New Job Excuse for Lack of Updates
Posting has slowed down quite a bit, mostly because I got a new job recently so the amount of time I can spend on personal programming projects has decreased significantly.
In a new turn of events, my job is actually challenging me with programming related tasks. There have been days where I was getting paid to program in Python and that is amazing!
I’ve been able to build a few internal tools for the team that I work on as well as figuring out how to deploy a larger web based tool for a larger segment of the overall company. There has been talk of turning it into a product as well which is quite exciting.
Actually being able to feel useful with my programming is quite the dream come true. While my job title is not quite “software engineer”, it is getting closer!
That being said, I’ve been trying my best to get at least one commit in on my personal project everyday. While I haven’t been perfect on that front, I’ve made near daily progress on my current main project which is a ChatGPT based chat app built using Python and Flask.
ChatGPT Chat App Project
While I’m not going to win any awards for the web design, I think I’ve done a good job building an actually useful AI chat app. It is currently using GPT-3.5-Turbo since it is so cheap.
Here are some features that help to make it standout:
Features:
- Improved design over previous “chat apps” I have created in the past using Javascript and AJAX so there is feedback when sending a message. Previously, the page wouldn’t update until the ChatGPT API responded.
- You can select from a series of preset prompts or you can input your own custom prompt. These custom prompts tend to work better than inputting your own prompt after the conversation has already started.
- A chat interface that includes the ability to easily delete individual messages, reset the chat entirely, and download the conversation history to a markdown file.
- Filename of the markdown file is ChatGPT generated based upon your initial message.
- Ability to have multiple concurrent chats going at the same time. Front page will have a small summary of the ongoing chat as well as the current prompt being used.
What’s Next?
My next move is going to be trying to add Bitcoin Lightning Network payments to the chat app in order to cover OpenAI API costs. With that in place, it might even make sense to give access to other models like GPT-4 which is significantly more expensive than GPT-3.5-Turbo. Profit will be had but I don’t expect many people to use this tool.
Hopefully by my next update, I’ll provide access to everyone! Stay tuned, or not. 😂