why Desktop? (And Why Simplicity Wins)
Most AI tools today are websites. You log in, you pay a monthly subscription, and they keep your data.
I hate that.
I wanted Narrativ to be yours. No Accounts: You don’t sign up. You just open the app. Your Data: Everything is saved to a folder on your computer. No Subscriptions: You use your own free (or paid) API keys from Google or Fal.ai. You pay them directly for what you use.
It feels like the old internet. Simple, private, and owned by you.
Under the Hood (For the Curious)
Even though it looks simple, there is some cool tech inside:
Search & Research: It doesn’t just make things up. It searches the web to find real, current information (like “Latest SpaceX Launch”) before writing the story.
Smart Images: It doesn’t just say “make a rocket.” It describes the rocket, the lighting, and the angle to get a perfect shot.
Local Sync: Because it saves files to your Documents folder, if you use iCloud or Dropbox, your stories appear on your iPhone instantly. No “export” button needed.
What I Learned About Building with AI
It’s Fast-ish. This would have taken me months to code by hand. With AI, it took a few days of late nights. It’s not instant, but it’s doable.
It closes the gap. I’m not a Rust expert. I’m definitely not a designer. But with AI, I can punch above my weight class and build things that actually look and feel professional.
Taste still matters. AI writes code, but it has terrible taste. It will happily build an ugly, confusing app. You still have to say, “No, that user experience is bad, let’s fix it.”
Try It (If You Want)
Narrativ is free, open source, and very much a work in progress. It runs on Mac (Apple Silicon).
If you want to poke around, you can install it via Homebrew:
brew install chaiovercode/getnarrativ/narrativYou’ll need a Google Gemini API key.
It might have bugs. It might be a bit rough around the edges. But it works for me, and maybe it’ll be useful for you too.
Wow, the part about barely writing code really stood out, making me woder about the evolving role of developers, and this is truly brilliant.