AI IN MI I BY PETER DODS The Case for Building an App
B uilding customized applications for your business is one of the most exciting parts of the AI era for me. But before I get into my favorites, I want to be clear about what I’m pitching and what I’m not. I’m not telling you to build customer-facing applications with public URLs. That path has exponentially more security risk. What I’m pitching is internal tools — bespoke software that lives inside your company, available only to you and your team. Because I’m a music retailer, I don’t need to build my own Shopify
I shared it with my sales team so instead of running back to the register or fumbling with a mo- bile app, they can pull a quote on the spot. Another example was streamlin- ing our email marketing. I started with a Google Sheet and an Apps Script that compiled product info, photos, links and HTML widgets into a finished email that automati- cally connected to Mailchimp. It worked for me, but training some- one else would have been brutal. So, I rebuilt it as an app inside Google’s Antigravity. I already had all the HTML and the Tri-Tech referenc- es, so wiring it up was easy. Note: Claude Code or Codex would also work great for this. Now I have widgets I drag and drop, like a YouTube block with a side paragraph, or a triple product card with smaller font. Want to hide MAP pricing and strip URLs for an in-store-only deal? One but- ton does both. Want a different color scheme for a holiday? I have 40 transparent PNG logos with gradients on a drop-down menu that match all the section headers. A FINAL WORD With AI, the intelligence and tooling will keep getting better, but quotas, run rates and pricing won’t. Over the past eight months, I’ve watched AI companies get steadily stingier. ChatGPT and Claude are reportedly losing mon- ey even on their $200 plans, and a glance at their pay-as-you-go API rates tells you why. Subsidized pricing can’t hold forever, so start building now. MI
replacement. The tech isn’t there yet, and my skills probably never will be. Instead, I’m advocating for you to try building small, internal tools that make your actual day-to-day work easier. Before I dive deeper into how to do this, a word of caution: When your applications come online, ask yourself: Who owns them? Who knows how to fix them when they break? I learned quickly that being one of the few doing this at my shop meant I was the one paying the price when things went sideways. USE GOOGLE APPS SCRIPT If you use Google Sheets and Google Docs, Apps Script is right there in the “Extensions” menu. It connects natively, so there’s no wrestling with HTTPS requests or API configurations to make a basic tool work.
You also get native control over who can log in. You can lock the app to your organiza- tion or to a few specific users. You don’t host anything on a local computer, and you don’t pay for cloud hosting. Google hosts it for free, and Workspace accounts get generous runtime. A FEW OF MY FAVORITE BUILDS To date, my “SKU Finder” and “Proposal Builder” apps have been top of my list. We auto-export
“Consider using AI to help you build internal tools that live inside your business, available only to you and your team to make day- to-day work easier.”
Tri-Tech inventory data to Google Sheets multiple times a day, and with that backbone in place, I built an app to fix a personal headache. When I’m traveling and a customer asks for a discount on Reverb or through our admin email, I’d have to remote into the desktop, open the Tri-Tech mobile app or dig through spreadsheets. None of that’s fast. So, I built version one on my phone using Gemini and Apps Script while on vacation that would let me type in a SKU and see the last received date, cost and current margin. All I have to do now is type in a proposed price, and it shows the new margin. When I got home, I added a partial SKU search, up and down arrows to nudge the margin, a shopping cart, total margin on the full sale (obfuscated to the customer) and a quote system that emails the customer a proposal good for 24 hours.
Peter Dods is the owner of Honolulu-based Easy Music Center.
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