Last month, For All Things Digital teamed up with Purple Mango Company and DEMP Agency to bring a free community AI workshop to Roxbury, a historically Black Boston neighborhood. In partnership with Lovable, we created a space where people could come as they are, no experience required, bring an idea, and build it in real time. There are people in neighborhoods all over Boston who are creative, entrepreneurial, and ready to learn, and they’re usually expected to travel to wherever the opportunity already exists. We brought it to them instead.
People came in with ideas and left with working products and tools.
One person built a Life Coach Planner that takes a big goal and breaks it into a personalized, step-by-step plan. Another person built a DIY Home Project App where a homeowner describes a repair or uploads a photo and gets back a cost estimate, a supply list, a timeline, and how-to videos.
Gaelle Bernard, a homeschool mom, educator, and content creator, vibe coded for the first time ever. She built Mama Hub, an app that pulls curriculum, meals, schedules, activities, and family planning into one place.
Every participant also got a free guide we designed called A Guide to Building Smarter With AI. It includes everything from plain-language fundamentals, prompt frameworks you can reuse, and a starting point for exploring tools on your own.
And yes, it’s free! Grab it here: purplemangoco.com/vibecheck
Why We Called It a Vibe Check
Vibe coding is telling AI what you want it to make. A vibe check is checking yourself before you start. What are you actually trying to accomplish? Who are you building for? What problem does this solve? And is the convenience worth what you’re asking the tool to build?
IEA's Energy and AI report projects that by 2030, the data centers powering AI could use roughly 945 terawatt-hours of electricity, slightly more than Japan uses in a year. A separate report from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health puts the water needed to cool them at 9.3 trillion liters annually, equal to the basic yearly water needs of everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Generative AI is the new normal, so obviously not going to sit here and tell folks to stop using it. Yet, we have to be more intentional about using it so we’re not wasting processing power. If you already know what you want, write one good prompt instead of generating fifty versions. Build something useful instead of another digital product nobody asked for. (Our guide covers this)
Intentionality is better for the planet, and it usually produces better work anyway.
How to Actually Prompt (Well)
The biggest observation from the workshop was how surprised people were by their results once they gave more context in their prompts.
“Build me a booking app” leaves too much room for questions. AI has no idea who the app is for, what kind of business is using it, how customers book now, or what the brand feels like. ❌
Compare that to “Build a booking app for a solo hairstylist whose clients currently text her to schedule. Most of her customers are local women between 25 and 45, she has limited slots each week, and she wants it to feel warm and personal instead of corporate.” ✅
Four things to focus on when prompting:
Build before you build. There’s nothing wrong with good old pen and paper. Draw the diagram. Mock it up in Canva or Adobe Express. Give AI something to react to instead of asking it to invent your idea from scratch. Make the thing first, then ask AI to help you make it better.
Say what you’re making and who it’s for. Context changes the output dramatically. The more clearly you explain the user, the problem, and where the product will actually get used, the more useful that first version tends to be.
Describe the experience of the features. Warm and welcoming? Modern and minimal? Playful and colorful? Polished and high-end? Two products can have identical features and still feel completely different.
Bring your brand in. Give it your language, colors, visual references, fonts, tone of voice, and examples of things you’ve already made. The tool can’t know your brand unless you teach it, which is exactly where your expertise and experience becomes the differentiator.
Specificity also means fewer wasted generations. You spend less time asking the AI to redo something you could have explained better the first time. The vibe check makes you a better builder.
Bring This to Your Neighborhood
If you’re reading this and already thinking about your organization or the people you serve, good! You don’t have to wait for somebody with a bigger platform, a bigger budget, or a formal title to decide your community is ready.
Lovable has an ambassador program and a community events platform that can help. You can apply to become an ambassador or host a Lovable community event and bring this to your own community!
Let us know how it goes!!