I'm Andrew, a former frontend dev who, after 18 years in the field, transitioned into Product Management - where I’ve been for the past 5 years. Lately though, I’ve been itching to build something again. But between time constraints and rusty coding skills, I figured it’d be tough to get far.
That’s when I turned to AI. After seeing so many folks launch projects with help from AI, I thought: why not? Not to make money, but to see for myself what’s truly possible.
That’s how [Miniwhips](https://miniwhips.app) was born. A fun side project for car enthusiasts like me (yep, I’m a bit of a petrolhead).
Goals of the project
- See how far I could go relying on AI for code (is the hype real?)
- Test dev tools like Cursor, Windsurf, Kiro, Claude, and ChatGPT
- Learn how Paddle works for modern payments
- Explore AI APIs for analyzing/generating images (costs, quality, prompting)
- Build something fun that I’d actually enjoy using
What it does
You upload a photo of your real car, and Miniwhips transforms it into a stylized "toy" version — think Hot Wheels vibes, but fully custom. GPT-4o analyzes the image and DALL·E 3 creates a one-of-a-kind collectible-style render.
Tech stack
- GPT-4o Vision → describes and interprets uploaded car photos
- DALL·E 3 → generates 1024×1024 stylized image
- Laravel (PHP) backend with Blade templates
- Alpine.js + Tailwind CSS for frontend
It’s free to try, and I’d love feedback on:
- The overall experience (UI, UX, image quality)
- How hobby/fun vs. monetization balance feels
- Anything you’d do differently with the stack or the flow
If you'd like to provide more direct feedback or just say hi - you can always reach out at contact@miniwhips.app!
Appreciate any thoughts or critique. Thanks!
lookdangerous•5mo ago
I think the pricing is a bit odd because I imagine using this for one or two cars, not 3 or more. Maybe some would be willing to pay a couple bucks per car, so you could raise the prices, and make 3 focused tiers instead of 5.
There's something odd about the pictures too. The thumbnails don't look like toy cars, they look like (photographically) sharpened images. It's only when I open the full picture that I see the toy-car-ness. Not sure what you can do about that.
The backgrounds, too, don't scream 'toy-car'. I think it might feel more like a toy if you render it on a desk, on a hot wheels track, etc.
That is what I noticed, critically. Way to build something.