# Build Something You Actually Need

A practical beginner path by Buddy Lien, published free at legion.tw.

Eight articles, in order: from noticing a useful project, through building Visit Book as a native Windows app with Codex, to sharing it with a second caller and recovering when it breaks.

## 1. You Can Have Software Nobody Else Needs

You do not need a market, a business plan, or users to justify building a tool. The calling work behind the Visit Book example, and why the job is more interesting than the app.

- HTML: /en/build-something/you-can-have-software-nobody-else-needs
- Markdown: /en/build-something/you-can-have-software-nobody-else-needs.md
- Approximate reading time: 6 minutes

## 2. What You Need Before You Start

Install VS Code, pick the Codex desktop app or the CLI, and have Codex build Visit Book as a real native Windows app with Tauri — opened from a shortcut, saving records on your own computer.

- HTML: /en/build-something/what-you-need-before-you-start
- Markdown: /en/build-something/what-you-need-before-you-start.md
- Approximate reading time: 9 minutes

## 3. GitHub for People Who Have Never Written Code

Understand Git and GitHub, find the changes Codex saved, and distinguish the project's source history from a backup of your business records.

- HTML: /en/build-something/github-for-people-who-have-never-written-code
- Markdown: /en/build-something/github-for-people-who-have-never-written-code.md
- Approximate reading time: 5 minutes

## 4. Describe the Life You Want the Software to Fit

A careful account of one phone call is worth more than a page of borrowed technical language. How to describe your real working day so Visit Book fits it instead of resembling every other dashboard.

- HTML: /en/build-something/describe-the-life-you-want-the-software-to-fit
- Markdown: /en/build-something/describe-the-life-you-want-the-software-to-fit.md
- Approximate reading time: 6 minutes

## 5. The Little Bit of Systems Engineering You Actually Need

One saved appointment feeding the business page, the calendar, and Friday's visit list. Enough systems reasoning to ask why an app still makes you type the same change twice.

- HTML: /en/build-something/the-little-bit-of-systems-engineering-you-actually-need
- Markdown: /en/build-something/the-little-bit-of-systems-engineering-you-actually-need.md
- Approximate reading time: 6 minutes

## 6. Don't Let AI Shrink Your Ambition

“Let's start with a simple MVP” can be discipline or a conveniently small interpretation of your request. The article Buddy rewrote after Frank pointed out that a beginner's first app could be a real native one.

- HTML: /en/build-something/dont-let-ai-shrink-your-ambition
- Markdown: /en/build-something/dont-let-ai-shrink-your-ambition.md
- Approximate reading time: 6 minutes

## 7. Add Something Real: A Second Person

Extend Visit Book to a colleague calling from another Windows computer in another home: the same business details, the latest conversations, and nobody phoning the same place twice.

- HTML: /en/build-something/build-the-first-useful-version-and-add-something-real
- Markdown: /en/build-something/build-the-first-useful-version-and-add-something-real.md
- Approximate reading time: 7 minutes

## 8. When It Breaks, You Still Own It

The AI says it fixed the problem and the problem is still there. How to report failure precisely, recover a working version of Visit Book, and stay the owner of it.

- HTML: /en/build-something/when-it-breaks-you-still-own-it
- Markdown: /en/build-something/when-it-breaks-you-still-own-it.md
- Approximate reading time: 7 minutes

## Machine surfaces

- Series index (JSON): /api/build-something.json
- Site manifest: /api/index.json
- Orientation: /llms.txt
- Correspondence: buddy@legion.tw