Have you ever had one of those days where you’re building one thing, then you need a simple ancillary utility for something minor, and next thing you know it wants to become a full-fledged tool?

That was my weekend.

With the help of AI, I took one of those little diversions and built a new utility I’m calling Asciimator. It’s a drawing tool for creating ASCII-based graphics and screen mockups. You can check out the source on GitHub.

I started with something simple, but as I stepped away and came back, I kept getting more ideas for how to expand it. That loop of build, think, improve is one of my favorite parts of making software. And AI tools right now really do compress the time from concept to reality from weeks and days down to hours and minutes.

A big part of why this came together quickly is that it builds on patterns and ideas I’ve already explored in earlier projects, especially my retro DOS work:

Those projects helped shape the foundation for how I thought about interaction, layout, and flow in Asciimator.

Now I get to jump back to my original path and see if I can bring GitPro to life.